Wednesday, November 30, 2005
artnet Magazine - Sophie’s Choices
artnet Magazine - Sophie’s Choices
Looks like this show could be worth a visit, these paintings are so bad that they are good, if you get my drift.
Looks like this show could be worth a visit, these paintings are so bad that they are good, if you get my drift.
Eye Level : New Blog on the Block
Eye LevelA new "blog" about American Art from the folks at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Is this a museum web site masquarading as a blog?
Friday, November 25, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Marina Abramoviç: Seven Tough Nights in NYC
What a week… I just got back from the last performance of Marina Abramovic: the finale of her seven night run @ the Guggenheim. I was lucky to have been present for five of the seven nights. In my estimation, the last two performances were the most riveting. Too much to digest fully so I’ll write more after the dust has settled.
From November 9 through November 15, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Marina Abramoviç: Seven Easy Pieces,seven consecutive nights of performances in the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda from 5 PM to 12 AM.
Since the early 1970s, Marina Abramoviç has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has always served as her subject and medium, and the parameters of her early works were determined by her endurance. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for transformation. With Seven Easy Pieces Abramoviç reenacts seminal performance works by her peers dating from the 1960s and ’70s.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Marina Abamovic Performance@Guggenheim Museum
The opening night of the 7-day "performance marathon" by acclaimed artist Marina Abamovic on Nov.9th was a powerful and intense experience for anyone lucky enough to be in attendance in the famed Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. An historic moment in contemporary art began with Ms. Abramovic re-enacting a piece by Bruce Nauman.
To be in the audience in that space felt like witnessing a comet that comes once in a lifetime. time stood still as the power and intense concentration of the artist on stage drew you into the her very breathing so riveting was her focus and energy. There was a hushed aura like being in the eye of a storm: the air was crackling with energy and you could feel the electricity in the room. A heightened awareness was transmitted by the artist to viewer in a way similar to that of a highly skilled musician playing a very difficult piece. The space could not have been more fortuitous to this performance as it allowed the audience to perambulate the circular stage and to also ascend the ramp and orbit the stage and view the performance-in-the-round. The proportionate relationships between Ms. A on the stage and the physical space around her demonstrated another facet of the harmony of spatial relationships that is any signature of Frank Lloyd Wright building, but especially so at the Guggenheim.
The idea that one performance artist can re-create the work of another is being likened to a band covering a song; the intention is to red-interpret the original work not re-create it. This may herald an entire new way avenue of expression in contemporary culture. Think of it: performances of famous pieces by artists could presage a flood of re-interpretations of the entire thirty-plus year canon.
The NY Times coined a wry headline:“Self-Mutilation is the sincerest Form of Flattery”
To be in the audience in that space felt like witnessing a comet that comes once in a lifetime. time stood still as the power and intense concentration of the artist on stage drew you into the her very breathing so riveting was her focus and energy. There was a hushed aura like being in the eye of a storm: the air was crackling with energy and you could feel the electricity in the room. A heightened awareness was transmitted by the artist to viewer in a way similar to that of a highly skilled musician playing a very difficult piece. The space could not have been more fortuitous to this performance as it allowed the audience to perambulate the circular stage and to also ascend the ramp and orbit the stage and view the performance-in-the-round. The proportionate relationships between Ms. A on the stage and the physical space around her demonstrated another facet of the harmony of spatial relationships that is any signature of Frank Lloyd Wright building, but especially so at the Guggenheim.
The idea that one performance artist can re-create the work of another is being likened to a band covering a song; the intention is to red-interpret the original work not re-create it. This may herald an entire new way avenue of expression in contemporary culture. Think of it: performances of famous pieces by artists could presage a flood of re-interpretations of the entire thirty-plus year canon.
The NY Times coined a wry headline:“Self-Mutilation is the sincerest Form of Flattery”
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Study for Two Sisters by John Graham
I couldn't resist posting this drawing which is a study for the sumptous painting currently on view at the Allan Stone Gallery.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Esoteric Beauties on Carnegie Hill: John Graham@ Allan Stone Gallery
I visited the Allan Stone Gallery just the other day and was knocked back by the proximity of two unparalled masterpieces of American Art: Two Sisters (on loan from MoMA) and Marya (in the collection of Allan Stone and incidently, Not for Sale). This show is the show of the season: you would be hard pressed to see better painting on view in NYC at any gallery of contemporary art. Perhaps you could to go to the Fra Angelico show (currently at the Met) or even the Hans Memling exhibit (currently at the Frick) to see such sumptuous, intelligent and compelling images but no recent painting is equal to what Graham accomplished over fifty years ago. These paintings have gotten better with age, as we catch up them. These images look surprisingly at home to 21st century eyes accomstomed to Henry Darger(kindred spirit), John Currin (who wishes he could paint this well) and the current fascination with the self-mutilation of performance artist Maria Abramovic.
I had been looking forward to seeing this latest show of Graham's work, the largest exhibit in New York in two decades; lingering impressions of that earlier exhibit still haunt my soul. The sheer force of these paintings which burst forth from under the shadow of Picasso and greatly influenced both Gorky and de Kooning impressed me with their virtuosity and utter weirdness. This show is not to be missed.
This from Jed Perl on John Graham:
"Esoteric forms of knowledge have had a special appeal for modern artists because they could provide a mystery or complexity that was otherwise missing in twentieth-century life, and these esoteric forms of knowledge were most often appealing when they were hyper-personalized, presented obsessively, paradoxically, so that esotericism became an especially stylized kind of individualism. Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth magic has this quality;…so do the paintings of cross-eyed dames decorated with geometric emblems that John Graham, that old friend of de Kooning’s, was exhibiting in the 1950’s. looking at Graham’s paintings and drawings, you do not really know why there is a model of a dodecahedron placed right next to a particular woman, or why another woman’s face is covered with a grid of images of suns and moons. And yet this seems to be the way it has to be for Graham, and you may feel that this is the only explanation that is needed."
-Jed Perl New Art City, page 303
Friday, October 28, 2005
John Graham@ Allan Stone Gallery
Allan Stone Gallery
The work of John Graham is not nearly as well-known as his protégés Arshille Gorky and Willem de Kooning. Yet Graham has achieved a place in the history of the New York School of painting. New Art City by Jed Perls is the most recent book to chronicle the influence of John Graham on the pioneers of the new abstraction.
John Graham is an acquired taste. His last eforts were devoted to a strange mix of classicism (inspired by Ingres), surrealism and the occult that precludes a wider acceptance by the genteel museum-goers who flock to the latest post-impressionist exhibit yet shy away from anything more difficult than late Monet. Second, there have been few opportunities to see any paintings by John Graham in the galleries and museums.
Thankfully, the Allan Stone Gallery exhibit may change some of this. Perhaps time has caught up with the mysterious and strange imagery of this enigmatic painter. Fans of Henry Darger may respond to John Graham. Note: the squeamish and conservative may be offended by the explicit imagery and implicit violence in the late works on view in this show.
“John Graham: Sum Qui Sum will be on view at the Allan Stone Gallery from October 22 – December 22, 2005. The most comprehensive John Graham show in almost two decades, this exhibition presents a survey of John Graham’s oeuvre, including his alchemy-inspired paintings and drawings, his majestic horses and soldiers, and his best-known work—the beautiful, elegant, and yet increasingly disturbing paintings of women.”
-from the press release of the Allan Stone Gallery
Saturday, October 22, 2005
New Art City by Jed Perl: book review
New Art City by Jed Perl: book review
This book, along with de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, covers the well-worn territory of the “heroic” period of American Art and the importance of New York City as the locus that made the new art possible. Indeed in Mr. Perl’s book, subtitled Manhattan at Mid-Century, the City itself is the main character whereas in the de Kooning book, the city is the backdrop and catalyst for the remarkable career of one painter.
The history of this period has become myth, legend, caricature and satire for generations yet both books offer fresh insight and perspective from a vantage point that is several steps removed from the gallery propaganda and art world hype inimical to books about this period. To speak of the “triumph of American painting” was to glorify and obfuscate an historical shift of power from the Old World to the New, from the old guard to the avant-garde.
I have been immensely pleased with the writing in both of these books: the story is told in a straight forward jargon-free and direct style that is appealing and fresh as the art that is described. I haven’t yet finished New Art City but I am confident that it will sustain the sense of drama, destiny and desire for the new art in the new city for many readers as the Stevens/Swan book has done for de Kooning.
This book, along with de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, covers the well-worn territory of the “heroic” period of American Art and the importance of New York City as the locus that made the new art possible. Indeed in Mr. Perl’s book, subtitled Manhattan at Mid-Century, the City itself is the main character whereas in the de Kooning book, the city is the backdrop and catalyst for the remarkable career of one painter.
The history of this period has become myth, legend, caricature and satire for generations yet both books offer fresh insight and perspective from a vantage point that is several steps removed from the gallery propaganda and art world hype inimical to books about this period. To speak of the “triumph of American painting” was to glorify and obfuscate an historical shift of power from the Old World to the New, from the old guard to the avant-garde.
I have been immensely pleased with the writing in both of these books: the story is told in a straight forward jargon-free and direct style that is appealing and fresh as the art that is described. I haven’t yet finished New Art City but I am confident that it will sustain the sense of drama, destiny and desire for the new art in the new city for many readers as the Stevens/Swan book has done for de Kooning.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005
22nd St. Double Bill: Daniel Libeskind / Sue Williams
Freedom Tower by Daniel Libeskind
Painting by Sue Williams
Daniel Libeskind@Max Protech
A retrospective for the battered architect of the new WTC tower.
Opens Oct. 7 (now open)
511 W 22nd St.
Sue Williams@303 Gallery, 525 W 22nd St.:
this show of recent paintings by an artist at the top of her game, right next door to the Libesking exhibit at Max Protech.
Top 10 shows, top 10 Chelsea galleries, top 10 small museums, etc. to see right now
-from The Autumn Art Scene The L Magazine
Friday, October 14, 2005
What Art to see in NYC: Fall '05 (part II)
More Art to see in NYC: Fall '05:
Jeremy Blake; sodium Fox @ Feigen Contemporary
Went to see this latest projected "time-based painting" today... great activity for a rainy afternoon. Jeremy Blake continues to intrique me with his multifarius multilayered multimedia extravaganzas. Definitely worth checking out even if the weather improves.
535 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel 212.929.0500
Memling's Portraits is at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700, through Dec. 31
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Artdaily.com - The First Art Newspaper on the Net
Artdaily.com - The First Art Newspaper on the Net
3D images of Architecture
3D images of Architecture
Two Franks
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry
http://www.rockwool.dk/sw58000.asp
Beauty and the Industrial City
“Not since the Sidney Opera House, has a building achieved more recognition and admiration than the new Guggenheim art museum in Bilbao (1997).”
Definitely one of the first buildings of the 21st Century.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water
http://www.paconserve.org/fw-building.asp
The Story of Fallingwater
“Fallingwater is recognized as one of Wright's most acclaimed works, and in a 1991 poll of members of the American Institute of Architects, it was voted "the best all-time work of American architecture." It is a supreme example of Frank Lloyd Wright's concept of organic architecture, which promotes harmony between man and nature through design so well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition. Wright embraced modern technology to achieve this, designing spaces for living which expressed architecturally the expansive freedom of the American frontier.”
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