Pensive howler monkey. Displaying a spectacular set of nuts. (Photo by C-M.)
Monthly Archive for July, 2011
City Hall offices, Lubumbashi, DR Congo, 2007, by Guy Tillim. Part of the exhibit Guy Tillim: Avenue Patrice Lumumba, at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. (Image courtesy of CAC and Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin.)
Plus: Congrats to Jason Lujan for winning the C-Mon Giveaway Extravaganza, 3-D Art Book edition.
- L.A.: Saner, Secuestro Express, at Mid-City Arts, near the Fairfax District. Opens Friday.
- L.A.: A 24-hour screening of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, at LACMA. This evening at 5pm, in the Fairfax District.
- Chicago: Windows on the War: Soviet TASS posters at home and abroad, 1941-45, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Opens Sunday. Plus: check out the exhibit’s awesome Tumblr feed.
- Plus: Click over to Gallerina to see my New York recommends!!!!
Cracks in the Wall: Philomé Obim’s Last Supper at the Sainte Trinité Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, display the damage of last year’s devastating quake. (All photos by San Suzie.)
Almost one year ago today, I set foot in Haiti for the first time — six months after a 7.0 earthquake had practically leveled the capital. I was in Port-au-Prince at the request of the Smithsonian, with my colleague Viviana Dominguez, a painting conservator, to examine what remained of a series of mural paintings at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. At that point, I was quite familiar with the televised images of the devastation. I had seen the bodies lifted from the rubble and the shots of the crumpled presidential palace. But nothing quite prepared me for the state of need we saw as we drove out of the airport and into the snarl of traffic.
Everywhere around Port-au-Prince there are reminders of the devastation.
Six months after the earthquake, much of Port-au-Prince remained in ruins. Though the air was thick with the dust of demolition, many collapsed buildings still lay where they fell on January 12. The road from the airport to the cathedral was a sea of tents where people lived without running water and electricity. We saw fax machines and barber chairs set up along the sidewalk, people bathing out of buckets, cooking over charcoal fires and washing clothes in muddy urban rivulets. Because so many roads continued to be blocked by rubble, it took nearly an hour to drive just a few miles.
Sainte Trinité, as it is locally known, had once been a simple but beautiful art deco structure. In the 1950s, the building’s walls were decorated with 14 murals depicting New Testament scenes. Done by a collective of Haitian artists associated with Port-au-Prince’s Centre D’Art, these energetic, color-saturated paintings quickly became something of an international sensation — one of the must-see sites for Haitian painting. For locals, they had a deep spiritual importance because they used Haitian people and settings to illustrate the life of Christ. This went well beyond the skin color of the biblical figures. For example, in Rigaud Benoit’s Nativity, palm trees, a thatched building, baskets of pineapple, and a waterfall that bears a distinct resemblance to a local pilgrimage site frame the baby Jesus. In Wedding at Cana, artist Wilson Bigaud set the miracle of turning water into wine in a Haitian hilltop village, complete with musicians playing conga drums and flutes of local origin. (See a pre-earthquake view of some of the murals here.)
The remains of Sainte-Trinité, Port-au-Prince. At rear, Prefete Duffaut's 'Native Procession' sits behind scaffolding.
When we arrived at Holy Trinity in the summer of 2010, both Benoit’s and Bigaud’s murals had been reduced to fragments the size of my hand. Gone also were paintings of the Annunciation, Temptation of the Lord, and Crucifixion, not to mention the building’s walls, roof, and pillars. Only three murals — Castera Bazile’s Baptism, Prefete Duffaut’s Native Procession and Philomé Obin’s three-walled Last Supper — clung precariously to walls that looked about as stable as the piles of debris that surrounded them. Doused by rain and baked by the sun for six months, the paintings were starting to fade and powder. They had to come down immediately. The question was how to do it without destroying them.
Continue reading ‘Haiti Report: Saving a country’s priceless murals.’
A screengrab from Francis Alÿs’s 2002 video, When Faith Moves Mountains (now on view at MoMA). In which volunteers shoveled pieces of a Peruvian dune. The line across the dune is the advancing row of shovelers. Naturally, this brought to mind…
…the 1987 Cheech Marin flick Born in East L.A. — in which all the Mexicanos storm the border to a Neil Diamond soundtrack. ¡Orale!
Gore-B, protecting today’s perishables for tomorrow. (Image courtesy of Gore-B.)
American Graffiti
Eric Thayer's photo of L.A. graffiti in the New York Times.
The New York Times has a story about the oh-so-scary rise in graffiti. I’d love to spend more time dissecting this, but unfortunately I’m slammed with work. Thankfully, Joerg Colberg pointed me to this vey smart essay over at No Caption Needed, which does just that. In it, Robert Hariman argues that the main issue with this story (and in so many others like this) is that it throws the problem at the feet of the culture industry, without bothering to examine any of the other causes that might lead to an uptick in graffiti:
In what may appear to be sophisticated coverage, the Times reports that ‘The upturn has prompted concern among city officials and renewed a debate about whether glorifying such displays — be it in museum exhibits, tattoos, or television advertisements — contributes to urban blight and economic decay.’ And there, in a stroke, we have it: The Times channeling Fox News. The leading explanation faults culture, not economics or politics, and suggests that a culture war is underway and the rightful center of public debate, and that the real danger comes from curators and other liberals who promote transgression in the arts…
The essay is all kinds of excellent, so please click through and read it. But I will add a couple of thoughts: One, we live in a period where there is less arts education ever. Where we choose to spend our funds on grotesquely punitive measures against graffiti, rather than providing people with alternative outlets for art. We also live in a time in which our public spaces are wallpapered with advertising (a lot of it illegal). In other words: the corporations get to talk to us, but we never get to talk back. Most irritating is the fact that the story’s accompanying slideshow features legal graffiti-inspired murals — but fails to identify them as such. (The photos also fetishize graffiti to the max.) Lastly, the story provides absolutely no historical context: the urge to paint walls is as old as civilization and, perhaps, even predates it.
The fact is, that as long as people have something to say (even if its for blatantly commercial reasons — like getting a sneaker deal), then people are gonna paint on walls. I agree, graffiti is not always aesthetically pleasing. But maybe, just maybe, we should simply learn to live with it.
Strange Tech
A collar that chokes, a menstruation machine and bacteria that colors your poops. I have a piece up at Techland on the five most bizarre piece at MoMA’s new tech show, Talk to Me. (Which, by the way, is all kinds of excellent.) Please click through!
Random Linkage
- R.I.P. Lucien Freud. The Guardian obit, which I link to here, has some great recollections from Sue Tilley (the model for Benefits Supervisor Sleeping), which involves a joke about whales wanking.
- That sublime point where wild primates and copyright laws intersect.
- Speaking of awesome intersections: The extraordinary meeting point between Chicano and Japanese hip-hop.
- And it looks like the Spiral Jetty will go to…Dia.
- The Medium is the Message: The Fishko Files on Marshall McLuhan. Which makes me wonder what McLuhan would think of Snookie.
- On the (nuanced) failures of one of the United States’ most famous housing projects, Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis. I really want to see this doc. (@JohnPowers1.)
- A profile of artist Tania Bruguera, who as part of her latest piece, is living the life of an undocumented migrant in Queens — surviving on minimum wage and sharing an apartment with 11 roommates.
- The Machine of Death: A very worthwhile Al Jazeera doc on the violence in Juarez.
- Frida Kahlo, the forebearer of “me” art. The best quote comes from Kahlo, describing the European art scene: “[I’d] rather sit on the floor of the market of Toluca and sell tortillas than have anything to do with those ‘artistic’ bitches of Paris.” (@KnightLAT.)
- Sort of related: Gustavo Arellano is right. Damien Cave of the New York Times has managed to excrete the world’s most asinine tortilla metaphor.
- No doubt the sort of thing Jennifer Dalton could have a ball with: Vintage NY Mag profiles of art dealers.
- John Cage’s Lecture on the Weather.
Gina Drunk with Henry in Lobby, by Naomi Harris. Part of the group exhibit Fuck Pretty: A Photography Exhibition, at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica. Opens today at 6pm. (Image courtesy of the artist and Robert Berman.)
- Houston: The Whole World Was Watching: Civil Rights Era Photographs from Edmund Carpenter and Adelaide de Menil, at the Menil Collection. Through September 25.
- North Adams, Mass.: Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum, at MASS MoCA. Through February 28.
- PLUS: Check out my New York listings at Gallerina!
- DOUBLE PLUS: Two Kickstarters worth supporting: Steve Lambert’s Capitalism project and Leon Reid the IV’s Tourist-in Chief project. (FYI: I only recommend Kickstarters I donate to. This isn’t just lip service.)
OMG, yes. (Photos by C-M.)
I finally made it to Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., to investigate one of modernism’s more revealing architectural marvels. Ordinarily, I’d be posting all kinds of great pictures from my visit. Except that my visit wasn’t so great, because there was conservation work going on — meaning that half the house was covered in plastic tarps. This woulda been nice to know before we plunked down $90 (plus $2.50 for parking) to go see the damn thing.
Thankfully, I made up for the aggravation by defiling a badly-made Donald Judd sculpture with frivolity and then hitting the gift shop, where I discovered the above treasure: Philip Johnson-esque eyewear, described in the adjacent marketing material as “upscale fashion forward reading glasses.” Otherwise known as the kind of lookers worn by Harry Potter.
Eyeglass prices started at $125. (Seriously.) You can find the old coot in his signature specs here. See photos of our eyeglass fashion shoot after the jump.
Rob Pruitt’s Andy Monument, in NYC’s Union Square. Reminds me of all the buskers who paint themselves silver and pose for money. I will give it this: it goes nicely with the TGI Friday’s situated across the square. (Photo by C-M. Hat tip to Yvonne.)
Untitled, 1985, by Yayoi Kusama. Part of the exhibit Possible Worlds: Mario Ybarra, Jr., Karla Diaz and Slanguage Studio Select From the Permanent Collections, at LACMA. Through September 25, in the Fairfax District. Mario and Karla are the coolest peeps ever. Go see this show!!! (Image courtesy of LACMA.)
- L.A.: Distant Star, an exhibition inspired by the writings of Roberto Bolaños, at Regen Projects. Opens today.
- L.A.: Cordy Ryman and Kiel Johnson, Construct, at Mark Moore. Opens Saturday at 6pm, in Culver City.
- S.F.: Division of Labor, a four-day performance arts fest, with Nao Bustamente, Leticia Castaneda, Daniel Blomquist and many others, at The Lab. Kicks off Friday at 8pm.
- Chicago: Amy Casey, Boomtown, at Zg Gallery. Opens Friday, at 5:30pm.
- NYC: Box Hockey closing party at Pandemic Gallery. This Friday at 8pm. This will be the most fun you’ll have with a broom handle and a hockey puck. Do. Not. Miss. Also: Bring Band-Aids.
- London: The Animation Show, at the Barbican. Through September 11. If anything, be sure to click through and watch Run Wrake’s rabbit animation. Whoa.
- Plus: Get the rest of my NYC listings over at Gallerina — complete with Muppets!!!
All times and seasons at once, a screengrab from Google Satellite of a piece of the Rockies in Colorado.
Every Time At Once
Since I’m all about Google Maps these days: I found the above image while doing a bit of research for a book project I’m working on. It’s a screengrab of an area in the San Juan National Forest, north of Durango, Colo. The area was clearly photographed over different periods, creating this wild juxtaposition of seasons and times. The whole thing reminded me of Joanne McNeil’s essay, Overfutured, in which she discusses the way in which the internet can appear to scramble our sense of chronology.
Art and Social Media
Paddy Johnson and Hrag Vartanian have a debate going on about the merits — or lack thereof — of recent art incorporating social media. I’m with Hrag on the fact that Paddy’s initial critique in L Magazine could have been a bit more nuanced, that there’s a difference between art that is made for a social media platform and art that merely utilizes social media as part of a larger concept. That said, I’m with Paddy on the fact that a lot of projects that have been presented have been less than compelling.
WTF is Twitter Art? (Graphic borrowed from Hyperallergic, with credit to Twittable Art)
To be fair, I have not participated in many of these (because, well, they’re just not very compelling), so it’s difficult to judge. But I did become involved with was Man Bartlett’s #24hEcho at PPOW last year — in which he read aloud Tweets sent to him over a 24-hour period. Certainly, if you just look at the Twitter piece of it, it is pretty banal. But there was something gripping about hearing my words echoed back at me over the internet in real time. It was like being in the car with my little sister, when she would repeat every last thing I said — an intriguing/annoying one-sided non-dialogue that was slightly unnerving. (For the record: I sent him Journey lyrics.)
Paddy has a more thought-out follow-up at Art Fag City. Particularly insightful are the comments about our “like”-happy culture. Definitely worth reading…
Update: Hyperallergic responds to the response. In terms of our “like”-happy culture, I agree, this is not just the province of social media (as Jim Poniewozik writes, in reference to TV). But when social media applications are built around nothing but “like” and “plus” and “favorite” — these types of somewhat fawning judgments are encouraged.
Random Linkage
- The BBC on the expense and effort required to graffiti-proof public works of art. Which makes me think that maybe public works of art should be built with ephemerality in mind, because does any community need to be saddled with one sculptor’s “genius” forever? Would be more environmental, too… (@KnightLAT.)
- Spiral Jetty Hijinks: Greg Allen, of greg.org, has formed a non-profit and submitted an application to win the lease for Robert Smithson’s work of land art. The Dia is probably feeling seriously flat-footed right about now. More here.
- Not sure how I missed this: A piece from Studio 360 on visualizing the Civil War — discussing works by Winslow Homer and Mathew Brady.
- An interesting talk by MIT’s Sherry Turkle on the impact of technology on our lives.
- Christopher Knight theorizes on why Warhol painted soup. Interesting read.
- Really, really digging all the great L.A.-centric stuff I’ve been finding on East of Borneo.
- A lovely photo essay by Matt Black on a rural Mixtec village in Mexico.
- Brazil’s adaptive football fields.
- ZOMG: Klimt Barbie. Hyperallergic imagines five others. My suggestions: Ana Mendieta Barbie (I mean, seriously), Senga Nengudi Barbie, and Patssi Valdez/Asco Barbie. ‘Cuz those bitches would be fierce.
- Dial-Up modem sound, 700% slower. To which I add 12 hours of white noise. Duuuuuuuude.
- Because I’m so Society: I made Manhattan Mag’s Twitter list (p. 46), along with @MuseumNerd and @NYArtBeat — and, most importantly, @patkiernan of NY1. In the papers!!!!!