Tripping over the Carsten Höller show at WNYC…
Archive for the 'New York' Category
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I’m totally late on this (the show closed last week), but I nonetheless feel obligated to post something on the Ramellzee assemblages I saw at White Columns during all the gallery openings in September. The dude had a sense of material that was just off the hook: turning ordinary plastic coat hooks, tooth brushes, citrus juicers and bleach bottle caps into fantastical arrangements that look like intergalactic weaponry. All of this is just a way of saying that if you have an opportunity to check out his work at some point, do not miss. These are the sorts of pieces that become more and more fascinating the longer you stare at them. Photos don’t do these justice in the least. But you can supersize the images above by clicking on them.
In the meantime, get a quick overview of Rammellzee’s life from this obit in L.A. Times. He passed away last year.
Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: Ramellzee at White Columns, in NYC.’
Palas por pistolas, by Pedro Reyes, on the Lower East Side. (Photos by C-M.)
Like many people who live in New York City right now, Occupy Wall Street has occupied my mind. Like many people, I’ve been of a mixed mind about it. As has been repeated ad nauseum, there is no unifying message, no unifying issues, no unifying ethos. The protests’ goals are unclear. And the scene in Zucotti Park is a borderline circus, complete with naked-lady body painting, relentless bongo drumming and enough patchouli to gag an ox.
But as chaotic as the protests are, they have energized me — or something in me that has felt powerless before a power structure (Congress, corporations, the Koch brothers) that stacks the deck against people like myself. I’m a freelancer. I am almost 40 years old. I have almost no benefits to speak of and neither does my husband. I make less money now than I did five years ago — even though I work twice as hard. The prospect of an eventual retirement seems almost morbidly hilarious. I am, to be cliché, the 99%. Which is why I’ve supported the protests (I’ve made food donations), even if I don’t entirely know what they’re about and even if I’m not really the type to grab a sleeping bag and camp out. I also support the right of the protestors to remain firmly in place — as a noisy, irritating thorn in the side of an establishment that seems to care less and less about people like me.
All of these thoughts were consuming my brain as I paid a visit to the Living as Form exhibit in the abandoned Essex Street Market on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Thursday. Organized by Creative Time’s chief curator Nato Thompson, the show is less a collection of aesthetic objects than a gathering of projects and project documentation that in some way speak to social action. In other words, this isn’t a show that is easy to look at. You’re not going to jet in and out and be blown away by some kaleidoscope of color or some highly photogenic installation.
Living as Form explores the ways in which many artists are engaging social issues in their work — whether its Pedro Reyes (see the image above), who collected guns and quite literally, transformed them into shovels, or Rick Lowe, who for a decade and a half, has dedicated himself to the community inhabiting a row of historic shotgun houses in Houston, a project that in every way imaginable functions like a traditional non-profit. There is a gripping video by Jeremy Deller, which recreates a historic encounter between union miners and the Thatcher government and a simple bookshelf, installed by the L.A. collective Finishing School, which displays books that have been branded “dangerous” under the Patriot Act. Some of these are obvious (The Anarchist Cookbook), others are downright befuddling (a tome about how to live off the land).
How is this art? Thompson says neither he nor the exhibit necessarily have the answer. The show is merely a way of exploring the way in which art plays a role in the lives of the many communities it inhabits. “It’s good to be aware that art isn’t universally regarded as a ‘good,’” says Thompson. “Talk to people on the Lower East Side and they might be, “I don’t want your art. I want affordable housing.” The show includes their voices, too (in the form of walking tours around the neighborhood). This may all feel a little unmoored, but that’s the point. It’s all part of the moment that we’re living in.
Living as Form will be on view through this weekend at the Historic Essex Market on the Lower East Side. Definitely go and check it out (and give yourself plenty of time when you do). Want to do a little more reading? Mira Schor has an essay on this very topic…
Continue reading ‘Last Chance: Living as Form, on the Lower East Side.’
FUCKING TIRED.
There are journalistic tropes that are so long running that it seems that they are no longer even recognized as tropes. One of these is the whole East Coast/West Coast, New York/L.A. view of the world — applied liberally to the world of hip-hop in the ’90s. The other is that L.A. is a provincial agglomeration of Variety-reading, plastic surgery-enhanced, vacuous show business wannabes who care about nothing other than their Q ratings and their cars. Both of these clichés received ample column inches in Adam Nagourney’s story about Pacific Standard Time in the New York Times.
One of my standing rules on this blog is to try not to complain too regularly about the New York Times because a) it gets boring, b) that’s what everyone else does, and c) life is too damn short. But this story sent the little Califas chola that lives inside of me reaching for the razor blades she keeps tucked inside her hairdo (partially because I spent a LOT of time researching my own story about PST). And reach for those razor blades is just what I’m gonna do.
My paragraph by paragraph breakdown of Nagourney’s piece of…
1.) Nagourney kicks off with an East Coast/West Coast Narrative Arc.
This is articulated thusly right in the second paragraph (the “nut” graf, as it were): “This multi-museum event, in all of its Los Angeles-like sprawl, suggests a bit of overcompensation from a city that has long been overshadowed by the New York art establishment…” So a project that was about establishing a record of haphazardly covered movements, artists and communities becomes about loopy L.A. trying to be like it’s big, more cultured brother New York. Aren’t we over this? Isn’t this what killed Tupac and Biggie? Isn’t this just…boring… at this point?
2.) He then adds in a line about The Vapid Angeleno.
Again, let’s cut to the nut graf: “…a place that — arguably unfairly — still suffers from a reputation of being more about tinsel than about serious art, and where interest in culture starts and ends with movie grosses and who is on the cover of Vanity Fair.” Okay, so he qualifies it with “arguably unfairly.” But seriously, are we still on this? Of all the music, art, architecture and literature the place has produced and we’re still harping on the three mile radius around Beverly Hills? Has anyone told Nagourney that L.A. is 80 miles wide? That it’s majority minority? That people do stuff like work in defense, manufacturing and engineering?
3.) He then includes a horrible Dave Hickey quote.
Hickey says: “It’s corny…It’s the sort of thing that Denver would do. They would do Mountain Standard Time. It is ’50s boosterish, and I would argue largely unnecessary.” This unfortunate quote isn’t entirely Nagourney’s fault — because Hickey comes off like an asshole all on his own — but when the first quote of the story is given over to a guy who lives in New Mexico, and who it seems hasn’t been to any of the shows, well… (And let’s hope Hickey doesn’t have to make any appearances in Denver any time soon, a city that, incidentally, is about to open a museum dedicated to painter Clyfford Still.)
4.) And it’s followed by a Peter Plagens quote.
Which is inoffensively uninteresting (more East Coast/West Coast), but again: second quote in a story about PST and no one who currently lives in California has been quoted. This is then followed by a generic quote from Jeffrey Deitch, who has lived in Cali for all of five minutes and will likely be there for only five minutes more. Clearly, all the news that’s fit to print.
5.) He then tosses in a random list of shows.
Which refers to the Hammer Museum’s Now Dig This! exhibit as showcasing the work of “local African-American artists.” Is he for serious? Does he know the show contains work by artists such as David Hammons? Who could crush Nagourney’s skull with his thoughts? And whose works are a part of MoMA’s permanent collection? And whose piece African-American Flag can be currently seen in MoMA’s second floor galleries and hanging from the façade of the Studio Museum in Harlem? Does Nagourney even go to museums when he’s in New York?
6.) Then we’re back to more East Coast/West Coast.
“No one is suggesting that Los Angeles is about to supplant New York as an art capital; it is not lost on people here that the executive directors of three of the four biggest museums in Los Angeles came here from New York.” Blah blah New York blah blah Los Angeles blah blah New York blah blah. Are New Yorkers capable of writing stories about Los Angeles that don’t mention New York?
7.) Obligatory reference to Venice Beach.
He then lets us know that he knows that there are some artists living in Venice: “The sheer sprawl of the city means that it is hard to have the kind of concentrated art district that has characterized New York over the last 50 years, though there has long been an influential colony of artists out in Venice.” Except the point that PST makes is that there were and are vibrant artistic clusters all over Southern California from the O.C. to Wilmington to East L.A. and downtown — they just haven’t always been relentlessly hyped and commercialized like some communities in Greenwich Village and SoHo and Williamsburg that I know. Update: Also, as a friend just pointed out to me: Who the hell is spending $6000 a month to rent studio space in Brooklyn?
8.) Then cut to line about how sunshine makes everyone uninterested in culture.
“And there are obstacles that come with living in this part of the country: Curators talk about the difficulty of encouraging people to walk indoors for anything but a movie in a city that has glorious weather so many months of the year.” Because all anyone does in SoCal is sunbathe and do sit-ups. Would love to know who these “curators” are.
9.) Season with more Deitch.
Who is described as the director of the “Los Angeles Modern.” That just made me snort-laugh.
10.) And with that we’re pretty much over and out.
No real references to art or movements or discoveries… Just a quote by James Cuno of the Getty, who is required to address the whole East Coast/West Coast thing AGAIN. Zzzzzzzz. Thud.
CCTV/Creative Control, an intervention by Marcos Zotes in Brooklyn. (Image courtesy of Zotes.)
Congrats to James, Michael, Rosa, Daniel and Antonio for winning the five copies of Graffiti 365 — for the latest C-Mon Giveaway Extravaganza.
- American executives: Paid to fail. This is pretty gross.
- Progress: human civilization’s big mistake. (@jmcolberg.)
- Steven Pinker thinks that humans are less violent than ever.
- Sherman Alexie on the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
- A taxonomy of taxonomies: A Historical Timeline of Systemic Data and the Development of Computable Knowledge. Or, how humans have created ways of sharing information. A good one for the information geeks. Find the explanatory blog post here.
- A guide to character archetypes in women’s romantic comedies. My favorite: “The Woman Who Works in an Art Gallery.”
- Procrastinate by reading this essay about how procrastination is tied to our relationship with time. Interesting fact: “Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.”
- Flashback: Hunter S. Thompson’s 1965 Hell’s Angels story for The Nation.
- John Perrault breaks down all the shows about Fluxus that seem to be popping up in institutions all around the Northeast.
- Beautiful story: Love in the time of Stonewall, one of the models behind George Segal’s iconic West Village sculpture writes about how she met the love of her life.
- Michael Kimmelman’s debut outing as New York Times architecture critic. It’s nice to see public housing get ink, but I would have loved a little context on how these structures fit into the immediate landscape and how they might compare with other public housing efforts, past and present.
- I’m totally late on this, but this Studio 360 piece about the TV show Dallas is all kinds of excellent. Thing I never knew: The show was HUGE in Romania.
- Relentless Self-Promotion: In which I interview Work of Art judge/New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz about art reality, his fantasy green room demands and what it’s like to party with the Housewives. Bonus: Audio of Jerry imitating Simon de Pury.
Painting, 1948, by Willem de Kooning. (Photos by C-M.)
As I’m sure you’ve well read by now, the Willem de Kooning retrospective at MoMA is all kinds of gangbusters. I’m not going to get into some dissertation about what he and his work signified, because I think there have been plenty of those — among them, the comprehensive 500-page catalogue. But I did want to highlight one of the aspects of the show I really dug: the black and white paintings from the late 1940s — mainly because I’m a sucker for black and white, but also because they seem to revel in a certain gritty New York City-ness (that seems to no longer exist). They also look like a type of proto-graffiti, what Jed Perl describes in New Art City in the following way: “De Kooning’s nitty-gritty New York was all knock-you-in-the-teeth actualities, all surprising particulars: the dramatically contrasted sizes of adjacent buildings, the abandoned lots and demolition sites, the oil stains and graffiti on the pavements, the reflections of neon signs on wet streets.”
This is also an opportunity to pimp my podcasts on New York City in the time of the Abstract Expressionists. Many more pictures after the jump.
de Kooning: A Retrospective is on view through January 9 at the Museum of Modern Art.
Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: de Kooning: a Retrospective, at MoMA — the black and whites.’
In One Piece At A Time, artist Jonathan Brand has recreated a Ford Mustang entirely out of paper. And since my first car was a banana yellow ’75 Mustang sedan, well, I couldn’t resist featuring it here. The paper auto is on view at Hosfelt Gallery through October 29 in New York City. (Image courtesy of the artist.)
- Newport Beach, Calif.: State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970, at OCMA. Opens Sunday.
- L.A.: Craig Kauffman, Sensual Mechanical, at Frank Lloyd Gallery. Through October 15, in Santa Monica.
- L.A.: Sigrid Sandstrom, Hide-outs, at The Company. Through October 29, in Chinatown.
- L.A.: Cuentos de Amor y Resistencia: The Tenacity of Chicana Artistic Expression, a panel with Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, María Elena Gaitán, and Judithe Hernández, at the Vincent Price Art Museum. This Saturday at noon, in Monterey Park. This will be followed by readings and performances tied to the exhibit After The Gold Rush: Reflections and Postscripts on the National Chicano Moratorium of August 29th, 1970.
- Oakland, Calif.: Ajit Chauhan and Kevin Killian, Don’t Be Upset — I’m Only Crying in English, at Sight School. Opens Saturday.
- Marfa, Tex.: Justin Almquist, at the Chinati Foundation. Opens Saturday at 6pm.
- Miami: Bhakti Baxter, Rompelotas, at Gallery Diet. Opens Friday at 7pm.
- Greenwich, Conn.: On Every Street: An Exhibition of Work by 30 Street Artists, at Samuel Owen Gallery. Opens today at 6pm.
- London: Neil Ayling, Flextion, at EB&Flow Gallery. Through November 5.
- Plus: You can find all my latest NYC listings over at Gallerina.
In her new installation at the Winkleman Gallery, Jennifer Dalton picks apart the lack of female guests on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, among other programs. (Image courtesy of Dalton and the Winkleman Gallery.)
Jennifer Dalton’s latest exhibit began with an inkling. She was watching the Daily Show, in which some male guest was expounding at length about something when she realized she couldn’t remember the last time a woman had sat in that place. “I thought it was me, that I was just looking for that,” she says. “Then I went into the archives and I was like, ‘No fucking way.’” Dalton counted up all of the guests listed on the program’s online archives for all of 2010. During this time, 79% of the Daily Show‘s guests were men and only 21% were women.*
She then went and performed the same exercise on a bunch of her other favorite programs. All of them featured an overwhelming majority of male guests. The Colbert Report had a guest line-up that was 82.5% male. Charlie Rose came in at 80%. Bill Maher had 74%. And Rachel Maddow — Rachel effing Maddow! — featured dudes 80.5% of the time. Public radio fared somewhat better: Leonard Lopate‘s guests were male 66% of the time, while Brian Lehrer came in at 68%. Fresh Air, however, which is hosted by a woman, checks in with a low lady-guest ratio. More than 79% of Terry Gross’s guests are male. (Bands and other groups were counted as single guests, hence the fractionals.)
Dalton's "What does an important person look like?" (Click to supersize.)
“My gut is that it’s entropy,” says Dalton. “It makes me think that people are lazy. Like they’re just reblogging the same stuff.” The artist, who has previously charted the ways in which female cultural figures have been visually portrayed in the New Yorker (hint: cheesecake), has used this research to create new works for her latest solo show at the Winkleman Gallery. The central piece (shown at right) is devoted to the Daily Show, the program that spurred Dalton’s recent quest. In it, she has organized the guests by subject areas (authors, athletes, etc.) and placed the men in gold frames and the women in silver ones. The colors say it all.
Dalton says the piece was born of equal parts rage and glee. “These are heroes of mine and I think they’re doing really important work,” she explains of figures such as Stewart and Colbert. “But I just end up confused. It’s like are you with me or against me? I think of you as on my team, but maybe you don’t think of me as on your team?” She hopes that her work might get someone in some aspect of the media business to think a little bit more critically about what they do: “I would just love for these producers to be like, ‘Here’s a pile of women we rejected. Did we reject them too quickly?’” In order to do that, some of these programs might have to start by hiring a few more.
Jennifer Dalton: Cool Guys Like You opens today, at the Winkleman Gallery, in Chelsea.
*Update: Made a small correction to the Daily Show figures above. I previously had them as 78/22 male/female. The correct figures are actually 79/21.
**Further Super Duper Important Update (9/12 at 8:50pm): Some of the discussions I’ve seen on the internet about this piece suggest that Stewart’s male/female ratios are skewed towards men because he interviews so many political figures and most politicians are men. That is not the case. According to Dalton: only 18% of Daily Show guests are political figures. Of those 25 guests, only one was a woman (for a male/female ratio of 96/4). Just so you can draw some sort of comparison, the 111th Congress, which was in session when Dalton created the piece, was 17% female.
It’s actually authors and actors that make up the majority of Stewart’s guests — not political figures, as is frequently assumed. Together, these two arts-related categories make up 63% of the Daily Show‘s guests. And within these, the male-female breakouts remain nothing short of depressing. Of all the authors featured on the program in 2010, only 25% were female. Of all the actors, only 33% were women. In several categories (chefs, military figures, and filmmakers), the line-up was 100% male. Though, to be fair, he only featured one chef. What does this mean? It means that culture, as viewed through the Daily Show lens (as much as I love many parts of it), is heavily male. And don’t make me go to the gallery to count the minorities. ‘Cuz I’m sure that area is probably a hot mess, too.
Which brings to mind this delicious little video that Dalton recently Tweeted: Too Many Dicks on the Daily Show.