"Flock of Seagulls." Source: Getty Images

• It’s a cage that went in search of a bird…Sreshta Rit Premnath explores the ocean as a territory that lies outside the realm of governmentality.
• Nicole rounds them up! From exhibitions and public talks, to limited-edition prints and digital calendars, this week you can find Art21 artists involved in various activities in New York, Washington D.C., Dublin, and Johannesburg.
• FLASHPOINTS: Kevin Buist talks about the Mythic Environments created by Robert Smithson and Eames Demetrios… What is Ecoartivism? Stacy Ward Kelly has been inspired by many artists who have a calling to protect and care for the physical world we inhabit…How does art respond to the natural world?
• VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Paul McCarthy | Piccadilly Circus
• A year ago Joe Fusaro explored the theme of power with his students. He does the same again this year but in a different way. In this week’s Teaching with Contemporary Art column, Joe emphasizes the importance of taking feedback from students seriously.
• What is the story of how Art21 began? Your answer is here, directly from Susan Sollins, Founder and Executive Director.
• Maria Steinina talks about historic photographic in the art market … and her unquenchable thirst for the artists’ book.
• International Design Conservation:  A Discussion with Tim Bechthold

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Artist Paul McCarthy describes the improvisational process and performances behind the video work Piccadilly Circus (2003). Filmed at an unoccupied London bank before being renovated by Hauser & Wirth gallery in 2002, and shot several months before the start of the Iraq War, the work features costumed players in the roles of President George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and the Queen Mum (in three versions).

Paul McCarthy’s video-taped performances and provocative multimedia installations lampoon polite society, ridicule authority, and bombard the viewer with a sensory overload of often sexually-tinged, violent imagery. With irreverent wit, McCarthy often takes aim at cherished American myths and icons—Walt Disney, the Western, and even the Modern Artist—adding a touch of malice to subjects that have been traditionally revered for their innocence or purity. Whether conflating real-world political figures with fantastical characters such as Santa Claus, or treating erotic and abject content with frivolity and charm, McCarthy’s work confuses codes, mixes high and low culture, and provokes an analysis of fundamental beliefs.

McCarthy’s current exhibition of drawings WHITE SNOW is on view at Hauser & Wirth in New York through December 24th, 2009. Works in the exhibition draw upon the 19th century German folk tale ‘Snow White’ (‘Schneewittchen’) as well as its modern interpretation by Walt Disney.

Paul McCarthy is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Transformation of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Doug Dunderdale. Editor: Lizzie Donahue & Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy: Paul McCarthy.

In my last post as your guest blogger, I want to indulge a bit and quickly acknowledge my un-quenchable lust for the artist’s book. No, I don’t mean the artist’s book that is widely published and circulated amongst coffee tables of the world in its glossy radiance and clever contemporary design. I cannot get enough of handmade or editioned artist’s books and zines in all of their intaglio, found material, random texture, sincere approach, unconventionally bound, dorky, blind-stamped, and subtle glory…. And yes, I am a stalker of Printed Matter, self-published gems at Blurb, college presses, and dusty shelves of alternative bookstores.

May I recommend that we all tune in for PBS’s upcoming expose on paper folding entitled Between the Folds? And who else’s imagination goes on a strange journey when they see these new possibilities of the pop-up book, courtesy of MIT above? As much as new media threatens to destroy the book arts and put paper way behind us, this artist/writer/blogger/researcher/designer thinks paper is not that easy to overpower when it comes to the viewer’s experience. Cheers to the book!

Season 4 artist Laurie Simmons recently sat down with Art21’s Executive Director Susan Sollins to uncover the story of how Art21 began and the experience of filming 86 of today’s most thought-provoking artists.

LAURIE SIMMONS: I am Laurie Simmons with Founder and Executive Director of Art21, Susan Sollins. It is Summer 2009.

SUSAN SOLLINS: You are such a pro.

LS: Well, you trained me, right?

After 20 years of working with art and artists, what made you think artists themselves would make for interesting TV?

SS: In general, when artists are interviewed in public settings or on film, I would find the result stiff, academic, or too theoretical. Sometimes these situations are more about the interviewer than the artist. I always had all sorts of questions that were never asked—or answered—unless I happened to be talking with an artist directly—like with you, Laurie, right now. This is a moment when things can be revealed. Most people don’t get a chance to talk with artists. You might see the work, but you’re remote from the person. I wanted to bring these experiences together. I thought it could be possible to make something for television that would provide people with a more complete understanding of artists’ methods and thinking.

LS: Well, toss me a question, one of those burning questions you wanted to ask with this idea of revealing something.

SS: Well, something simple—are you interested in beauty? Is beauty important to you? Do you ever think about or play with beauty? Is it a factor in what you do? For years beauty is a topic that has not been talked about. What is beauty for you—if it interests you at all? And what is beauty today?

LS: And yet that’s just a fraction of the way that you divided up the segments of Art21 series and the subjects that you’ve touched on. Beauty is…

SS: Well, it’s a subtext.

LS: A subtext, one of the many.

SS: I’m interested in the real voice of the artist. I want the artists to tell their stories.

LS: So you’re looking for the real story?

SS: I am looking for the real story.

LS: Walk me through the steps toward the creation of Art21.

SS: Near the end of my tenure as director of iCI, Independent Curators International, around 1995 or ‘96, I was approached by WNET/Thirteen to consult on the visual art component of a series they were developing called City Arts. It covered many things—from a new work on the Broadway stage to a new museum exhibition in New York City.

I thought, “I don’t know anything about television.” They showed me a sculpture they had filmed and I was appalled. The camera was extremely agitated and it moved rapidly all over the sculpture; it was enough to give you vertigo.

I didn’t think I would know what to say to them, but in fact I did. All the looking at contemporary art, video art, film, and watching TV—particularly Law and Order at that time—provided me with the instincts or knowledge I didn’t know I had. I immediately said, “You know, you don’t look at sculpture that way…that’s the wrong way to film it.”  So, I served as consultant for this series for quite a while, and then began to seriously learn about broadcast television.

LS: How difficult was it to convince PBS that a show about artists could be viewed by a broad TV audience?

SS: Well, I had an idea that there is something different that could be done on television for contemporary art and artists. I had made a good friend through the consultancy for WNET/Thirteen, Glenn Dubose, and he liked the idea. I took him over to MoMA for lunch, so he could look at the garden…

LS: Good choice.

SS: …to pitch the idea. He said, “Well, write that up.” I wrote it up and gave it to him. He wanted to know more—what would something like this look like?

Laurie, it is so funny that we’re talking about this. I think I’ve told you this story before, because you were the artist for the first description I wrote about Art21.

LS: But I ended up in Season Four.

SS: I know, I know. Isn’t that strange? It was the year that you had an exhibition that traveled to the Baltimore Museum.

LS: Right, 1997.

SS: Yep, and that’s when I was writing the first description. One of the questions was, what kind of story would be told? And I thought of you getting on the train with Tip and your daughters, who were maybe 5 and 11, going to Baltimore. The girls would be so excited that you had this big gallery with your work in it. I imagined them leaping, twirling, and giddy with excitement because they were with their mom and their dad and going to the Baltimore Museum, and there was mom’s show.

LS: That’s just what we did. That’s really what happened, but you weren’t there.

SS: I wasn’t there. But I imagined it.

LS: How funny.

SS: And so that was the description of what a segment, an Art21 segment, might include. The idea was that you and I would talk about your work with the Baltimore Museum exhibition as the focus. So, this was one of the scenes.

LS: So you really were interested in the place for an artist where the personal, the private, and the work life intersect.

SS: Well, yes, but in that first description, that probably had a lot to do with you and your family at the time. And there are some instances in the series where that happens. And there are other times when it doesn’t. But I was interested in the life of the artist and that the artist would not only be seen making work, because nobody knows how that happens, but would also be the spokesperson for his or her own ideas. They would reveal what they’re thinking about, not what a critic or curator is thinking about in reaction to the work.

LS: We’re now in Season Five. How many hours have there been altogether?

SS: I think we’re up to 20 hour-long episodes and have worked with around 86 artists. In terms of footage, I cannot even image how many hours we have shot to date. It is vast.

LS: That’s amazing. When you’re at the point you’re at now, when Season Five [just] premiered (all this work takes two years), do you get a chance to take a breather to think and reflect on what you’ve accomplished? Or you jump right into Season Six?

SS: We are constantly moving forward. People don’t realize that Art21 is NOT a production company; it is a non-profit contemporary art organization that runs year-round. We have to raise funds for everything we do, like any other non-profit. Obviously, we produce the television series, but we also create so many other resources like our websites, a companion book for each season, Educators’ Guides, a teacher institute, and this blog.

Art21 also creates other art education opportunities. A new pilot we recently developed is called Art21 Educators, where we brought teachers from around the country and will work with them for a year to develop ways to bring contemporary art into their curriculum. Keep in mind we are also making films year-round, short videos that we put online. They are all over the place—YouTube, iTunes, ArtBabble, Blip.tv—everywhere you can think of.

LS: They are all over YouTube.

SS: And the Art21 series itself is on Hulu and iTunes too. Anyway, there’s never any time to sit back and reflect on what we’ve achieved.

LS: Did you think this thing, Art21, would grow exponentially like it has or that you would receive all these awards? Did you have any idea?

SS: I had no idea. For example, with something like receiving the Peabody Award, I didn’t even know what it had stood for until I got to the awards ceremony. Art21 was simply something I really, really wanted to do. It just was too irresistible. Once the people at PBS said in a preliminary way, “Yes, we’re interested in this, we’re going to find a way to broadcast it,” Art21 as a non-profit organization was inevitable.

Help continue to make our work at Art21 possible, with a donation of as little as $5 in honor of our fifth season. Your contribution would help underwrite Art21’s activities and programs in the coming year.

Carla Goldberg, “It’s All About the River,” 2009

— “ecoartivism”; Pronunciation: ēko’ar –ti,- vi-zəm; Function: noun
The practice of using art as a tool for the advocacy of the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment; especially: the movement to control pollution.

— “eco·art·iv·ist”; noun or adjective

While all artists are meaning-makers of the world in which we live, those that I refer to as “ecoartivists” use their artistic expression to connect the rest of us to the environment, which we all too often take for granted. In addition to the need for self-expression, these artists find they have a calling to protect and care for the physical world we inhabit.

During college in 1992, while living for a semester in London, I was inspired by an ecoartivist. On the way back to my flat, I walked by an outdoor exhibit at the Natural History Museum of large-scale photographic prints by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, which were mounted on twelve-foot high posts. Next to each gorgeous landscape image was a poster of equal size, with a fact in bold type about the negative effect humans are having on the part of the world that was pictured. As a photographer, I found the work to be breathtaking; as a human, I found the facts about how we are damaging the earth to be enraging.

Carla Goldberg is a local ecoartivist. This past week, she came into my classroom and spoke about her mixed media paintings, which combine acrylic and oil paint with objects in layers of resin. She described her current installation, It’s All About the River, which highlights fish that are in danger of becoming extinct in the Hudson River. Carla’s work is both evocative and powerful. Through this installation, she is raising awareness of the pollution that exists in the river. Carla inspired me to research and share with my students information about power plants that use outdated cooling systems, which pollute the river daily. My students, in turn, were inspired to create their own art about these fish and will be mailing these works to the governor of New York state, hoping to encourage him to act.

Student work – Unit inspired by "Earth From Above" installation by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

As an art educator, I try to challenge myself to make lessons that go beyond introducing an artist and asking students to copy his or her work. However, when I create lessons that teach the way art is made, I note that artists are often inspired by one another. I try to engage my students to make their own meaning and share their personal interests and expression. Years after seeing his work, I created a unit inspired by Arthus-Bertrand’s Earth From Above series, where students are first introduced to his work and then are given time to research environmental issues. They complete a fact sheet of information about a number of issues and then choose one on which to focus. They create a fold book that turns itself into a freestanding house. On the outside walls of the house are mixed-media collages created by the students to accompany three facts about their issue of choice. One student focused his work on acid rain, while another created art about pipelines leaking oil into the ocean. While I borrow the idea of using eco-facts paired with powerful artwork from Arthus-Bertrand, I also introduce a new technique of mixed media collage and make sure that the students do their own research and decide which issue interests them the most. In this way, their work becomes more personal, powerful, and true.

Stacey Ward Kelly, “Kings Canyon," 2007

As both an artist and an educator, I believe in and practice ecoartivism, and I feel both a personal and professional responsibility to share with my students who I am and what I do. While I use my own interests and artwork to influence my students, I allow them opportunities to have their own voices heard through their art. This is not to suggest that my teaching covers only concepts and ideas that I personally am interested in, but when it does, it’s always the best teaching I do.

Like curators, one of the things we all do in trying to make sense of “what artists do,” is to label them into categories and groups. Ecoartivists are also artists, who create work and use art to make sense of the world. While they may use some or all of their art to inspire people to better care for our natural resources, their responsibility to do so is a self-driven pursuit. What they all do in being ecoartivists is shed light on the collective responsibility of us all to step up, get concerned and enraged, and they activate us through the power, the beauty, and the poignancy of their art.

As an art conservator, my initial focus in any project starts with from what and how art is made. To this end, there really isn’t a big difference between, say, a toaster and a gigantic puppy made of flowers. But I must consider the intent or purpose—or maybe function—of an object when creating a conservation plan.

I had these questions and thoughts in mind last month when I departed from my fair Hoosier State to Munich, Germany, to attend a conference organized by conservators Tim Bechthold and Susanne Graner and hosted by Die Neue Sammlung, The International Design Museum Munich. The conference was called “FUTURE TALKS 009: The Conservation of Modern Materials in Applied Arts and Design,” and I wouldn’t have thought of making this trip three years ago, because back then the Indianapolis Museum of Art only had a few design objects in its collection. But now, all of a sudden, we’ve acquired hundreds of objects, recently co-organized and hosted the exhibition European Design Since 1985 (which will be traveling to multiple venues in the near future), and just this year we acquired the Miller House, one of the country’s most highly regarded examples of mid-century Modernist residences. It was designed by Eero Saarinen, with interiors by Alexander Girard and landscape design by Daniel Urban Kiley. Of course, this home is filled with design objects.

But I digress. The conference in Munich was excellent, and Die Neue Sammlung is a fantastic museum. To talk more about the conference and caring for design objects, I’ve invited Tim Bechthold, the Head of the Conservation Department Die Neue Sammlung, here for a conversation. Thankfully, Mr. Bechthold is not only good at organizing conferences and working as a conservator, but is also fluent in both German and English.

Tim Bechthold

Richard McCoy: I left the conference not really having any hard answers to my above questions. But I think that in many cases, design objects are like works of art, and then other times not at all. Do you have a sense of what makes a design object similar to an artwork?

Tim Bechthold: I think whether it is an art object or design object, we conservators are all starting at the same point. The procedure starts with collecting background information on an object. For an art object, you can talk to the artist; for a design object, we talk to the designer. Then we research the materials from which it was made, and try and understand its degradation systems. With this knowledge, we begin to conceptualize a suitable conservation treatment.

So the difference between a conservator of design objects and a conservator of contemporary art objects is not that big. I think it is more the mission or focus of the museum you are working for. As a design museum, the Neue Sammlung is mainly interested in the aesthetic form of a collectible object. As we aren’t a technical collection, the actual function of an object plays a smaller role. Compared, for example, to a kinetic art object, this is something quite different.

RM: Does this decision of whether or not the object is a closer to a design object or an art object affect the way you devise a conservation treatment?

TB: Normally not. First of all, the necessity or importance of a conservation treatment relates directly to the object’s current condition or its degree of degradation. But I wouldn’t be honest to tell you that a mass-produced bottle of Coca-Cola has the same importance to us as a Rapid Prototype chair by Patrick Jouin.

In most museum collections, you’ll find the dogma of expensive objects—acquired from private donations or huge amounts of tax money (in the case of my museum). Objects like these have to be put on exhibition quickly because people want to see them shortly after they are acquired. In cases like this, the prioritization of treatment is affected.

But what I’d like to emphasize is this: even if you put more energy in the conservation of a unique design object, as a design conservator you shouldn’t forget that often it is more difficult to find material information about mass-produced objects than from one-of-a-kind pieces. These mass-produced goods were available in large numbers for a certain period of time; then there was a change in production and with this, a change in mentality. These goods were thrown away and nobody took care of them. So be aware of this!

RM: Now that the conference is over, what projects are you working on?

TB: At the moment, there are three extensive projects we are preparing. One is still connected to Future Talks 009, and that’s producing the post print publication. With 28 contributions related to the conservation issues of modern materials, this publication promises to become a very valuable resource in our field. We intend to publish it in Spring 2010.

The other project deals with the re-opening of our permanent exhibition on contemporary jewelery. With approximately 1,000 objects, we are deeply involved in condition reporting and the installation of these very delicate objects.

The third project is related to a kitchen unit designed by the French architect Le Corbusier in 1946 for the Unité d’Habitation Marseille. After more than 50 years of extensive use, we are facing the challenge of developing an appropriate conservation treatment. Questions like traces of usage, intention of the designer (original color scheme etc.), degradation and conservation of different materials (rolled and cast alloy, blockboard, cast iron), and reconstruction of original color versus conservation, etc., are presenting a large spectrum of research issues.

RM: As a conservator responsible for the care of contemporary objects, I’m constantly chasing information around new technologies, materials, and media from which these things are made. In many ways, it’s an impossible task to try and keep up. It seems like every designer and artist is working in a new medium, or applies a new technique. What are some of things you read or research to stay current in our field?

TB: We keep in contact with designers, product companies, research laboratories, and specialists in the respective fields. We study books, magazines, and articles on technology and materials and we go through datasheets and patents. Moreover, in the last few years, there has been a wave of new literature on modern and innovative materials. This is also a valuable source of information for our daily work. Nevertheless, a big part of identifying and assessing these materials is related to the examinations we do in our conservation studio.

RM: Design objects, unlike artworks, often come packaged in boxes that are used to not only keep them safe during shipment, but also to help sell them when they are in a store. Do you ever keep the box that a design object comes in, and why?

TB: Indeed, these packages are often very fancy and ingenious, have innovative details and materials, or come with a fantastic graphic design. Moreover, a good package plays an important role for the promotion and the “feeling” of an object. This is why Die Neue Sammlung has been collecting good package design since it started collecting in 1908. If we decide to keep a package, in most cases, we store it separately from the object to avoid any undesirable interactions.

RM: Of course, museums need to keep track of their objects and even occasionally the boxes they come in. One of the best ways to do this is to give each piece a specific number and then record all sorts of information about it using an electronic database.  To do this, we often paint numbers on objects and then cover them with a protective synthetic coating. This is occasionally problematic, in that sometimes solvents are used in this process that can harm plastics. How do you deal with this problem?

TB: To avoid the undesirable interaction of solvent and the object, we have developed a method which is permanent but reversible. For most of our plastic objects, we achieve quite good results by writing the inventory number with pigmented ink on acid-free paper labels and then applying a thin BEVA lamination layer on top. A label can be fixed to the object by heating a small spatula to approx. 55 °C and then gently pressing it on the BEVA film.

Please note: This method needs a short input of increased temperature which means extra energy for chemical degradation processes for some plastics. Therefore it is not advisable to label sensitive plastics, like PVC (that have a high amount of softeners), PMMA which already shows crazing, thin thermoplastics, or heavily degraded plastics. Sometimes the BEVA label doesn’t stick to polyethylene or polypropylene surfaces. This labeling method is also not suitable for elastic plastics like rubbers or silicones. In that case, a soft pencil (3B) is our tool of first choice.

RM: I had the good fortune of taking a tour of the collection with Chief Curator and Deputy Directory Dr. Corinna Roesner. Not only are your exhibition spaces impressive, but your collection is enormous. How many objects are in it? And how do you store it all?

TB: The objects you saw in our permanent exhibition are more or less just the cherry on top. Since we have not completed the digitalization of our collection database, I’m not able to tell you the exact number of all of our objects. It is definitely more than 80,000 objects, which is quite a lot!

We store them in our museum in Munich (Pinakothek der Moderne) and at 5 other places, which are located in Bavaria–all within a distance of a maximum of 250 km away from Munich. You can imagine that it is quite time-consuming to do even the regular monitoring of the collection.

Most of the object groups are divided in different storage facilities. We have storage facilities for graphic design, furniture, industrial design (electric devices like TV sets, radios, kitchen machines and so on), ceramics, porcelain and glass, cars, and the so-called ‘street furniture’, such as fountains, a metro station, street lamps, petrol, and bus stations and a 22m rotor blade made of glass-fiber reinforced polyester of an early windmill-powered plant.

RM: With all of those things in the collection, do you have a favorite object right now?

TB: The interesting thing about being a conservator is that the more you work on an object, the more it thrills you with its technology and design. I don’t have a favorite object–one could rather say that I have a favorite period of design: the 1950s to the late 1960s. At that time there were so many new ideas about how to live, the development of new technologies and products often originating from war production, and most of all an enthusiastic belief in plastics.

Okay, maybe one favorite object. The Futuro house by Matti Suuronen. It’s a UFO-shaped house which was designed in 1964 as a ski-cabin. It’s really an incredible design object that consists mainly of all kinds of plastics.

Alen MacWeeney, "Bernie, Cherry Orchard," circa 1976. Gelatin silver print, dimensions variable. Courtesy www.alenmacweeney.com.

It hardly seems fair that in today’s world of the point-and-shoot dominated landscape, where a common tourist can not only take a professional photograph but adequately circulate it via the internet too, that we are seeing an influx of historic photography in the art market. Yes, the images are certainly of interest, but haven’t we redefined our relationship with the image in a daily existence of friends tagging us in Facebook shots? What in history is so contemporary? How are New York and California art dealers and auction houses, such as Phillips de Pury, working up the nerve to charge thousands of dollars for a vintage photograph unearthed from the dusty photography studio? And speaking of the studio, where does the photographer as the artist fit in all of this? Where does craft and precision? I don’t know that I have all the answers, but I do know that documentary photography looks darn good on contemporary white walls. It seems this may be the new place for it, for better or for worse, as bulky photography books make their comeback in all their design glory and new standards for print quality.

Alen MacWeeney, "Willie Donoghue and Children," circa 1976. Gelatin silver print, dimensions variable. Courtesy www.alenmacweeney.com.

Not too long ago, it seems, I was Assistant Director of the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea and had received a crash course on the true marketability and value of the photographs many a contemporary collector may take for impostors in the art world. And, I have to say, much like the art world in general, value is a questionable entity, as it is assigned by a handful of pioneers willing to be the first to put historical documentation up on white walls and call it art. Oh, and of course attach the appropriate price tag. What else could explain the booming sales of mugshots from the 40s and 50s? Yes, they are available on eBay for fraction of the gallery cost, but the juicy ones with notes on crimes such as “loitering” and “looking suspicious” and the ones with the wildest hairdos will cost you. Take a look at more here. And should we speak of the collectors of photography as art, who seem to feed their collections with images of high value and fetishized subject matters? It would be easy to pick out, for instance, Diane Arbus as being on the other side of this deal (the photographer living as artist and not thinking much of it). Arbus, whose photography and ephemera has been widely exhibited in the art world and sold (see, again, Phillips de Pury last year) for incredible prices.

Well, lets just say it would be nice if any of the photographers still alive received the accolades. The thing is, photographers don’t get rich unless they go commercial. Not today. Is it because the market is just not ready to accept the value of a moment captured soulfully and then printed so skillfully that no flaw in exposure, paper, grain, or spotting can be detected as fine art? Is it the fact that we are convinced that we are all just as good, with the same means for travel and documentation of our world? Or is it that we like things a bit more painterly?

Page spread from "Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots" by Mark Michaelson & Steven Kasher. Steidl & Partners, 2006.

All I know is that the value of a moment in time can truly be priceless, as is its context within history and culture. Alen MacWeeney is one artist I’ve met in my brush with contemporary gallerisms that touched me with his work in a very real way. Not only because his images are so evocative, where a people are portrayed with dignity and vulnerability and, ultimately, all of their humanity intact, but because he is a purist in a good way. He is a master printer with such regard for perfection that his prints speak for themselves. Not a speck of dust, not a single sign of overexposure. Even the black-and-white shots of the Irish Travelers (derogatively known as the tinkers) from the 70s are so alive, for lack of a better word, that they actively play with the viewer. The young and the old are equally playful and sorrowful; their humanity contagious and real in a way to which not every lens connects. So what is the value of a photographic print? If you ask me, it is very much outside of the market phenomenon, but is rather serious nonetheless.

Artist at work: Cai Guo-Qiang. Art21 production still. 2005

About a year ago at this time I was getting ready for Art21 to come in and film me teaching about the theme of power with my freshman Studio in Art class. I was a bit nervous, but when it was all said and done, I was happy with what we had filmed and the story that got told about how students tackled the idea of visually depicting power in a variety of ways through painting. The number of hours that went into that 5 minutes of film (fame?) still blows me away.

It’s that time of year again. And while I’ve decided that I will return to the theme of power with my new students, the beginning has already been different. Rather than start with a customary skill-building approach similar to our recent drawing unit, which is the way we began in 2008, I decided after looking at some reflections in my notebook that maybe I wanted to begin with specific challenges students already have when it comes to painting. It seemed a lot easier than assuming what they did or didn’t know.

Borrowing an idea I learned while mentoring teachers in New York City, I set up a “parking lot” (aka a large chart for students to place written responses to a specific question) this past Monday and gave each student four Post-It notes in the ugliest color I could find. I asked each of them this time around to identify four specific challenges they have experienced working with paint in the past (a quick survey told me that over 90% of the class had some experience with painting pictures). After they finished, students placed their answers in the parking lot I had set up near the door.

Later that afternoon, I looked over the chart and realized that the beginning of this unit would be a little different than last year. Based on the answers I received, students wanted the most help with blending, color mixing, and coming up with good ideas (”Not making a mess” was a close runner-up, by the way). So this time around, we will be trying some specific experiments around mixing and blending before re-emphasizing, as was the case last year, a variety of ways artists get good ideas and put them in motion.

In my work as a teacher and an artist, I am constantly reminded that just because something went well once doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be better the next time around. Starting the Power unit in a slightly different way allows me to show students I am taking their feedback seriously and that I’m ready to help with what they need as we move into something new.

Robert Smithson, "Spiral Jetty," 1970

When I first saw that this site’s new Flash Points topic was Art and the Environment, I immediately thought of two artists: Robert Smithson and Eames Demetrios. They are not contemporaries. Smithson, a seminal land art pioneer, died tragically in the height of his career in 1973. Demetrios, a currently active artist and filmmaker, is the namesake of his designer grandparents, Charles and Ray Eames. Demetrios is creating an elaborate global installation called Kcymaerxthaere, a manifestation of what he calls “3-dimensional story telling.” These two artists provide compelling arguments for the value of natural resources precisely because neither deals with the topic directly. Rather, both engage in a form of artistic practice that stretches back to prehistory. By creating monuments to complex mythologies and situating them in both a physical and historical context, the apparent value of these sites is renewed.

Robert Smithson is most famous as an early proponent of the land art movement. His most famous work, Spiral Jetty (1970), is a 1,500 foot curled protrusion into a remote part of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It’s made of truckloads of basalt rock, salt, and earth. It’s easy to mistake Smithson as simply a precursor to someone like Andy Goldsworthy. While Goldsworthy’s earthworks draw attention to the beauty of the site with delicate and sensible interventions, Smithson’s approach was not nearly so tidy. Smithson was fascinated by entropy, the unstoppable loss of energy, and increase of chaos, within natural systems. Far from a zen-like harmony with nature, Smithson’s interactions with the natural world hinted at an apocalyptic tension. For an example of a very un-Goldsworthy Smithson work, check out Glue Pour (Vancouver, 1969).

In the case of Spiral Jetty, Smithson’s intervention in the landscape manages to inspire compassion for the natural world despite his sometimes brutal approach. Smithson selected the site for its pinkish red water. In an essay about the work, he explains, “Chemically speaking, our blood is analogous to the primordial seas. Following the spiral steps we return to our origins, back to some pulpy protoplasm, a floating eye adrift in an antediluvian ocean.”

Smithson was intent on situating Spiral Jetty not only at a specific site in Utah, but also within the epic sweep of geologic time. In a film he made to document the piece, he intercuts a map of the Jurassic Period, about which he said, “I needed a map that would show the prehistoric world as coextensive with the world I existed in.” This is where I find a clear connection to the recent work of Eames Demetrios. As I mentioned earlier, Demetrios is six years in to a global series of site-specific installations known as Kcymaerxthaere. Kcymaerxthaere consists of a series of sculptural installations and faux historical bronze plaques, each one telling a portion of a story about a fantasy world that parallels our own. It’s a bit like trying to read a Tolkien novel spread out across 63 sites in ten countries, in locations as diverse as the Australian outback and the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Scotland.

Demetrios describes himself as a “geographer at large,” and speaks about the project more in terms of discovery than creation. I had the chance to meet Demetrios when he came to Grand Rapids, MI, to install five permanent Kcymaerxthaere plaques as a part of ArtPrize, an international art event I help manage. As with many artists who have installed works in Grand Rapids, Demetrios’s mythical plaques deal primarily with the Grand River, which divides the city in half. The plaques are sited at two local universities, two city parks, and a bar, and each tell of “Grwosts,” specialized Kcymaerxthaere denizens that act as time guides, leading people over the tremendous temporal rift of the River Lakcenne (what we call the Grand River).

Eames Demetrios, "Kcymaerxthaere," 2003

While touring Demetrios’s plaques is certainly fun, and has value as an act of civic engagement or even a twist on geocaching, the real value lies in the plaques’ ability to impart a sense of importance on a site by tethering it to myth. The plaque in Grand Rapids that does the best job of this is titled “Handfuls of Small Stones.” It is situated on a boardwalk on the east bank of the Grand, literally inches from the water. It tells of a Kcymaerxthaere ritual that takes place on the parallel of that site, in which handfuls of small stones are tossed in the water. Demetrios has provided a box of pebbles so that visitors can participate in this ceremony, where the thrower acts out the creation story of Kcymaerxthaere. The text explains, “the passage of rock into immersion could symbolize the life of an individual, a community, even what we think of as a planet. Even a pebble could be an “anggroav”, a difficult to translate term referring to the tendency of some islands to be their own universe, with their own laws of time and space.”

Both Smithson and Demetrios marry natural sites with epic mythologies. Creation myths have a particular ability to inspire a sense of awe with the natural world. Demetrios does this with a playful and hopelessly complex web of Tolkien-esque story fragments. Smithson, on the other hand, is concerned with the absolute and unforgiving elements of the natural world, rocks, salt, water. Origins lead naturally into destructions, entropy. In regard to the viewer’s relationship to the natural site, however, the effect is the same. These works remind us that nature is ancient, and we are not. They inspire empathy for the planet’s plight not by pandering for sympathy, but by creating a “fear of god” effect, a reminder that we are blips in a cosmic expanse.

Gabriel Orozco, "Dark Wave", 2006. Calcium carbonate and resin with graphite, 119 11/16 x 154 5/16 x 541 5/16 in. Courtesy Jay Jopling / White Cube (via artnet.com).

From exhibitions and public talks, to limited-edition prints and digital calendars, this week you can find Art21 artists involved in various activities in New York, Washington D.C., Dublin, and Johannesburg:

• The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has announced a mid-career retrospective exhibition of work by Season 2 artist Gabriel Orozco. In 1993, MoMA organized Projects 41: Gabriel Orozco, the artist’s first solo museum show. Many of the well-known objects he has created since that time (such as Black Kites, 1997) will be shown alongside lesser-known drawings, paintings, photographs, large sculptures and installations. Gabriel Orozco runs December 13, 2009–March 1, 2010. Jump to Wesley Miller’s 2008 blog post, Gabriel Orozco: Mobile Matrix, to learn more about the sculpture pictured above.

• High on my wish list this holiday season is the electronic plug-in issue of Visionaire Magazine, a tri-annual limited-edition publication. Visionaire worked with 52 curators and art collectors to select one artwork for every day of the year; Orozco, Bruce Nauman (Season 1) and Louise Bourgeois (Season 2)  are among the 365 artists chosen. The Visionaire 2010 is available in stores now.

• Picturing New York – an exhibition of 145 works from MoMA’s photographic collection – will open at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on November 25. Through the work of nearly 40 photographers, including Cindy Sherman (Season 5), Berenice Abbott, and Diane Arbus, the show celebrates the tradition of photographing the city.

• In other Sherman news, Artinfo.com reports that the artist will receive the Jewish Museum’s Man Ray Award for “her distinguished accomplishments in advancing the world’s understanding of the limitless possibilities of identity, and the profound impact of her work on the contemporary art world.” The award will be presented on November 17.

• On November 18, the Whitney Museum of American Art will host a public conversation between Roni Horn (Season 3) and chief curator Donna De Salvo. They will discuss Horn’s work over the last 30-years and her mid-career survey now on view at the Whitney. The program begins at 7pm. (Check out the Bomb Magazine website, where you can read an interview with Horn from 1989.)

• Yinka Shonibare MBE, the traveling exhibition of work by the Season 5 artist, opened at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian last week. The museum has dedicated a blog, as well as a twitter account exclusively to their Shonibare show. The exhibition runs through March 7, 2010.

• If you missed the mention on Art21’s twitter page, I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine – a performance by Season 5 artist William Kentridge commissioned for Performa 09 – was reviewed by Roberta Smith of the New York Times. Smith called the piece “an exquisitely polished work of art in itself, thanks largely to Mr. Kentridge’s marvelous stage presence.” Read the complete review here.

• Later this month, the award-winning South African puppet company Handspring – who has collaborated with Kentridge in the past – will celebrate the release of their first full-length book exploring their work in adult puppet theatre. On the occasion, Kentridge (who served as an editor on the project) has designed two limited-edition prints based on his work with Handspring; they are available through David Krut Projects in Johannesburg.