hatchets and skewers

she continues to possess athleticism

2012-01-22T10:13:00.005-05:00

Below are some shots from the weeks leading up to the opening of SHE GOT GAME--including Cory Oberndorfer hard at work on his mural; the arrival of Unreasonably Large Photos by Martin Schoeller; prep work for Kristina Bilonick and Holly Bass's installations; and Tara Mateik's space helmet-esque vintage video sphere.

Thanks again to everyone who came out for the opening reception on January 13! Your next date to save: Feb 11, when Kristina Bilonick will give a DC CHEER workshop (you need to register to participate!), and Amber Hawk Swanson will rock out CrossFit-style.

You can read my curatorial statement here. Read more about the show at the AAC site here.

me, me, and somebody else

2011-10-13T08:35:00.001-04:00

This past weekend I had a review of the American Visionary Art Museum's current show, "All Things Round," in the Washington Post. Read that here, if you haven't already.

Tomorrow I review entries for "Utopias," a juried show I'm doing for Anne Arundel Community College. I'll meet the artists who make the cut at the juror's talk and opening reception on November 10.

See it this weekend: Evan Reed at GRACE in Reston. Evan is one of those artists who stays in his studio and quietly develops a really kick-ass, technically excellent, idiosyncratic body of work...and gets very little of the recognition he deserves for it.

Read the press release here; see some of Evan's sculptures on his website here.

Evan was our visiting resident artist at AAC for much of my tenure there; I had the pleasure of bringing a Very Large Sculpture of his with me to Germany in 2007 for a show we did at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen.

Evan's a master craftsman and draftsman--and, hey, if someone wants to buy me one of his retro-modern drawings (the website images really don't do them justice) as a Christmas present, that'd be very nice, thanks.

The show--"until every shape has found its city"--is accompanied by a catalog, featuring an essay by Phillips Collection curator Vesela Sretenovic.

The reception is this Saturday, October 15, from 5 - 7 pm. For more info, visit the gallery website here.

Pictured: Evan installing "Arlington House" in Aachen, 2007.

thirty-something

2011-10-06T07:14:00.000-04:00

My review of "30 Americans" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is in this week's Washington City Paper. Read all about it here.

Also: read Philip Kennicott's take on the show in the WaPo here. I don't disagree too much with Phillip--except for the bit about how inherently difficult it is to persuade the museum-going public that found objects can be transformed into art. Let's all just catch up with the 1920s, shall we? OK.

Lenny takes issue with Kennicott's Rubell ruminations (he's probably not gonna care for my piece, either). Read all the militating that's fit to electronically disseminate here.

Pictured: Nick Cave, "Soundsuit," 2008, fabric, fiberglass, and metal.

tri a little tenderness

2011-09-26T09:38:00.009-04:00

Well, the fight is over. The tent has been taken down; the balloons have all been popped; the podiums have been carted off; the fitness equipment has dried out and been moved back to the gym (without anyone getting electrocuted, thank goodness).

There's a champion and there's a loser...and that loser is me!

Which leads me to say this: Thank you everyone for making the first annual (will there be others?) Triathlon of the Muses a rip-roaring rain-free, electrocution-free, vomit-free success! Kathryn and I could not have done it without you.

Huge thanks to Helen Allen, Leigh Conner, and Jamie Smith for organizing a kick-ass art fair--it looks like (e)merge was a hit, and will definitely be back next year--and for accepting and allowing us to completely overhaul the original design of the performance ("Weren't you supposed to be doing a fake food and wine reception or something?"), and offering fabulous support all the way through.

Thanks also to Philippa Hughes for championing the performance, letting us crash her condo for our promo fight video, and, as referee, calling all sorts of entertaining technical fouls that we completely ignored as we continued to pant and sweat our way to the finish.

Thanks to Jonathan Fischer and Maura Judkis for being our fabulous color commentators! If I didn't laugh at all of your jokes, it was only because I was Hurting Deeply.

Thanks to Andrea Pollan for, uh, representing one of us, anyway, and for promoting the big fight.

Thanks, Lenny Campello, for posting our press release on your blog (albeit with insulting references to my physique and penchant for ladies' wear inserted here and there); thanks, Bridget Sue Lambert, for being the fantastic master of the printing studio; thanks Svetlana Legetic for saying nice things about us; thanks to Jeremy Flick and Patrick McDonough for facilitating, getting passes for my MICA crew, and being extremely patient with all of the chaos in the run-up.

Thank you Capitol Skyline Hotel staff and management for moving your fancy electronic gym equipment out to the pool deck and for letting us pump obnoxious metal/bad pop over your PA system for two hours. Somehow you thought these were good ideas.

Thanks to our documentarians--so-stellar-he's-interstellar photographer Max Cook, who always seems to be there when I'm embarrassing myself; Anthony Smallwood; Rob Parrish, and Bruno Venini.

And I save my personal biggest thanks for last: Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you to my MICA Curatorial Practice crew! Deana Haggag, Matt Spalding, Gabrielle Buzgo, Chloe Helton-Gallagher, Catherine Akins, and Emily Clemens: I guess this means I owe you extra credit?

Below and at the top: Photos of the triathlon by the amazing Max Cook. Underwater shots by Anthony Smallwood--he jumped in the pool and shot us while lying on the bottom! I call that commitment to your craft.

all the news that's fit to copy and paste

2011-09-22T09:37:00.002-04:00

They're gonna throw down!

The fight is on! After weeks of intense training—and even more intense Twitter trash talking—performance artists Kathryn Cornelius and Jeffry Cudlin are ready to throw down. Their two-person sprint triathlon kicks off THIS SATURDAY, Sept. 24 at NOON, at the (e)merge art fair.

Who are these lunatics?

The competitors could not be more physically different: Nearly a foot in height and 50 pounds in weight separates them.

Cornelius is, of course, a woman; stands 5' 6 3/4" tall; and weighs somewhere between 118 and 121 lbs--depending on whether or not she's had her daily constitutional.

Cudlin, meanwhile, is male (usually); stands 6' 4 1/2" tall; and weighs between 171 and 180--depending on his cupcake intake.

The two also sit on opposite ends of the food chain: For the past 14 years, Cudlin has eaten a strict vegan diet, eschewing meat, dairy, eggs, and all other animal products in favor of grains, legumes, and vegetables. Cornelius, meanwhile, eats a strict Paleo diet, avoiding grains, legumes, and dairy in favor of meat, nuts, seeds, some fruit and little sugar.

In addition to totally dominating one another, Cornelius and Cudlin aim to counter the stereotype of artists as weak, non-athletic sensitives who are notoriously bad at sports.

Triathlon of the Muses from The Pink Line Project on Vimeo.

Who's in charge of this monkey farm?

But who’s going to keep these two bloodthirsty artists-turned-athletes honest? Leave that to color commentators Maura Judkis (Washington Post) and Jonathan Fischer (Washington City Paper), as well as MC Philippa Hughes (Pink Line Project)—who will also be donning the black-and-white striped shirt and officiating the faceoff.

Maura Judkis, Producer for the Style Section of the Washington Post, knows a thing or two about responding to hard-charging sport spectacle: In a previous life, she was captain of her high school cheerleading squad.

Prior to serving as Arts Editor for the Washington City Paper. Jonathan Fischer cut his teeth on the Brandeis University squash courts. Though he claims he’ll only watch a game on TV if sriracha buffalo chicken dip (actually a thing) is present, don’t be fooled: Arts editing is a blood sport.

And Philippa Hughes, DC Arts Commissioner and founder of the Pink Line Project, was the only girl on her 8th grade soccer team—her school didn’t have a girls team, so she had to play with the boys. As a result, Hughes developed a highly competitive killer instinct…and firsthand knowledge of the forces unleashed in any battle of the sexes.

What is a sprint triathlon?

At the Capitol Skyline Hotel, Cornelius and Cudlin will engage in three very real tests of physical and mental stamina: They'll both swim 750m in the very short hotel pool (that’s approximately 20 laps), pedal 20k on stationary bikes, and run a 5k race on treadmills.

Why are Cudlin and Cornelius doing this?

The Triathlon of the Muses attempts to insert the conventions of popular sporting spectacle into the structure of the art fair—replacing one form of competition, costume-wearing, and role-playing with another. In this way the piece provides a more clearly legible analog for transactions both prior to and within the fair. It also presents a symbolic battle between artists of opposing genders for the same limited resources of audience, patronage, and cultural capital.

Where’d that odd title come from?

The performance's title is a nod to Pierre de Coubertin's Pentathlon of the Muses, a series of art competitions typically held at the Olympic games during the first half of the 20th century. In the Pentathlon, the sport-inspired work of amateur artists would be judged by arts professionals and other dignitaries. Gold, silver, and bronze medals were awarded.

writing, or something like it

2011-09-16T08:36:00.000-04:00

Well, that was a refreshing nap, wasn't it? Yes, after two months of getting settled in my new gig at MICA, it suddenly dawned on me that I have a blog, and that my readership--spammers, family members, people arriving here by accident--might want to know what the heck is up.

The answer is: quite a bit. We have some catching up to do.

For now, I'll just note this: The WCP 2011 Fall Arts Guide is out. Pick it up on your way into or out of the metro...or read all the news that's fit to download here.

In the guide, Louis takes sneak peeks at a couple of important upcoming shows--"Harry Callahan" at the NGA; "30 Americans" at the Corc--and I ramble a bit about "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," which comes to the NPG via the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco starting October 14.

Just for fun: See the checklist for the show with thumbnails here.

More updates on the way, but for now, a question: Why am I exercising so much?

stu-stu-studio (part two-two-twodio)

2011-07-18T11:33:00.002-04:00

OK, ladies and gents, I have only a couple of weeks left occupying an office at AAC, but I need to announce a couple more AAC-related opportunities before I split.

Here's a big one: Studio Space! Yes, AAC has an unexpected opening in its group studio. It's a shared space, but it's big, high-ceilinged, light-filled, and suitably awesome. Seriously, if it didn't break all kinds of rules, I'd apply.

Artists you'd be sharing this studio with: Jenny Sidhu Mullins, Bridget Sue Lambert, Matt Smith. You know: the cool kids.

Things you'd have: 24/7 access to your space, a kitchen, lounge, and bathroom with a shower; opportunities to show in the Wyatt gallery; opportunities for feedback and exchange with a fantastic group of VA/DC/MD artists; opportunities for open studios during our very well attended art openings, etc., etc.

Also: You occasionally might get opportunities to do offsite AAC projects like this one.

Deadline: Very close. August 1! You snooze, you lose.

Hey, you! Apply yourself! Details here; application form here.

deadline: july 1

2011-06-28T15:50:00.005-04:00

The deadline for 2012 SOLOS at AAC is this friday, July 1. The application form is on our website here.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the very last set of solos exhibits for which I'll be sitting on the panel--and I must say, we've pulled out all the stops for this one.

Our guest jurors this time around are:

Klaus Ottman, Curator at Large and Director of the Center for the Study of Modern Art for the Phillips Collection

Karen Milbourne, curator for the Smithsonian African Art Museum

J.J. McCracken, DC based installation artist and art professor

These folks will spend two days reviewing all of the submissions and selecting twelve to fourteen emerging contemporary artists who are producing sharp stuff and have novel proposals for exhibits in our seven gallery spaces.

Should you apply? Well, duh. I mean, if you live in DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, or Delaware, that would be a big yes.

Things to think about in your application:

Site specificity. How is your show going to be tailored to the spaces at AAC? Show the panel that you've thought about how you'll use our floorplan to your advantage. How will your show here be a unique occurence, i.e., not just a rehash of the same array of objects or experiences you might present in a different gallery somewhere else?

Professional development. What does showing at AAC do for you? How will it allow you to advance your game, develop your practice, attempt something on a scale or trajectory you haven't attempted before?

The non-profit difference. Why does it make sense to show your work in a non-profit art space? Is there something about your work or your project proposal specifically that makes more sense in our galleries than in a local commercial gallery? If you already have commercial gallery representation, why should your work be shown here?

If you can answer those questions, and your images/video/plans look good, then you might very well be in business.

Get those applications in!

Pictured: Images from previous SOLOS shows by Laure Drogoul, Mia Feuer, Pamela Sunstrum, David Page, Roxana Perez-Mendez, Erin Colleen Williams, Gregory Thielker, Ben Pranger, and Steven Pearson.

charmed by the charm city

2011-06-13T03:34:00.007-04:00

No doubt you know by now that Arlington Arts Center's Executive Director Claire Huschle is leaving on August 1.

Claire hired me to shake up the exhibitions program back in July of 2007. Thanks to Claire, I managed to risk my life installing giant murals; travel to Germany; and organize shows on transhumanism, comics, historical reenactments, experimental geography, african-american women artists who use narrative, and, well, a bunch of other stuff, too.

Claire transformed AAC; she and I shared a vision for what contemporary art is and how a community arts space ought to present it. She also gave me a level of creative freedom that I quite frankly can't imagine any other institution or E.D. offering.

I can now announce that Claire won't be the only summer departure from AAC: As of August 1, I will be packing up my office as well.

Where the heck am I going? I've been offered (and have very happily accepted) a full time position as Professor of Curatorial Studies and Practice at MICA in Baltimore.

For the new job, I'll be teaching MICA's undergraduate Exhibition Development Seminar--read an article about a previous class project in the Baltimore City Paper here; see the website for the most recent "Open City" EDS exhibit here--and team-teaching the First Year Practicum for MICA's brand-spanking-new MFA in Curatorial Practice.

Both EDS and the new MFA are George Ciscle's babies. If somehow you don't know about George (and I'm not sure how this would be possible), read a little background here.

No small part of my excitement about taking this job comes from having the opportunity to work with--and hopefully learn from--George, whose ideas about both teaching and developing new community arts practices I find challenging and exciting.

At AAC, I've worked extensively with recent MICA graduates as part of our annual SOLOS shows; I've also done crits at MICA over the past few years. I've known that really good things happen at MICA for awhile now, and have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunites I've had to interact with their students. Deciding whether or not to go there was a no-brainer.

What does this mean for AAC? Well, in the short run, less than you might think: While I won't be reporting to work there anymore, I still have shows in development and on the schedule. It looks like I will be bringing at least one of those--a show about images of women in sports titled "She Got Game"--to completion in January as an independent contractor. I'll be working with my suddenly much busier exhibits coordinator Catherine Satterlee to make that happen.

AAC may no longer have my body, but they get to keep my brain for awhile.

I have no doubt that AAC will continue to grow. A new E.D., an expanded budget, a larger staff: This is all on the horizon. I know that our board wants to continue the vision for the organization that Claire forged; new blood can only help propel that process.

So, goodbye Arlington; hello Baltimore! I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it here.

Above: The view from my new office window.

mele kalikimaka!

2011-06-01T09:01:00.001-04:00

I had a review in the Sunday Arts section of the Washington Post over the Memorial Day weekend--I wrote about "This IS Hawai'i," the two-venue show of contemporary native hawaiian artists currently on view at Transformer and the National Museum of the American Indian.

Read my take on the little indigenous contemporary art show that could here.

While you're at it: Read Kriston Capps's take on the same show over at the Washington City Paper. Compare and contrast!

Pictured: Maika'i Tubbs, "A Life of Its Own," 2010, plastic forks, spoons, knives

i will tell you if i'm dead

2011-05-16T09:41:00.010-04:00

Today I'm sitting at home as the plumber and his crew destroy my house.

On Friday night, around 1:00 am, I heard a strange combination of sounds emanating from our basement. "Well, that can't possibly be the cats," I thought.

It wasn't. Instead, water was pouring out of our basement ceiling--onto, among other things, some of my old paintings which have been piled up down there for about three years now...basically, since I stopped painting.

After furiously poking a few holes in the ceiling to try to figure out where the heck the waterfall was coming from and putting large plastic storage bins under the holes, I closed the main water shutoff valve. The torrent eventually stopped.

We've spent the whole weekend without water, relying on the kindness of neighbors and finding creative ways to "flush" the toilets.

Today the plumber's crew arrived to cut a giant hole in our dining room wall...only it turned out that was the wrong wall. It was the living room that needed triage. After removing all of the wall-mounted electronics and moving the media cabinet, we discovered that, yes, the whole bottom of the wall was sodden and blistering.

So, now there's a giant dust cloud in our house, a floor-to-ceiling hole in our living room, and the sound of furious hacking and hammering in our basement.

One repercussion, aside from having spent the last two days feeling like we were camping in our own home, was that on Saturday, my art band with Kathryn Cornelius, formerly known as Beat Freaks, missed an opportunity to interview with artist Agnes Bolt for an upcoming residency in Philippa Hughes's condo--and to be present for a photo shoot, during which we hoped to unleash a new song that's presented in part via a powerpoint presentation.

(The band's current name is Business as Usual--hence the powerpoint obsession...but by the time of our next show it will likely be something else.)

Agnes, as you no doubt have read by now--see photos here; read Kriston's piece for the Washington Post here; read Arin Greenwood's piece for the WCP here; read Philippa's tumblr about the experience here--spent a week living in a giant transparent plastic bubble in the middle of Philippa's live/work space.

The experience was initially very stressful for both Philippa and Agnes. This became clear after I talked to both of them on Tuesday night: They were attempting to play with one another, test one another's boundaries, but it felt strained, anxious, genuinely contentious.

Philippa began the night ignoring Agnes and her habitat completely, and focusing on Victoria Gaitan's artist's talk. Many who were present (myself included) had no idea that the subject of the talk was Victoria's work, and assumed we were really there to hear about the bubble--so this led to a surreal disconnect.

Only at the end of the talk did Philippa really acknowledge the giant clear structure that was dominating her living room and making it impossible for people to get to most of the condo's space without passing behind the kitchen island and gingerly stepping over one of the blue retractable tunnels through which one enters Agnes's domain.

"Oh, have you met my houseguest?" she asked. "This is Agnes. She's staying with me for awhile."

Philippa then suddenly reversed course: She asked everyone present to pack into Agnes's structure, just to see how many people it could hold--and, again, to mess with the artist.

Agnes responded by turning on a fog machine, presumably to fumigate her structure. This set off the condo's smoke alarms. A look of panic flashed across Philippa's face as she tried to remember if this could result in the sprinkler system going off.

I've been fascinated by the project for a number of reasons. As someone whose work is at this point largely about open-ended collaboration with other art world-ers, in which I attempt to force uneasy alliances and get people to agree to things that aren't necessarily in their best interests, I am quick to reassure potential collaborators that I want them to feel empowered. At every step, they should be allowed to see how they will be represented, and have final say over the results of the collaboration in some fashion or other.

This is usually, in part, just a ruse: Once I have people on board, their participation becomes their de facto validation and endorsement of the project, regardless of what they really think of the results.

Agnes, by contrast, did not seem to make any effort to allay Philippa's fears. The rituals she put in place surrounding the residency--communicating via hand-written notes; demanding to be fed twice a day, kissed once a day; asserting that she could keep objects from Philippa's life that she could drag inside the habitat, and eventually present and sell them as part of the project--were all designed to make things more uncomfortable, not less.

At one point on Wednesday, after a lengthy back and forth via e-mail with Philippa in which we mused about Agnes's practice, motivations, and personality, I received an e-mail from Agnes herself--albeit from Philippa's account.

The artist had borrowed Philippa's laptop and was reading--and responding to--her e-mail. She'd just seen everything we'd written about her.

"Uh, Agnes?" I wrote. "Does Philippa know you're reading her e-mail?"

"She's been complaining that my presence has set her back in all the emails," she explained, "so I thought i'd help her out a bit."

I've had more than one conversation with local arts folks who regard the project suspiciously; one friend even dubbed it "MFA art"--suggesting, perhaps, that it is only of interest to those in academic circles...and in no way participates meaningfully with the market it critiques.

Agnes is an MFA student currently in Pittsburgh, she is not connected to or collected by Philippa, so there may be something to this. Further, Philippa, as an arts organizer and advocate, was actually very tolerant toward this intrusion into her personal space, much moreso than a ridiculously-wealthy-and-out-of-sight collector--who would be a more likely target for a critique of gallery culture--would be.

But the issues underlying the project are real, and not merely of interest within a grad program. Further, the references to relational aesthetics that have been used to frame the project are, I think, misleading.

Relational or dialogic art is often understood as opening a space for encounters with a directly engaged audience. Agnes's project as I see it was designed to stifle engagement, impose distance through oppressive-seeming rules regarding conduct. This to me makes the work look more like a sort of faux-modernist confrontation than a space for open exchanges.

The clear plastic structure looks like a modern, triumph-of-universal-technology imposition, one that doesn't take account of the local conditions in Philippa's condo. Its design is weirdly, laughably futuristic.

The leotard/uniform, the extreme limits on speech/communication, the rules generally: These are all about making experiences deliberately curtailed/contingent somehow, refusing to make things easy for the viewer/participant, and instead provoking confrontation, confusion, alienation. Again: Modern art. Think triumphant abstract paintings that resist interpretation; think forbidding angular architecture that is uncomfortable to live in and stubbornly apart from whatever setting it occupies.

I think Agnes would disagree with this evaluation to an extent--I know she believes that she was as exposed and uncertain in the transaction as Philippa was. Certainly she was dependent on Philippa and had placed herself in a vulnerable situation--asking for food and collaborative good will from a stranger.

Mostly, at this point, the project highlights a typical D.C. conundrum: It received a fair amount of media coverage--but nearly all of that coverage centered on the spectacle, and didn't really do much to help a general audience understand how the piece might or might not relate to the history of performance generally.

What's that? Oh, right: The title of this post is an acknowledgement that I haven't written anything here in awhile--no, I didn't die; thanks for asking--and is also a reference to a track from "Shut Up, Little Man," the early '90s cassette phenomenon that, improbably, is now a documentary film currently making the festival circuit.

At some point, when we were working for the campus humor mag at UVa, Mike Wartella and I had this tape memorized and would parrot the parts back to one another in the wee hours of the morning. Some things never change: I still pull plenty of all-nighters trying to finish things, and apparently people's appetites for hearing drunks yell at one another remain strong two decades or so later.

Anyway, as I said: Not dead. Just busy. There are lots of changes coming and new projects brewing. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Maura Judkis wrote a piece yesterday (Monday, May 16) over at TBD about Philippa, Agnes, and tensions over ownership within their project. Read here.

baltz for jeffry

2011-05-09T09:42:00.002-04:00

I had a review in the WaPo's Sunday Arts section of the Lewis Baltz show that's currently at the NGA.

Read it here.

The show was curated by former NGA assistant curator Matthew Witkovsky--whose 2007 show, "Foto: Modernity in Central Europe," was pretty terrific. Read my review of that show for the WCP here.

Tyler has been reflecting on Baltz--specifically, on the relationship of his photos to painting. If you haven't been reading his take, see here, here, here, and even here.

Pictured: Lewis Baltz, "South Laguna," gelatin silver print, 1972

critical conditions

2011-04-21T08:58:00.000-04:00

It's official: The WaPo went in-house to fill its vacant art critic post. Starting May 2, Phillip Kennicott adds vis arts to his current mix of writing about architecture and culture. Read the official memo over at the WCP here.

"But what about Jeffry Cudlin?" you might ask, especially if you happen to be me. Hey, I'll continue freelancing for Los Posties as long as they're willing to put up with me...and it sounds like they're willing, for some reason: Look for my next museum review to run in the Sunday Arts section a couple of weeks from now.

ault text

2011-04-07T09:53:00.001-04:00

My review of the George Ault show currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is in this week's Washington City Paper.

Read it here.

Pictured: George Ault, "January Full Moon," oil on canvas, 1941

laugh and the LAT poops on you

2011-04-06T09:45:00.002-04:00

On a slow news day, some people crack lame jokes. Others pass the time by generating phony moral outrage. And then there are guys like Christopher Knight, who direct phony moral outrage at lame jokes.

Yes, Kriston Capps, John Anderson, Washington City Paper arts editor Jonathan Fischer and I had a little too much fun musing on the unsuccessful attack on Gauguin's "Two Tahitian Women," on view currently at the National Gallery of Art in the exhibition "Gauguin: Maker of Myth." (Read my review of the show here.)

We thought: Why Gauguin? Are there other pieces that might've made better targets? Our answers were quite silly, and in no way intended to suggest that people descend on the National Mall with pitchforks and torches.

Christopher Knight at the LA Times took exception to our fun, though. My thoughts on his response are below:

The alternative tabloid proceeded to "recommend" three works in the museum's collection more suitable for trashing than the Post-Impressionist picture, which is on loan from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to a popular traveling exhibition.

Well, that's not exactly true. I didn't say I wanted to "trash" "Graft"; I just said I wanted to live in it, and maybe do some really bad performance art up there. I don't have a problem with the piece, personally. I just like the Wizard of Oz. And oil. And yelling at people from high places.

But, you know, if as a result of my offhand silliness, dozens of weirdos in silver face paint flock to the mall with welding rigs in tow, then I guess I owe Roxy Paine an apology.

The story appears in the paper's ArtsDesk blog, not on a comedy page, where standards would probably be higher.

Sadly, this is true. The Onion would never run a regular WCP Arts Desk feature like "Far Out Vs. Hot Dang."

But I suspect the shiver that ran down the spines of every museum curator around the globe when the Gauguin story first appeared, fearing possible copycats, will get a new jolt from what amounts to water-cooler tomfoolery now posted by art critics on the Internet.

Well, actually, Christopher, I'm a full-time art curator--I do this stuff for a living. So I'm on both the "jolt" and "tomfoolery" sides of this equation.

I guess this means you're actually trying to defend me from myself here. To which I say: Thanks for the assist, but I think I can handle this guy.

Look, I get it. It's always serious business when a priceless work of art is not in any way physically harmed. And you know what? If, as a result of our writing, another work of art somewhere should happen to not actually get damaged, either, we'll take full responsibility for that.

i'll be seeing you

2011-04-04T09:29:00.003-04:00

I had a review in Sunday's Washington Post of "Seeing Now" at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Read it here.

Deinstallation of "On the Road" starts today; installation of "Spring Solos 2011" starts later this week. Looking forward to seeing you next Friday, April 15, for a fabulous opening. Or defriending you if I don't.

Kidding! You just won't be able to post on my wall anymore.

Pictured: Mickalene Thomas, "Le Déjeuner Sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires"

send in the clowns

2011-04-01T09:31:00.006-04:00

Today the National Portrait Gallery announced an unusual addition to their 2013 calendar of exhibitions: portraits of jubilant clowns, all crudely rendered, and typically shown against bright monochrome backdrops.

The show, titled “Pogo: The Savage Mirror,” collects examples of prison art from notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

“It’s important to understand the Portrait Gallery’s mission,” explained gallery director Martin Sullivan. “In choosing to show any body of work, our museum must always ask about the cultural import of the figure being described—our shows are about context and representation first and foremost. And I don’t think you can argue that serial killers have not played an outsized role in American popular culture, and in our collective imagination.”

Gacy, executed in 1994, is known primarily for murdering 33 young teenage boys and burying most of them in the crawlspace of his Norwood Park, Illinois house. But Gacy also took breaks from the bloodbath to follow his other favorite pastime: clowning for the Moose club's Jolly Jokers group, designing his own costume and distinctive makeup for his merry alter ego, Pogo.

The 43 pieces in the show, all created while Gacy sat on death row, and all depicting smiling clowns framed by rainbows and balloons, are, arguably, self-portraits of a psychopath.

“The show brings up many interesting art-historical questions,” Sullivan said. “What is the relationship of art produced by those who have lost their freedom to the broader culture? Can we make aesthetic sense of an oeuvre tainted by tragedy? Why are clowns so creepy?”

Sullivan dismisses the idea that Gacy’s murders make mounting such an exhibition unthinkable. “Art floats free of the artist’s biography, misdeeds, and even his intentions,” he mused. “In fact, there’s a long history of creative types indulging in questionable behavior and still being honored for their work. Phillip Johnson was a National Socialist. Carl Andre pushed his wife out a window. John Currin might be a libertarian.”

“Most artists have skeletons in their closets—it just turns out that in Gacy’s case, the skeletons were actually skeletons. And they were buried under his house.”

Oddly, Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough seems unconcerned about possible scandal or outcry. “Look, there’s nothing offensive in these pictures—no crosses, no leathermen, no pictures of Ellen DeGeneres. I checked.”

“The only thing museum goers might object to is the context, the history. And we have a strategy for dealing with that: All wall text will be set in teeny tiny typefaces.”

When pressed about the wisdom of showing art by a mass murderer so soon after the "Hide/Seek" censorship debacle last winter (“I prefer to call it a debacle-tunity,” he insists), Clough is quick to frame the show in a broader art world context.

“People tell me that this show has a body count. Excuse me, but have you checked to see who’s underwriting major art museum exhibitions these days? Big insurance companies; big tobacco; defense contractors. Body count? Gacy didn’t even begin to put up those kinds of numbers.”

Editor’s note: Today is April 1.

art tribes, old and new

2011-03-23T09:32:00.004-04:00

Thanks to a ruling by U.S. District judge Deborah Batts, photographer Patrick Cariou will soon be in possession of a bunch of Richard Prince’s paintings and exhibition catalogs. Prince’s 2008 show, Canal Zone, borrowed heavily from Cariou’s 2000 photo book, Yes, Rasta; Cariou sued; and Batts ultimately deemed those borrowings fell outside of what can be considered fair use.

A further bizarre twist: Anyone who happened to buy pieces from that Gagosian show (the gallery sold eight pieces to the tune of about ten and a half million dollars) is now forbidden from showing the work. Guess I'll just have to leave my own million dollar Prince piece in the crate, then.

Read all about the decision here.

Reactions have been all over the spectrum. A lot of painters and photographers I know personally have been gleefully stamping their feet, decrying Prince’s laziness as a producer, and questioning the ways appropriation and recontextualization have become accepted practice in gallery culture.

Me, I’m a fan of fair use, and however ambivalent I might be about Prince’s methods in this show in particular—he apparently requested multiple copies of Yes, Rasta from Cariou’s studio without declaring his intent, and went on to use 35 photos in some 28 paintings total—the ruling threatens to turn contemporary art on its head, and will, if it stands, certainly change the way some galleries decide what to show. Greg Allen explains why:

In a series of truly amazing statements, the most shocking is Batt's cursory finding that Prince, Gagosian, and the gallery all acted in bad faith by not proactively pursuing permission from Cariou to use his images. In other words, operating under the assumption that an artist enjoys a fair use exemption to use or reference a copyrighted element, or that an artist is using copyrighted material in a transformative way, is, on its face, bad faith.

The heart of the matter, though—and this also came up in the Jeff Koons decision back in 1992—seems to be whether or not Prince was specifically commenting on Cariou’s work by appropriating it. Batts didn’t think so; Ed Winkleman disagrees:

This is a philosophical question, and, of course, those who feel their copyrights have been infringed deserve to have their day in court, but "inherent in the process of appropriation is the fact that the new work recontextualizes whatever it borrows to create the new work" (emphasis mine). To my mind, that recontextualization is, in and of itself, always commentary.

So what was Prince commenting on, exactly? He didn’t do himself any favors by claiming in testimony that the work didn’t really have a specific message--that it was actually just part of some sort of big postmodern rock opera or something.

Yet the Canal Zone pieces actually are pretty easy to read: By juxtaposing pornographic images of Western women with romanticized black and white pics of Rastafarians, Prince seems to be commenting on the continuing Western fantasy of the exotic other—and the use of that fantasy as cover for bad behavior.

Since I’ve just written back-to-back pieces about Picasso and Gauguin, I can’t help but think about these images in the context of modern Western painters at the start of the 20th century appropriating strategies and formal innovations from the frontiers of empire.

Picasso apparently visited the African art in the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1907 and subsequently painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon—which, in the faces of two of the figures, shows the clear influence of African masks.

Picasso's African period was brief, but full of extensive references to the African art he began to collect. For Picasso, African art held useful distortions—which, to the artists who made them, were not distortions at all, but devices in the service of an entirely different idea of what representation is and how it works. Picasso pried the devices loose from context and used them for his own purposes.

Gauguin, meanwhile, happily threw together references in his painting to Easter Island, art from New Zealand, Hindu idols, and whatever else came to hand, weaving his own personal fantasy of what life in Oceania, or New Zealand, or Martinique was really about--which, to him, seemed to involve lounging around with scantily clad, yellow-skinned ladies in some sort of primordial paradise.

It’s hard not to think of Patrick Cariou’s descriptions of the Rastafarians he visited in the same light: He described them as “...a spiritual society, living simply, independently, and in harmony with nature, apart from the industrialized world of environmental pollution and materialism which they reject and refer to as ‘Babylon.’” How different is this from, say, Gauguin’s Oceania, which became for the artist merely a metaphor for Eden or Arcadia?

Seen this way, Prince’s art really is a direct comment on Carious’s underlying assumptions. But that's an argument Prince seemed unwilling to pursue. In fact, Prince insisted he hadn't thought about Cariou’s intentions at all, describing his photos as “mere compilations of facts...arranged with minimum creativity.”

At the heart of Prince’s dismissal seems to be an assumption that Cariou is not a part of the contemporary art world. His work provides raw fodder for Prince’s own development of an idea, but without Prince, it has no merit—and, presumably, if Cariou were part of the art world, he wouldn’t be making these kinds of photos, anyway.

Oddly, this makes me think of Roger Fry’s essay, "Negro Sculpture," first published in 1920, in which Fry describes what he thinks would happen to African artists were they to encounter Western art:

It is for want of a conscious critical sense and the intellectual powers of comparison and classification that the negro has failed to create one of the great cultures of the world, and not from any lack of the creative impulse…the lack of such a critical standard to support him leaves the artist much more at the mercy of any outside influence. It is likely enough that the negro artist, although capable of such profound imaginative understanding of form, would accept our cheapest illusionist art with humble enthusiasm.

Yikes. Thanks, art history, for creeping me out!

Anyway, I swear I’m not trying to equate a privileged Western photographer dude's predicament with the fates of oppressed races and cultures here...but it does seem like an eerie parallel: Prince considers Cariou’s work fair game because it doesn’t operate by the same critical standards as Prince's own contemporary gallery culture.

Seen this way, Prince’s work isn’t just commenting on the construction of the exotic other by the West; he’s actually mirroring the ways modern artists appropriated formal ideas from cultures they saw as inferior. Which I find strange, problematic, and kind of fascinating.

green hell

2011-03-17T10:13:00.003-04:00

Rather than my usual lame attempt to commemorate St. Patrick's day by posting a Pogues YouTube video, today I will celebrate my 1/4 Irish heritage by offering links to audio re: Flann O'Brien.

Flann O'Brien, of course, was the pen name for Brian O'Nolan, a mid-20th century Irish author who was largely ignored during his lifetime, and who is sometimes considered a sort of Irish proto-Postmodernist.

In his 2009 review of O'Brien's Complete Novels, Fintan O'Toole gave this appraisal of O'Brien's convoluted first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds:

This is a book that begins by questioning why a book should have just one opening, and proceeds to give us three. It is a book by a man (Brian O’Nolan) who invents an author (Flann O’Brien) who is writing a book about an unnamed student narrator who is writing a book about a man (Dermot Trellis) who is writing a book. The narrator openly declares that “a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham” and that “the modern novel should be largely a work of reference,” since virtually all characters have already been invented. Its governing caprice is that fictional characters do in fact already exist, have independent lives, and are capable of revolting against the author who seeks to deploy them. The novel is a treasure house of brilliant pastiches of everything from Gaelic sagas and Irish folkloric narratives to the Bible, Victorian encyclopedias, scholasticism, pub poets, cowboy novels, and trashy thrillers.

You can listen to O'Toole talk about O'Brien's life and work in this New York Review podcast.

The most beloved book by O'Brien is one that was never published during his lifetime: The Third Policeman. It's a truly wondrous and bizarre novel over the course of which it becomes clear that the nameless narrator is in some sort of circular chain of events--is, in fact, dead and trapped in some sort of parallel hell, where the same disturbing inexplicable things occur over and over again.

In this Hirshhorn podcast, you can hear David Wilson, founder of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, read a passage from The Third Policeman featuring an infinite succession of nested wooden boxes. Worth your time.

exotic fever

2011-03-10T10:07:00.000-05:00

My review of Gauguin: Maker of Myth is in this week's Washington City Paper.

Read the piece here.

Also in this week's WCP: Kriston Capps and Louis Jacobson reflect on the passing of Fraser Gallery in Bethesda.

Read that story here; read Lenny Campello's extended remix of the hows and whys here.

And, while you're at it: I don't see how you can pass up the opportunity to read WCP Arts Editor Jonathan Fischer's curious cover story featuring tales from Ian Svenonius's Bruise Cruise, a garage rock weekend invasion of a Carnival cruise ship, featuring nine bands--including Surfer Blood and Vivian Girls--and 380 tattoo-and-jorts-clad fans.

Read all about it here.

Pictured: Paul Gauguin, Te Rerioa (The Dream), oil on canvas, 1897

irregular roundup

2011-03-08T11:51:00.005-05:00

Things, in no particular order:

I went to the Armory Show last week. It was exceptionally meh. I don’t go to a big art fair looking for smart art or subtlety (who does?), and, as expected, I didn’t get either…but I also didn’t get the vulgarity, spectacle, or gee-whiz factor that I assumed would be on offer. I saw lots of mirrors, mirror-in-the-abyss gags, angular metal sculptures, scruffy slapdash painting…and then I went home.

It was a short trip, and I went to no other fairs, which was a huge mistake—really wanted to see Ed Winkleman’s video fair in particular--but I was in the city for one day, and I put all of my eggs in one eight-hour basket, and that’s that.

While I was there, I ran into fine AAC residents Matt Smith and Lee Gainer. You can read Lee’s impressions of the Armory show in her blog, PEEK…which I am suddenly realizing is not featured in my almost-never-maintained blogroll. Instead, I have lots of defunct links and blogs that haven’t been updated since last October over there. It’s a vibrant community of shipwrecks and neglect in that sidebar o’mine.

What else? Mel Chin randomly showed up at AAC last Tuesday. I introduced him to departing AAC visiting artist Mia Feuer—check out her show at Conner Contemporary opening on March 19; it’s going to be huge (literally)—talked about what’s going on with Operation Paydirt (it continues to move forward!) and took him to dinner with a small group including my wife and son. Mel is not only an incredible artist, he’s a down-to-earth, funny, completely engaged and engaging character.

Artists: Apply for things. Apply for these two things in particular:

1)PLANNING PROCESS. Do you make preparatory drawings for your projects? Do you kinda like those drawings? You do? Well, would you like to show your drawings and your finished project to Helen Allen, former Executive Director of PULSE and current co-organizer of DC’s upcoming (e)merge art fair?

That’s a rhetorical question. Download the entry form here. Deadline: May 2.

2)Do you want an AAC SOLO show? Also a rhetorical question! I should just go declarative already.

The form isn’t up on the website yet, but the jurors are set: Karen Milbourne, curator at Smithsonian African Art Museum; Klaus Ottman, newly appointed Curator-at-Large for the Phillips collection; and J.J. McCracken, undeniably awesome artist, performer, and independent curator.

The deadline will be July 1, so start thinking about it. Next installment of SOLOS goes up April 15—details here.

Finally, as you may have noticed, I have been hungry to look at and write about art again of late, and my editors have been happy to give me reasons to do so: I had that piece on Philip Guston: Roma a few weeks back; I have another WCP piece coming out this week on Gauguin at the NGA…I wrote about Picasso at the VMFA for the WaPo a couple of weekends ago and will turn in my second freelance assignment for them next week.

(I mentioned AAC resident artist Matt Smith above; read Matt's own quick take on Philip Guston at the Phillips--and see a lot of images from the show--here, at New American Paintings.)

I’m also writing a catalog essay for Helen Frederick’s show at Hollins University in Roanoke…which I guess means I’m driving to Roanoke this month, doesn’t it? Yes, Jeffry, it does.

on the road: radical pedestrianism

2011-03-07T13:50:00.023-05:00

On Saturday, March 5, 2011, as part of our current exhibition, ON THE ROAD, Baltimore artist Graham Coreil-Allen unlocked the secret lives of Arlington's liminal spaces--and invited a select group of tour-takers to enter the world of Radical Pedestrianism.

What, you may ask, is a radical pedestrian? "If a pedestrian," the artist tells us, "is simply a person traveling by foot, a radical pedestrian is one who travels by foot through infinite sites of freedom while testing the limits of--and redefining--public space."

You say "trespassing"; Graham says "drifting direct action" and "insightful discourse".

Pictured: Graham hands out buttons and signed, limited edition tour-only maps.

Twenty people joined Graham for his tour of Arlington's New Public Sites--overlooked or marginalized spaces that the artist extensively catalogs in a book available at aac and downloadable for free here.

From the intro of The Typology of New Public Sites:

Somewhere between a suburban strip mall and its urban surroundings lies a poetic amalgam of space both epic and discrete. Situated within disparate zones of overlap, contradiction, ambiguity and interstice, the ongoing New Public Sites project investigates the ways in which invisible sites and overlooked features exist within our everyday environment. Based on a critical approach to understanding public space, this project proposes alternatives for signifying and activating sites through urban analysis, mapping, installations, video, tours, and this book.

The tour begins!

Graham invites participants to join him in Seclusion Acres.

Seclusion Acres: A void of privacy surrounded/by gathered screens of green.

Graham leads the group to our next stop: The Perpendicular Extreme.

Perpendicular Extreme: When walking planes juxt/opposing sharp mass,/standing tall over/whelming spatial balance.

Graham points out how sometime in the past, clever Arlingtonians have laid stones to ease their passage diagonally from sidewalk to parking lot.

Graham encourages the crowd to touch and investigate the Box of Uncertainty--do the people living in the tower really expect us to believe that they don't experience comfortable heating and cooling? What compels them to hide the devices that provide this comfort? Food for thought.

Box of Uncertainty: A box of harmonious form/and demeanor, ever so/quietly undone by subtleties/of sound and/or entropy.

HVAC Exhaling: Passing through grates of expulsion/ building lungs release/Heating, Ventilating,/sonic Air Conditions.

The building is breathing!

Graham cautions us not to look across the street: The building is cloaked by an invisible screen of security. (Please: No pictures! Men in uniforms will stop you. Not kidding.)

Onward in search of the Empty Signifier.

Graham draws our attention to the Empty Signifier--an incomplete sign, referring to a never-created development, appropriately stranded in the middle of a funeral home parking lot.

Empty Signifier: A post or pole absent/its original sign and/or meaning.

(Where is this "Club"? When and how might we join? Sounds luxurious.)

Anti-berm: A linear strip of earth/serving as path and platform,/that frames and directs one/towards an adjacent site.

Watercourse: A channel of bed and banks,/through which water flows.

Margie, one of the tour-takers, informed us that this is actually an underground stream, briefly emerging here by the tennis courts. Despite our having learned this, the Watercourse still retains its aura of mystery.

Having passed under the Skygate (not pictured), we head for the Median Refuge.

Graham considers stopping traffic, but thinks better of it. Should've brought the bullhorn!

Median Refuge: A liminal zone of linear respite/between parallels of churning traffic.

Radical Pedestrianism seems to require a significant adjustment in your thinking about where you should or shouldn't stand/walk/be.

Uniforms are important. Especially in performance art.

Secret souvenirs: Graham encourages us to find our own keepsakes here in the heart of the Void.

Void: A framed, open space imbued/with the psychic presence of a former mass/and or the profound immersion/of seductively infinite nothingness.

Having thus been thoroughly seduced, our weary band breaks up and heads home, perhaps considering new paths over, around, and through previously familiar (now exotic-seeming) terrain.

on the road: mary mattingly

2011-02-28T13:30:00.011-05:00

Getting back to ON THE ROAD: Our Tiffany Gallery is currently housing work by Mary Mattingly, courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery.

Mattingly’s work in the show breaks in two different directions: On one side, there’s dystopic, sci-fi-tinged fiction, as seen in the Nomadographies: constructed photographs of a fantastic entropic future where the ocean levels have risen, the terrain is either impossibly lush or impassably hostile, and people need to take to the road and travel light. (Below: photos of Mary Mattingly's work in ON THE ROAD at AAC.)

Mattingly on the photos:

I began the series Nomadographies by doing research, drawing sketches, and by imagining a possible scenario. The story evolved into a series of ad hoc and adaptive low and hi-tech solutions for the circumstances of nomadic life, goals of self-sufficiency, and depictions of a not-so-distant future when the amount of forced environmental and political refugees has increased worldwide, and new temporary communities are continuously created and recreated...Nomadographies is a pilgrimage through real and imagined terrains, a travelogue for the future.

Also in this vein is Mattingly’s video, Pangaea Ultima, which presents a world that once was and might be again: Earth is returned via some ecological disaster to a prehistoric state. A voiceover tells us about an era in which the rainforests have been leveled, turned into deserts. We see images of wandering tribes of humans inhabiting a raging, shifting, inhospitable climate. The viewer is left uncertain as to how far into the future—43 years, or centuries from now?—this cataclysm is supposed to occur.

See video below; click here if the player doesn’t appear.

On the other side, there’s documentation of Mattingly’s Waterpod project—an incredible, utopian-sounding but very real undertaking. The Waterpod was a 120 foot barge on which the artist and a team of collaborators lived and worked for five months in 2009. It was conceived as a “floating, sculptural eco-habitat designed for the rising tides,” according to the project website.

Mattingly received help from Appropedia founder Lonny Grafman and students from his Humboldt State University engineering class, Engineering 215: Introduction to Design, in which students typically “...work in teams with a client to address some real-world problem or opportunity.”

The problems Grafman’s team needed to solve included generating power, purifying water, disposing of human waste, and raising chickens:

...components of the Waterpod include a classic CCAT pedal-powered electric generator called the Human Energy Converter (H.E.C.). There’s also a hydroponic system growing herbs for the kitchen, a dry composting toilet (akin to an outhouse) and a high-tech filtered rainwater catchment system (like an old-fashioned cistern, but safer) with a hydropower system capturing energy from the overflow. A high-tech chicken coop designed by a team of students was adapted by a New York artist utilizing a repurposed shipping crate.

The Waterpod visited all of New York’s five boroughs and Governor’s Island, taking on passengers at every stop. It became a site where scientists, artists, performers, and ordinary New Yorkers could exchange information, educate one another, and think seriously about what sort of future world we humans are designing through decisions we make now—and what it might take to survive there.

he was only five foot three but girls could not resist his stare

2011-02-27T22:15:00.005-05:00

I wrote a review of the Picasso show currently on view at the VMFA in Richmond for...the Washington Post?

Wait, do I write for them now? What the heck happened?? I'm so confused.

Read about the masterpieces (and some other pieces) here.

Also: Listen to the musical version of my review in the player below (or click here if no player appears).

yet another reason why i like the artists i like

2011-02-25T11:01:00.004-05:00

Mariah Anne Johnson, a DC artist whose work you may have seen at Transformer and WPA, and who will be showing at AAC in SPRING SOLOS 2011 this April, has had a novel idea: She's converted the second story "sleeping porch" of her Capitol Hill rowhouse (hey, I have one of those!) into a gallery space.

Porch Projects reveals its first installment this Saturday, February 26, with A Nest, a Shell, a Corner, a Drawer--featuring art from Kendall Nordin, Leigh Davis (another SOLOS artist), and Magnolia Laurie.

My question: Why aren't more people doing this sort of thing? (Me, I'm already busy showing other people's art most of the time as it is. But the rest of you: You have no excuse! Report to your carriage houses, sleeping porches, or rented box trucks immediately.)

The opening reception lasts from 4 - 7 pm. For directions and information about visiting, e-mail Porch Projects here.

Pictured: Mariah Anne Johnson, Tornaduh, bed sheets with plastic chair, 3’ X 2’ X 2’, 2009