NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Disasters of War

The Art of Threat Awareness @ 11 Spring St.

reBlogged from Graffiti Research Lab, 12/20/06:

Homeland Security Advisory Tower

The HSAT is a functioning threat advisory system serving the residents of Nolita, Chinatown, Little Italy and the Bowery. The threat level in NYC has never changed from "HIGH" since the systems inception in 2001.

Click here to view video.
Click here for more flicks on flickr.

For more on the show at 11 spring check out the Wooster Collective. And special thanks to Bennet4Senate, Marc, Sara and Malcolm for helping to bring this level of threat awareness to Lower Manhattan.

Feeling very 2007

Rev. Al Sharpton with James Brown's coffin on the stage of the Apollo Theater...
Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

NEWSgrist wishes everyone a Happy New Year; in spite (in defiance?) of some nasty stuff out there, we insist on invoking the spirit of Mr. Brown:

"I feel good."

Regretting those no longer with us:

Kyoko Kishida, "Woman in the Dunes." (Janus Films)

 
Jason Rhoades (left) during his Black Pussy Soirée Cabaret Macramé in Los Angeles, 2006 

Allan Stone. Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Robert Rosenblum, 1982. Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

 
Nam June Paik

William A. Garnett, who elevated the genre of aerial photography to a form of artistic expression... Photo: The Getty

 
Arlene Raven: art historian, author, writer, editor, critic, lecturer, art curator, feminist and founder of the Women's Caucus for Art, (1972).

 
Barbara Guest, poet, New York School 

 
Robert Altman

+++

Coda:

Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), bought by Hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen for $12 million in 2004

HAPPY 2007!

Jerry Saltz: Mad About You (Happy New Year)

The New Museum under construction at 235 Bowery in Manhattan

via Artnet News, Dec. 27, 2006:
THE 2006 REVUE
{excerpt; links provided by ng}

Jerry Saltz: Criminal Behavior on the Part of Two Important New York Art Institutions: Dia and the Drawing Center. Plus, a Question about the Market.

Instead of renovating its tremendous 22nd Street Chelsea headquarters, or establishing another building, or even opening a temporary New York space, the Dia Art Foundation abandoned New York by shutting down all of its rotating Manhattan exhibition spaces. To ANYONE having ANYTHING to do with this reprehensible behavior, from the ex-director who in a very Bush-like move abandoned the institution after he shut it down, to all of the trustees, it is mind-boggling and heartbreaking that NOT ONE OF YOU openly protested or resigned over this negligent, irresponsible action.

The venerable Drawing Center, meanwhile, is this close to lost, having wasted years considering a misguided move to Ground Zero and supposedly continuing to mull a relocation to the South Street Seaport, where it would be little more than a tourist attraction. We all need to conduct a group intervention and tell the Drawing Center, "Snap out of it! Join the fray! Either move to Chelsea or near the New Museum on the Lower East Side, or even go to Brooklyn. Whatever you do, get your act together and start being important to New York again. As it is, you're almost irrelevant!"

It's doubtful that it's bold enough for this, but maybe the Drawing Center should take over Dia's old building. If not the Drawing Center, maybe a few nonprofits could share the building. White Columns and Artist's Space on 22nd Street would change the gravity of Chelsea overnight. Whatever, it's time for all of us (me included) to stop rolling over when our institutions behave in such reprehensible, irresponsible ways. We all love the Drawing Center and Dia. But we need to let them know that we won't stick with them if they continue not sticking with us. The clock is ticking for both of these institutions to get their act together.

Postscript: This postscript is a question about the art market -- it has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Artforum, its advertising, editorial policies or content. But consider this statistic, a telling one about the U.S. art world, taken from the pages of that magazine. Ten years ago today Artforum had a total of 112 pages. This month there are almost twice that many pages of ads, alone. There's nothing wrong with advertising. I like ads. Ads are the porn of art magazines. They are the reason art magazines can afford to exist. This is NOT a call for fewer ads.

 

< Artforum ad chief Knight Landesman

But you tell me what this much advertising means and how it may be affecting everything we do. Are we liking certain things because we know that other people are liking them? How is the market affecting the ways we see art? How does it affect the way curators and editors see art? Does the market create a competitive atmosphere that drives artists to produce better work or does it foster empty product? Do art fairs make artists make better, worse, or only more art? No one knows. We don't have a way to talk about the market. There is no effective "Theory of the Market" that isn't just a rehash of Marxist ideology. There's no new philosophy to help us address the problem of the way the market is affecting the production and presentation of art, although people are trying. The good, maybe great news is that the market is unpredictable. Therefore it is a force of chaos, and chaos is always good for art. It's just not clear yet how or even if this chaos is being used.

Arts Council (UK) Puts Collection Online

via ArtInfo:

UK Art Collection Goes Online

LONDON, Dec. 22, 2006—The notoriously inconspicuous Arts Council Collection of Great Britain is finally open to the public—online. At least 7,500 works in the council’s collection are on display for all to see on its new Web site, http://www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk, The Guardian reports.

Visitors to the site can view works by more than 2,000 British artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, Paula Rego and Gillian Wearing.

For years, the Arts Council has been difficult to pin down. Formed in 1946 and funded with taxpayers' money, it has had no permanent home, only storage facilities in London and Yorkshire that were hidden far from the public's view.

The main purpose of the collection, which has been administered by the Hayward Gallery in London since 1987, was to lend art to museums in the U.K. But it will now be accessible to general audiences.

"It's a people's collection, a national collection," said Hayward director Ralph Rugoff.

The Guardian: Website opens up discreet Arts Council Collection