NEWSgrist - where spin is art

John Perreault Reads Whitney Biennial Tea Leaves

via Artopia, (John Perreault's excellent blog), March 11, 2008:

The Whitney Biennial: Good News {excerpts}

Fritz Haeg: Animal Estates (detail)

Quantifications

Don't believe everything you read; the Whitney Biennial isn't all bad. In fact, as a crystal ball, it is cause for hope. But before we start reading tea leaves, we can indulge in quantifications.

Some of us tally women. There are 28 out of 81 artists by my count. On the other hand, some search out artists of color. Some list painters. And there are legions who quantify regions: 29 from the West Coast. In regard to regions, do artists who have moved upstate to either bank of the Hudson -- the new Hamptons -- count as New Yorkers anymore?

And how many curators? Alas, this Biennial gives me the feeling of too many cooks. Only a committee could include photo-realist painter Robert Bechtle, photo-conceptualist Louis Lawler and abstract painter Mary Heilmann. There are too many lookalikes and almosts. Could this be because Henriette Huldisch and Shamim Momin, the curators of record (both Whitney staffers), were "overseen" by chief curator Donna De Salvo and advised by Thelma Golden, Bill Horrigan and Linda Norden? Or perhaps this mix of voices is responsible for whatever success is in place.

But it's the dealers who really count, right? Which is why I like "Who Won the Whitney Biennial?" by Alexandra Peers on Conde Nast's portfolio.com, although I hope she is being satirical.

In olden days, as soon as picked by the Whitney curators, an unaffiliated artist was immediately corralled in time for that all-important free ad: "Courtesy of Gallery X" on the wall label. In most cases, however, the curators had already let the dealers do the walking. How else can you find the up-and-coming? An open call? Or maybe visit the art schools, as some art dealers now do?

Which dealers have three or more artists in the Biennial? Elizabeth Dee is one. Suzanne Vielmetter of Culver City and Berlin has five. And according to Peers, the losers are: Barbara Gladstone and David Zwirner, neither of whom had a single artist. She was wrong about Jeffrey Deitch: Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black is offered courtesy of Deitch, or so reads the Armory handout.

But there is more news....

[...]

Is This the End of Art for Dummies?

We may be getting only Beuys-Lite, Acconci-Lite, and Haacke-Lite, but art is back on track. The '80s hijacking of art by bombastic egotism and Picabia parodies suddenly seems an ancient, commercial diversion.

If the current reorientation of art has not yet produced major results, this is possibly because art criticism is not fully tracking, evaluating, or rewarding this return to art values, as opposed to market values. The collectors are out of control and sometimes function as art dealers themselves, with a big, quick, high-profit turnover -- aided by the auctions. The auction houses are still seen as trendsetters and the true measure of artistic success. The auction houses and art fairs make traditional art dealers seem like guardian angels.

Nevertheless, if the Biennial is a true measure of what's happening now and what is ahead, we are finally emerging from the swamp of dumb painting and the stupid, counterproductive commercialization of art. I'd like to think it is merely a case of higher values winning out, the perennial need for meaning, and talent, talent, talent. But because nothing is ever as simple or clear-cut as we might like it to be, I suspect it has to do with selling, too. [...]

 

Wafaa Bilal Update

For full story see previous post:
Wafaa Bilal's Thought-Provoking Exhibition Censored @ RPI

3/13/08: Anaba reports :

Wafaa Bilal, re-opened at The Sanctuary for Independent Media, has now ALSO been shut down. This is the place that was going to show the Wafaa Bilal piece after it was canceled by RPI. Wow.
[more...]

see also:
Game Politics 
ArtFagCity
We Make Money Not Art
Artcal Zine

Gerry "Limbaugh" Ferraro: Casual Racism Unleashed (Again)

UPDATE 3/13/08: Here's the video and transcript of Olbermann's special comment.

via Huffington Post:

Keith Olbermann To Do "Special Comment" About Hillary Clinton Tonight — First Time Targeting A Democrat

Rachel Sklar,March 12, 2008 07:43 AM
                                                                 
On last night's "Countdown," Keith Olbermann announced that tonight he'd be delivering another of his "Special Comments" — his impassioned, angry monologues fueled by outrage and usually addressed to President Bush and the Bush administration. Tonight, his special comment will be directed at Hillary Clinton — and, for the first time, his special comment will be directed exclusively at a Democrat.

Olbermann's special comments began on August 30, 2006 — in the ratings wilderness of late summer, pre-Labor Day limbo — in a fit of righteous anger at Donald Rumsfeld after he compared Iraq War critics to Nazi appeasers. Thanks to viral vid, the YouTube of the moment lived beyond the under-the-radar broadcast and flew through cyberspace, igniting righteous anger against the administration across cyberspace and racking up 100,000 views in a month. Now Olbermann's special comments regularly rack up views on YouTube in the hundreds of thousands, but remember, this was Sept. 2006 — the midterm elections were still two months away, the year anniversary of Katrina had just passed and the region that Bush had vowed to restore was barely improved, and new MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams had just started two months ago, and 100,000 views was a number MSNBC would definitely have been paying attention to. There was plenty of outrage to go around, and Olbermann had hit a nerve — and found an outlet — so off he went with four more special comments in September, three in October, four in November and on and on as the ratings climbed and climbed.

Always the target was the Bush administration in some form — usually the President ("Have you no decency, sir?" "I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war" "You're a fascist...What else is this but fascism?") though occasionally someone else in the GOP would get it for the latest nefarious move (see: Tom DeLay, Condi). In April 2007 the first presidential candidate was implicated: Rudy Giuliani, drawing Olbermann's ire for fearmongering about 9/11. The last special comment was last month about the FISA walkout; but tonight, for the first time and in the heart of the presidential campaign, it will be about Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and how Olbermann feels about exactly what cards she's been playing (hint: It has something to do with her not firing Geraldine Ferraro for her controversial  statement saying that Barack Obama wouldn't have been as successful if he weren't black. Last night Olbermann called Ferraro's statement "clearly racist" and likening the Clinton campaign to South Africa under apartheid for not rejecting it and firing her. Okay, that's more than a hint.)

It's a significant moment, because it marks the first time a full-throated special comment will have been directed exclusively at a Democrat. Not just the Democrats, whom Olbermann accused along with the Republicans last May for failing to do anything to get the country out of Iraq, but one particular Democrat — a Democrat whom, incidentally, he did a special comment defending in July after the Defense Dept. sent her a letter accusing her of facilitating anti-U.S. propaganda by demanding to know whether the administration had conceived of an exit strategy from Iraq. He also defended her husband, Bill Clinton, in Sept. 2006 after his controversial interview with FNC's Chris Wallace. I wouldn't expect either of them to get much defending this time around — though something tells me this one will get a lot more than 100,000 views.

From Last Night's Show:
Olbermann: Ferraro Statement 'Clearly Racist: Are We in South Africa?' [Newsbusters]

Birth of...Clinton's 3am Ad: Not "Casual Racism"

via NYTimes, OPINION:

The Red Phone in Black and White

• comments (723)

By ORLANDO PATTERSON

Published: March 11, 2008

ON first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent “It’s 3 a.m.” advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.

I am not referring to the fact that the ad is unoriginal; as several others have noted, it mimics a similar ad made for Walter Mondale in his 1984 campaign for the Democratic nomination. What bothers me is the difference between this and the Mondale ad. The Mondale ad directly and unequivocally played on the issue of experience. The danger was that the red telephone might be answered by someone who was “unsure, unsteady, untested.” Why do I believe this? Because the phone and Mr. Mondale are the only images in the ad. Fair game in the normal politics of fear.

Not so this Clinton ad. To be sure, it states that something is “happening in the world” — although it never says what this is — and that Mrs. Clinton is better able to handle such danger because of her experience with foreign leaders. But every ad-maker, like every social linguist, knows that words are often the least important aspect of a message and are easily muted by powerful images.

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.

Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.

Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs. Clinton.

For more than a century, American politicians have played on racial fears to divide the electorate and mobilize xenophobic parties. Blacks have been the “domestic enemy,” the eternal outsider within, who could always inspire unity among “we whites.” Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was built on this premise, using coded language — “law and order,” “silent majority” — to destroy the alliance between blacks and white labor that had been the foundation of the Democratic Party, and to bring about the Republican ascendancy of the past several decades. The Willie Horton ad that George H. W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 was a crude manifestation of this strategy — as was the racist attack used against John McCain’s daughter, who was adopted from Bangladesh, in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000.

It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to 56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too, that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been a Muslim.

It is possible that what I saw in the ad is different from what Mrs. Clinton and her operatives saw and intended. But as I watched it again and again I could not help but think of the sorry pass to which we may have come — that someone could be trading on the darkened memories of a twisted past that Mr. Obama has struggled to transcend.

Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”

3/18 Public Hearing for Proposed Landmark Designation of St. Michael's Church

via email: (thanks Eve!)

From: LANDMARK WEST!
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 6:24 PM
To: LANDMARK WEST!
Subject: 3/18 Public Hearing for Proposed Landmark Designation of St. Michael's Church
Importance: High

An Important Opportunity to be Heard on the Importance of Preserving Historic Houses of Worship

On Tuesday, March 18 (exact time tba), the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC, located at 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor, adjacent to City Hall) will hold a public hearing to consider the proposed designation of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Parish House and Rectory [LPC's significance statement pasted below] (click here for photos) on Amsterdam Avenue and 99th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side.  While we're elated that this spectacular church may finally receive the recognition and protection it deserves (it was heard but not designated in 1980 - 28 years ago! - and has long been on LANDMARK WEST's landmark designation wish list), we are mindful of the many, many other historic houses of worship throughout New York City that also deserve to be heard. And fast.

Please make a point of attending next Tuesday's public hearing to show your support for landmarking St. Michael's AND for the prompt calendaring of other worthy (and all-too-often imminently imperiled) religious structures in YOUR neighborhood.  The list goes on...and on.  It isn't often that this kind of opportunity comes along.  If we don't make the most of this chance to be heard by the LPC, it will soon be too late to save some of these remarkable places that have for so long served as architectural and spiritual centers for our communities.  In the meantime, please write/call/email LPC Chair Robert B.
Tierney and NYC Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito (contact information below).  Please send copies of your communications to your local city council member (for contact information, click here) and LANDMARK WEST!  (landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org)

Hon. Robert B. Tierney, Chair
NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1 Centre Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY  10007
comments@lpc.nyc.gov
Phone:  212-669-7888
Fax: 212-669-7955

Hon. Melissa Mark Viverito
NYC Council Member (for the district in which St. Michael's is located)
105 E. 116th Street
New York, NY 10029
viverito@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone:  212-828-9800
Fax:  212-722-6378

_________________________

ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, PARISH HOUSE AND RECTORY, 201-255 West 99th
Street aka 800-812 Amsterdam Avenue and 227 West 99th Street, Manhattan

St. Michael's Church, Parish House and Rectory form one of the finest
ecclesiastical complexes in Manhattan. The church building of 1890-91 was
designed by Robert W. Gibson. Gibson was a major figure on the New York
architectural scene during the late 19th century and was proficient at designing buildings in a great number of stylistic variants. He is best known for the West End Collegiate Church and School designed in the neo-Flemish style.

The St. Michael's complex is Romanesque Revival in style, but the Romanesque forms are used in an unusual manner and are combined with a variety of other stylistic motifs to create a singularly eclectic composition. All three buildings are constructed of rockfaced limestone blocks laid in a random pattern and all are strikingly monochromatic. The most powerful feature of the church is the massing of the various liturgical elements - the long nave, apsidal chancel, unevenly-sized transepts, cloistered arcade, tall clerestory, steeply-pitched tiled roof, and most notable, the tall corner clock tower. The square tower, located at the corner of the building, nestled between the apse and the east transept, is based on Italian, Early Christian precedents. Topped by two tiers of open arcades and a pyramidal roof, it is visible for many blocks.

The parish house of 1896-97 on West 99th Street is a picturesque, asymmetrically-massed structure set back from the street behind a garden. The building, designed by F. Charles Merry, is Romanesque Revival in form, with rock-faced stone facing, round-arched openings, and stone transom bars. The boldness of the Romanesque Revival forms is tempered by the asymmetrical massing reminiscent of a mid-19th-century picturesque villa and by the Palladian window motif in the gabled projection.

The rectory of 1912-13 is located to the west of the parish house and is built out to the lot line, serving to enclose the garden on the third side. Although more austere than the other buildings of the complex, it is designed by Robert W. Gibson in a similar manner and is an integral part of the complex.

The church is well known for its series of Tiffany windows and for its acoustics. A new organ was installed in 1967 and is used for recitals. All three buildings are remarkably intact and are in an excellent state of repair.

The Landmarks Commission previously held two public hearings on the St. Michael complex in 1980.