NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Enjoy! Subrime! Lending!

via bloggy: (Nice one Barry; there are more variations on the sticker around the 'hood -- why not treat yourself to a Disaster Egg Hunt in Soho this Easter Holiday? Submissions will be posted here...)

Enjoy Subprime Lending

I spotted this in SoHo last Saturday, stuck to the window of the old Guild & Greyshkul space.

March 16, 2009 8:26 PM | Permalink | Business | Comments (3)

John Perrault on "Look Up: The Life and Art of Sacha Kolin"

via John Perrault's Artopia:

March 22, 2009

Sacha Kolin: Lives of an Unknown Artist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sacha Kolin, Departure, 1954

What The Art World Was

This is an odd, but fascinating book. Look Up: The Life and Art of Sacha Kolin by Lisa Thaler (Midmarch Arts Press, 2008) is the tale of an artist  written not by an art historian, but by a genealogist and/or, as the author seems to prefer, a "family historian" using her professional tools ... and then some. In an afterword, Thaler discloses she was drawn to Kolin's story for three reasons:

 I was curious about the children of the so-called illustrious immigrants. Little has been written about this younger generation of refugees. I was surprised that a prolific, exhibiting artist could have so quickly fallen into obscurity. And I was challenged by the research constraints and saw potential for innovations in my field. Could I read a painting the way I read a birth certificate?

This is the story of an "almost," an also-ran, a could-have-been -- yes, a failure --who, according to many who knew her, was energetic and charming. For an art historian, art critic, or curator there would be no cash value or prestige in writing about a failed artist. We are, therefore, often denied the nitty-gritty taste of the real lives of artists -- most of whom are not superstars. Here we get the taste -- the bad taste.

If Look Up were to be made into a movie, it would show Kolin's art in 1981 being tossed into a dumpster outside an expensive Soho loft, then cut to author Thaler discovering a painting by Kolin in an art auction, falling in love with it, and finding out that she and a collector cousin now had Kolin in common.

Books about artists are either promotional tomes, often with serious and brilliant essays by noted art critics and art historians, or at the not-so-distant other end of the commercial spectrum, pop entertainments of the Lust for Life variety.

Concerning the latter, who now wants to read about the lives of artists when most are businessmen or -women? It's not entertaining to read about a visual arts CEO and his (mostly his) struggle with auction houses, dealers, and tax accountants.

But can you imagine -- even if you like his art, which I do -- a novelized life of Damien Hirst? Art has, alas, been thoroughly demythologized.

Look Up is a window into an art world that no longer exists. I don't think I ever met Sacha Kolin, and I am glad of that. But I could have met her. It's a Facebook (or as, I call it, Facebutt) Effect: we had a few "friends" in common, and many more friends of friends. Far too many friends of friends. The author and I also overlap. Although she lives in Chicago, she studied contemporary art at Hunter College with Mary Miss, a sculptor I know.

[read on...]

ISSUE Project Room: Ben Neill/Bill Jones videos

P1010641, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Watch video of an elegant performance by Neill & Jones, at an equally elegant venue. (More clips to be added...)

Dis-solution 2: Ben Neill & Bill Jones at Issue Project Room from billjones on Vimeo.

Going To X-tremes

reblogged via ArtCat:

After the Deluge at X

By S.C.Squibb | Features, News | March 20, 2009

The X Initiative, Logo digital image, 2009 via X-initiative

Last night at the X Initiative, Lindsay Pollack led a panel entitled AFTER THE DELUGE? PERSPECTIVES ON CHALLENGING TIMES IN THE ART WORLD. The topic was clearly on the minds of many, as well over three hundred people packed the second floor of the old DIA space. With early Derek Jarman cycling eerily in the background, and the oblivious, hissing steam pipes quickly bringing the room to a broil, Pollack peppered Jefferey Deitch, of the eponymous Projects, Brett Littman, ED of The Drawing Center, Michael Rush, Director of the Rose Museum and Anya Kielar, doing double duty as an artist and as a former gallerist at Guild & Greyshkul.

The combination of the heat, the disparate panel, and the who's who crowd could easily have led to an heaping serving of platitude before everyone slunk up 10th avenue to one of the myriad openings on offer. Fortunately for all, Pollack took the opportunity to remind everyone in attendance how refreshing good journalism can be, and her guests, perhaps sensing that they were among friends, were remarkably candid and open, even as Pollack hit them with multiple follow up questions.

Rush, in particular, seemed eager to damn the torpedoes early and often, taking the first opportunity to remind everyone that, worldwide protests non-withstanding, the Rose is still due to be shuttered and its collection sold to ease Brandeis's financial situation. Rush emphasized that the Rose's own finances were relatively stable, considering the challenges facing all arts organizations at present, and that the selling of the Rose remains at the center of the university president's personal plan to rescue his institution. Rush painted a vivid picture of a largely independent organization, having been built and funded almost entirely of its own initiative, led to the financial slaughter at the hands of a rapacious and unfeeling bureaucracy. He indicated his support for legislation, introduced by Richard Brodsky, that would make it illegal (in New York) for institutions to sell donated works in the manner that Brandeis is currently attempting, as well as his sympathy for the many donors whose gifts would now be sold against their wishes, saying wistfully at one point, "a lot happens on good faith, and I think those days are over."

Apropos of nothing, Brett Littman began the evening with a hurried power point presentation diagramming how the structure of the art world has changed over the past several centuries. Later, addressing the topic at hand, he would say that the Drawing Center would shift from eight shows to six, but expressed optimism that the economy would force institutions to use their collections in new ways, a sentiment seconded by Rush. Littman also made the point that during the recent madness gallerists were often more willing to "step over the line" and attempt to influence institutional decisions about what works should be shown and how. Littman seemed pleased at the thought of humbled dealers and their ilk returning to their regularly scheduled role, leaving professional decisions to the qualified.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Electric Fountain, 390 LED bulbs and 527 meters of neon tubing, 2008 via deitch.com

Deitch expressed a similar feeling but in the opposite direction, saying that he was happy to finally have an excuse to 'say no,' to some of the more expensive project proposals that came across his desk. He also spoke at length, with Pollack's prodding, about what he termed 'the confusion of aesthetic and market values,' or the belief, apparently widely held, that the most expensive art is also the best. This would change, or so he hoped, in the near future; given the shifting buying practices of the "six billionaires" who had been setting the market in recent years, one of whom recently canceled all his previous purchases for the last six months. In an implicit contrast to Littman's lusting for a chastened private sector, Deitch argued that the recent proliferation of art fairs had made curators lazy, leading them to abandon such traditional tools as the studio visit and the gallery tour. Instead, curators had simply gone "to Miami for Art Basel 'cause it's more fun," giving one the image of an army of hung-over curators sheepishly filtering back into galleries, wearing dark glasses and making fumbled apologies for 'last night.' Or in this case, the past five years.

Anya Kielar, the only woman and the only artist on the panel, was also left to cover all those galleries that are not multimillion dollar, international institutions. At her own recently closed Guild & Greyshkul, she had seen the writing on the wall when she realized she was borrowing from her artists to pay her bills and her staff. Indeed, the contrast between her own candid admission that she now relies on her MFA, which allows her to teach art in a prison, for a living and Deitch's relief at not necessarily having to fund million-and-a-half dollar projects like Electric Fountain could not have been more striking. Kielar also voiced the now familiar sentiment, echoed by the other panelists and heard throughout the art world recently, that this economy might push things to be "a lot more renegade," and that this was surely positive.

Or, as Rush put it earlier in the evening: "Two years ago we would gather like this, and all we would talk about was the money. And now the economy has crashed and all we talk about is the money. Maybe, just maybe, this can help us move beyond the money."

Closings (Soho) 2

Closings (Soho) 2, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).