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Found Art (Chelsea): Unmonumental 207

Found Art (Chelsea): Unmonumental 207, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Gerhard Richter, Interviewed

via ArtInfo, excerpt from a recent interview with Gerhard Richter:

Gerhard Richter

By Sarah Douglas

Published: November 11, 2009

[...]

Sarah Douglas: Do you see much contemporary art these days?

Gerhard Richter: You get so many magazines and invitations and catalogues, it’s too much! It’s a strange development that there is so much art.

SD: It’s probably because of the market.

GR: The market, and people want to be entertained. So I do see a lot, but I don’t really go out to the galleries.

SD: Do you think this is a good time for painting?

GR: It’s not. It’s been almost the end of the culture of painting for a hundred years. We have photography, film, installation… You know, I’m the only painter at this gallery. I didn’t realize this until now. All the others are conceptual, and I was struck by this: I thought, it cannot be.

SD: You’ve seen work by some of the gallery’s other artists?

GR: Last thing I saw was the film by Steve McQueen, Hunger. It was very hard. I liked it. I was happy to see something made that wasn’t just cheap entertainment.

SD: As a German artist, what did you think of the decision to have British artist Liam Gillick in Germany’s pavilion in the Venice Biennale this year?

GR: I haven’t seen it, but I think it’s awful. So politically correct. It makes no sense at all. Stupid.

SD: Why did you decide to make a print based on the September painting?

GR: I do this sometimes. Initially it comes from wanting to have something for me; I take a photograph of a painting just to have it. Then it becomes interesting how different it is from the original. It’s not only a reproduction. It’s different from the painting and has its own qualities.

SD: I understand the incidents of September 11, 2001, coincided with an exhibition of yours at this gallery.

GR: Yes. So this has sentimental value, because I had an opening here on September 13, 2001. And I couldn’t be here. And here on this wall, where the print now hangs, there were gray paintings, and they looked like photographs of the dust from the towers. And people told me these paintings look like they have so much to do with what happened.

SD: Which was, of course, accidental.

GR: Yes. And so for sentimental reasons, this print is here in honor. Dedicated to that time.

[read full interview]

'Radicalizing Refamiliarization' in Journal of Visual Culture (8:2)

Stones, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive). (2003) 60 x 78 inches. Oil on canvas.

Dear Readers,

I am pleased to offer you my recent article, "Radical Refamiliarization," co-authored with John Armitage (University of Northumbria) for The Journal of Visual Culture (Volume 8, number 2, August 2009). The issue is out at last. It is a Special Issue in which a number of scholars, educators, curators, activists and artists respond to a questionnaire on Barack Obama and visual mediation. Several of the articles (including ours) engage the interesting developments surrounding Shepard Fairey's Obama posters.

Click the link to download our article; see also the full Table of Contents on SAGE:

Radicalizing Refamiliarization, [PDF] Journal of Visual Culture 8:2 (Fall 2009).

contributors:
Editorial, Marquard Smith; W.J.T. Mitchell; Shaun Michelle Smith; Dora Apel; Raimi Gbadamosi; Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan; Toby Miller; Jacqueline Bobo; Julian Myers, Dominic Willsdon and Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough; Lauren Berlant; Marita Sturken; Lisa Cartwright and Stephen Mandiberg; John Armitage and Joy Garnett; Victor Margolin; Joanna Zylinska; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; Anna Everett; Julian Stallabrass; Ellis Cashmore; John Carlos Rowe; Robert Harvey; Curtis Marez; Cynthia A. Young; Nicholas Mirzoeff.

"L'Affaire Joannou": Art Critics Get Down!

Sharon Butler reports, while offering a thorough linky roundup of what Artnet has branded "L'Affaire Joannou".

 

via Two Coats of Paint, Tuesday, November 17, 2009:

Critic on critic: Jerry Saltz tells DC blogger to get a grip

In a Vulture post about the New Museum's questionable curatorial practices, Saltz assesses the quality of the vociferous debate and courageously suggests that prickly blogger Tyler Green's criticism has crossed the line. "One of the main things that suggested all this indignation had gone too far was the witch-hunt tone of an editorial in the November issue of  Art Newspaper. The language in the piece — written by art blogger Tyler Green and published at the end of last week — was scolding, scornful, condescending, and smug, tinged with a verbal violence that was a little scary. The editorial begins with the false charge that private collector exhibitions are 'fluff shows.' Green sniffs that he’s 'especially disappointed' in the New Museum, and finishes by beseeching all museums to 'cancel' exhibitions of private collections. He demands that the Association of Art Museum Directors “ban” these shows because they are 'an insult' to the art world. When I hear a word like 'ban,' I reach for my dictionary and review the definition of the word democracy.

"This kind of apparatchik rule-making feels off to me. Green has gotten into the habit of demanding that people be fired, reprimanded, or punished, as if only he knows right from wrong. He played a role in getting Grace Glueck fired from the Times for her 'conflict of interest.' After Village Voice art critic Christian Viveros-Faune talked about his dual roles as a critic and an employee of an art fair, Green accused him of indulging 'a textbook case of unethical conflict-of-interest' that struck 'at the very heart of ... integrity' and 'flouted journalistic norms.' Green sneered that he was 'troubled' by this behavior and publicly asked the Voice to 'stop publishing' Viveros-Faune. Guess what? That’s exactly what happened. The Voice and the art world lost a tremendous voice....

"I know it’s dangerous to take on bloggers. They can go after you every day, all day long, and anonymous people can chime in, too. Already this week Green has branded me an 'up-with-art cheerleader,' chortled 'balderdash' at something I wrote, and is now even writing comments on my Facebook page and publishing other of my Facebook comments on his public blog. Still, come what may, I’m tired of the hate fest."

In a conciliatory response, Green writes in the Comments thread (and on Saltz's Facebook wall): "I'm proud of the positions I've taken on a range of issues. It is true that I've taken assertive, principled positions on a range of issues. I'd be happy to engage in a dialogue on any of those positions. ...I don't hate you."

Update: On Jerry's Facebook page, Green says the debate isn't about him, it's about the New Museum. Nice guy Ed Winkleman has called for a public debate between Saltz and Green.

Related Links (via Art Observed):
Controversy over New Museum’s plans to show trustee’s collection [The Art Newspaper]
Turning a museum into a vanity space [Tyler Green for The Art Newspaper]
The New Museum responds [The Art Newspaper]
The NuMu ethics story hits the NYT’s front page [Modern Art Notes]
The Met’s director: We’re closer to NuMu than to MoMA [Modern Art Notes]
Saltz: Money, Insularity, and a Huge Controversy for the New Museum [New York Magazine]
Art Morality [New York Magazine]
Some Object as Museum Shows Its Trustee’s Art [NY Times]
The New Museum’s Web of Connections [NY Times]
Museum Directors on Collectors and Exhibitions [NY Times]
The New Museum’s Position on Its Show From a Trustee’s Collection
The Appendix: New Museum Scandal Edition [Artinfo]
NuMu Boo Boo [Time]
New Museum Brouhaha Goes Supernova [Artnet]
New Museum commits suicide with banality [James Wagner]
The November Brooklyn Rail Cover [William Powhida]
New Museum Controversy Grows with its Announced Plans to Show Trustee’s Art [Art Fag City]
Jeff Koons and The Perils of an Unregulated Art World [Art Fag City]
The New York Museum Director Witch Hunt Begins [Art Fag City]
The Authority of the New Museum [Art Market Monitor]

Upping the Socially Networked Museum: Whitney.org Redesign

"To the museum’s credit, the sensibility of openness that leads to the collection concept works on both sides of the site database – content is added and edited using a distributed, wiki-style content management system (CMS) unique to Linked by Air, the design firm responsible for the new Whitney site. [...That ] part of the goal of the new site [... is to allow] a broad range of museum employees to contribute directly to it assures currency, accuracy – and staff ownership."

Philip Bump offers some insight and analysis.

via MEDIAite:

The Whitney’s Re-Design: Web Done (Nearly) Right

by Philip Bump | 10:27 am, November 12th, 2009

» 1 comment

I don’t envy those who have to redesign the website for a museum – balancing institutional structure and needs with the requirement that it reflect the appropriate aesthetic. Moreover, the process of transitioning a sensibility to the web in itself requires decisions about what the organization represents – a staid, classical collection would justifiably be nervous about embracing an open engagement of the general public.

The Metropolitan Museum, for example, probably won’t be holding a contest on YouTube any time soon. Its website, which looks like it was created by a medium sized corporation in 2002, is staid, muted, and tucked behind a splash screen. The Museum of Modern Art’s website, by contrast, is, well, modern, with a palette and structure that would bore Mies van der Rohe. It’s the Obama of websites – so cool, it’s dull.

Late last night, the Whitney Museum of American Art, known for its modern and contemporary exhibitions and its Biennial, unveiled the latest example from this world. It’s a great improvement over what was there yesterday, though that’s a low hurdle to conquer. Yesterday, the site was a card catalog. Today, it’s a website.

What establishes the Whitney’s new site as a success is not the aesthetic revamping with which, frankly, I’m not impressed. Various elements are laid in a casual grid, anchored by the logo, nice and big, at the top. The navigation is awkward, with elements jumping to the head of the line to show additional options once clicked. The background is either black or white, in order to accommodate a conceptually interesting feature in which it changes when the sun in New York rises or sets. (That would be at 4:41 this afternoon or 6:40 tomorrow morning for those wanting to witness it.) As I said – conceptually interesting. In practice, though, it tends to make the site feel a bit flat, and perusing the collection is negatively impacted by the black background. (White borders would do wonders.)

That’s particularly a shame, because said perusal and its accompanying tools are the real hook to the site. The collection itself is easy to navigate and well indexed. Every page, one notices, has at the bottom a small dot which, when clicked, adds an item to your “custom collection” (assuming you take advantage of the free registration, which you ought to do). This is not unique – the afore-mentioned MoMA site has a similar function – but the Whitney takes it further. When, above, I said every page, I meant every page. In addition to works of art, you can add artists, site elements, upcoming exhibits, even the contact page. Collections are an opportunity to interact with more than the art – you can in essence create your own museum website.

[read full article]