NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Sharon Butler: The Many Paintings of the Whitney Biennial

"Roland Flexner expands the definition of drawing by creating intricately detailed works of ink on paper using only his breath, chance, and gravity as tools."

via Two Coats of Paint:

Friday, February 26, 2010

A 2010 Whitney Biennial biopsy

In their opening remarks on Tuesday, the 2010 Whitney Biennial curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari confessed that they approached the selection process (gasp) open-mindedly, without a preconceived theme. Fortunately, the exhibition itself faithfully reflects their intent, presenting a resonant sampling of contemporary art practice. That is not to say that the show selection is thematically unfocused or ungrounded. To the contrary, much of the work manifests a rediscovered attention to physicality in various ways: in its preoccupation with human vulnerability, in its juxtaposition of figuration and geometry, or simply in its palpable materiality. Notable examples include “H.M. 2009,” Kerry Tribe's double film projection about an epilepsy patient who lost his short-term memory in experimental brain surgery and Nina Berman’s arresting images of former Marine sergeant Ty Ziege, who was severely disfigured in a suicide bombing in Iraq; R.H. Quaytman’s series  “Distracting Distance,” which riffs on the physical act of perception; and Susan Frecon’s huge minimalist paintings, which embrace the labor intensity of making an art object that is intended to last.

Other work has a more tangential but still evident connection to the body. A case in point: the Bruce High Quality Foundation’s projection of a sardonic video on American history onto the windshield of an old hearse. The overarching emphasis on the body, combined with provocative content, signals an optimistic new direction that reframes two enduringly important aspects of contemporary art: the senses and the visual, as opposed to merely the cerebral; and collective optimism, as distinct from unbounded egos.

Unlike the last Biennial, which offered very few canvases, 2010 features paintings around every corner. In line with the broader theme of physicality, the inclusion of so much painting signals the importance of sustained physical engagement and a renewed interest in the lifespan of the art object. Here are images from each of the eighteen painters included in 2010--an impressive, thoughtfully curated  exhibition.

[continue...]

The Brooklyn Museum Commons: Trees (etc) Grow There

via that dreaded rag HuffPo (still good for some things):

The Brooklyn Museum's Copyright Project

by Jonathan Melber

When it comes to progressive, public-friendly copyright policies, few art museums can match The Brooklyn Museum. In 2004, it was the first art museum to adopt a Creative Commons license, allowing any non-commercial copying of any image in which the museum holds the copyright. In 2008, it was the third institution to join the Flickr Commons, making available high-resolution images of Public Domain artworks from its collection. Last week, the musuem published the detailed copyright status of every image in its online collection--that's over 12,000 artworks--and made this information available through its API so that anyone can easily cross-reference the data with their own copyright research. It also switched to a less restrictive Creative Commons license, allowing non-commercial remixing as well.

The museum deserves credit just for the effort required to determine the copyright status of 12,000 works--a complicated, painstaking process that took Chief of Technology Shelley Bernstein, Head of Digital Collections and Services Deborah Wythe and a team of interns over two years to complete. "Identifying what is actually under copyright was one of the most challenging parts of the project," said Wythe, who, for artworks that were under copyright, contacted every artist (or artist's heir) she and her team could locate to get permission to display full-size, high-resolution images of their work on the museum's site. Images that were no longer under copyright were listed as "no known copyright." (Example.)

More impressive than the amount of labor that went into the project is the fact that the Brooklyn Museum was willing to go down this road in the first place. It is easier and safer, from a liability perspective, to only display thumbnails of artworks and to put the onus of clearing copyrights in specific images on members of the public who seek to use them. But it is more consistent with a non-profit cultural institution's public mission to make its collection as accessible as possible, as transparently as possible.

"Participating in Flickr Commons, following the Public Domain conversations on Wikimedia, and generally being in touch with the huge community of people who want images made us realize that we could be better community members by being as honest and open as we can be about what we know about our images," said Wythe.

Likewise, despite the common (though questionable) view that it's more lucrative for museums to assert as much control over their "intellectual property" as copyright law allows, the Brooklyn Museum apparently understands that its mission is more effectively fulfilled, and the public better served, when the museum allows its collection to be reproduced, remixed and disseminated in as many (non-commercial) ways as possible.

"I've come to realize that there has to be a lot of give and take with a project like this," said Bernstein. "Copyright is complicated, so we have to figure out a way to do as much as we can and clarify as much as we can to the visitors of our website, while still erring on the side of caution. While that's not ideal and we'd love things to be much simpler and clear-cut, we hope it's a start and a step in the right direction."

It's also a step ahead of most.

Islip Art Museum to Enter Partnership with Dowling College

In response to the outcry some months back, Islip Town has arrived at some kind of plan to keep the Islip Art Museum open:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: supervisorsoffice <supervisorsoffice@townofislip-ny.gov>
Date: Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:54 AM
Subject: Islip Art Museum
To:

Dear Islip Art Museum Patron:
 
First of all, let me assure you – the Islip Town Art Museum is not closing.  As a lifelong Islip resident and art patron, I recognize that our museum is invaluable to artists in the Tri-State area and around the world, and that because of this, the museum greatly contributes to our local economy and enhances our local culture.  We will not lose this gem on my watch and you can count on that. 

That said, the national economic climate has forced us to make many difficult decisions.  But, fortunately, it has also allowed us to think outside of the box when it comes to funding options and how to stretch the dollars we have.  Right now, the Town is working on finalizing an agreement with Dowling College’s Art Department which would enable the College to assume operations of the museum. This scenario is a great fit because under the direction of the College’s Art Department, the museum will have a great network of artists to draw from as well as better funding options.  Finally, this move will save taxpayers money – which is my top priority as Supervisor of the Town of Islip.

I look forward to many more years of exhibitions, articles and art world chatter.
 
Regards,
 
Phil Nolan
Supervisor, Islip Town

Of Doritos, Sausages, Replicas and Parrots

via Artopia, John Perrault's art diary (Jan 3, 2010):

Fakes: Have Replicas Replaced Art?

The Doritos Syndrome 
 
If it has never occurred to you how fragile works of art are, start worrying now. Temperature, humidity, and people looking at them can make them age, wrinkle, fall apart. And we can blame artists, too. They persist in playing with time-bound products like fluorescent lights and various video formats; they even distribute and store their art electronically on YouTube. Are YouTube and Picasa eternal? Is The Cloud, located in server forests somewhere in Switzerland or China, invulnerable to time and fortune?
 
Writers, you are not secure either. The New York State Archives recommends that electronic texts have paper backups and that electronic files be copied every three to five years, even to the point of "migrating" them to a new system.
 
But art has been asking for trouble for a long time. Artists of the last century indulged in unstable materials. Naum Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner enjoyed making sculpture out of cellulose nitrate back in the USSR. So much like glass, but lighter, unbreakable and easier to handle; so new.
 
At a 2007 conservation workshop at London's Tate, there were "collective gasps" when an original Pevsner, now looking like a "plate of Doritos," was shown next to an image of a recently constructed replica of what it had looked like in its glory day.
 
Cellulose nitrate is bad enough; think of fat and felt; of earth, blood, semen, garbage. Hot dogs.

Carol Mancuso-Ungaro (associate director for conservation and research at the Whitney Museum) in Conservation Perspectives, the Newsletter of the Getty Conservation Institute, reports the following anecdote offered by her British colleague Herbert Lank:

An auction house had received for sale a construction by Beuys of a German U-shaped knackwurst suspended from a rod by shoelaces. Unfortunately the Dutch owners had taken it off the wall overnight before packing. On returning in the morning to do so, they found that a large chunk had been bitten out of the base: their parrot was lying dead on the floor.

Joseph Beuys, when asked about what to do, replied that a new sausage would not be a solution because the original was by then 10 years old, and that the "patina" was an essential element of the work.

"Lank," reports Mancuso-Ungaro, " meticulously restored the missing part.

[read full article...]

Whitney Biennial 2010: News + Views

Whitney Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

via Lindsay Pollack - art market views:

Whitney Releases 2010 Biennial Picks

Curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari have announced the list of  artists for the 2010 Whitney Biennial.  The 75th edition runs Feb. 25-May 30. Eleven of the 55 artists have appeared in previous biennials. (Watch a video of the curators reading the list of artists here).

THE LIST

via NYMag's VULTURE:

Saltz on Art’s Triumph: Women Win Slim Majority in Next Whitney Biennial

12/11/09 at 2:28 PM

An art-world wall has fallen. The list of the 55 artists to be included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial was made public this morning, and 52 percent of those artists are women. Depending on where you stand, hell has frozen over, or there’s a fissure in the force. (The 2000 Biennial was made up of 36 percent women; in 2008, it was 40 percent.) When I asked curator Francesco Bonami about the unusually high percentage of women artists in his show, he said that he and associate curator, Gary Carrion-Murayari, “didn’t look for women artists. They were just in front of our eyes. It wasn’t conscious at all.” He added that it was “misleading” to think about the upcoming Biennial “in these terms.”

Perhaps. Still, the show will include excellent, newer, below-the-radar artists like performance chaos-creator Aki Sasamoto; Jessica Jackson Hutchins, whose arrangements of objects and ceramics create contradictory cosmic and formal storms; Kate Gilmore, who has been known to smash through Sheetrock walls while wearing party dresses and high heels; and Sharon Hayes, whose 2008 performance of her reading an imaginary letter about love and war on a midtown corner at lunch hour was one of the most moving things I saw that year. Also on hand will be powerful under-knowns Babette Mangolte, Dawn Clements, Suzan Frecon, and Lorraine O’Grady, who has invaded art openings dressed in various guises, addressing issues of race and class.

The inclusion of all the women artists in this cattle call does not mean that the upcoming Biennial will be much better or worse than usual. Art exhibitions should never be about quotas. Still, in all likelihood, Bonami’s 2010 Biennial will prove once and for all that women artists are no better and no worse than their male counterparts. Once this is acknowledged, we’ll be able to get on with the business-as-usual of tearing the Whitney Biennial to shreds. Or not.

via Two Coats of paint:

Thursday, December 10, 2009

18 painters selected for 2010 Whitney Biennial

According to Carol Vogel in the NY Times, the 2010 edition of the Whitney Biennial will not only try to chronicle current goings-on in contemporary art, but it will also reflect the world at large. "In these recessionary times, the show will be smaller than it has been in recent years, with just 55 artists, down from 81 in 2008 and 100 in 2006. It will also be contained in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s home, the Marcel Breuer building, rather than spilling over into a second location, as the 2008 Biennial did when it occupied much of the Park Avenue Armory or into Central Park as other Biennials have.

"Next year’s event, which runs from Feb. 25 through May 30, is being organized by Francesco Bonami, 54, the Italian-born curator who helped put together the Rudolph Stingel retrospective at the Whitney in 2007, and Gary Carrion-Murayari, 29, a senior curatorial assistant at the museum who helped with the Biennials in 2004 and 2006."

The eighteen painters include: [LINK]

Cherry Picker at the Whitney from joy garnett on Vimeo.

Cherry Picker at the Whitney, cont'd from joy garnett on Vimeo.