NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Accidental Snowmen

L: David Humphrey's "Snowman in Love" at Triple Candie, installation view

R: "Frosty for All Seasons" A piece of ephemera from out of the blue, Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, PA.; approx. 4 x 2 x 2 feet, molded plastic. Courtesy of Barbara Hughes & Andrea Dailey. Photograph by Joy Episalla

Can't help but wonder what's with the snowmen everywhere... is there some cosmic connection??

via artnet, 3/29/06:
SNOWMAN IN HARLEM

by Chris Bors

David Humphrey, "Snowman in Love," Feb. 26-Apr. 2, 2006, at Triple Candie, 461 West 126th Street, New York, N.Y. 10027  

Last month, the New York-based artist David Humphrey (b. 1955) activated the space of the non-profit Triple Candie contemporary art center in Harlem with a holiday-themed installation titled "Snowman in Love." More than 20 large, commercially manufactured inflatable snowmen were placed throughout the gallery and hung from the ceiling upside-down like giant stalactites, creating a winter wonderland of uncertain origins. The translucent nylon sculptures were lit from within, giving off a yellow glow, and adorned with hand-painted cartoon eyes, splatters of paint and such haute couture as a t-shirt featuring a graphic from the classic Milton Bradley game Operation.

Seven snowmen were arranged against one wall, stacked on their sides all the way to the ceiling in a no-strings-attached love sandwich that seemed a perfect remedy for the blustery chill outside for most of the month. On a wooden billboard-like wall was a painting featuring a horny mare humping a snowman, adding to the exhibition’s randy ice-carnival flavor. Placed prone behind the billboard was a lone snowman with a rosy glow of red paint emanating from his hind end, while mysterious red droppings were strategically placed nearby. Despite their suggestiveness they were, in fact, holly berries cut from the snowmen Humphrey couldn't resist recycling.

Smaller acrylic paintings on canvas hung directly on the brick walls. In one, a group of differently hued snowmen cluster together, as if to signify a rainbow coalition, possibly a nod to the gallery’s Harlem location. Rap star Young Jeezy makes an appearance in another work, his arm thrown around a snow woman. The Def Jam recording artist gained a certain amount of notoriety recently from his own use of the snowman motif, in which a frowning Frosty symbolizes the ghetto cocaine dealer. This image makes an appearance in two of Humphrey’s paintings. By citing hip-hop references, another level is added to the work, bringing an urban flavor to what is definitely a suburban emblem.

Though derivative of commodity-based sculpture of 20 years ago, notably works by Jeff Koons and Haim Steinbach, Humphrey's installation has an energy all its own, and its own peculiar racial address. The snowman is a folkish figure -- no corporate "Pop Culture" ownership issues here -- that Humphrey activates as a gender-free, omni-racial character engaged in a 21st-century "l’amour fou."

With his surreal presentation of American sentimentality, Humphrey asks, "Can we all get along?" His snowmen answer with a yes so resounding that it might even require a cold shower afterwards.

CHRIS BORS is an artist based in New York.

Islamic Art @ MoMA, Boundaries and All

Shirin Neshat/Getty Images

Tyler Green covers all bases (via Modern Art Notes, 3/29/06):

"[...] For the New York Observer, I wrote a critic's notebook-style piece about Without Boundary: 17 Ways of Seeing at MoMA. In the piece artists Shirin Neshat (above) and Emily Jacir, who are both included in the show, speak out against the show's striking lack of political content, and I contextualize the show within MoMA's decades of involvement in geo-politics. I think the comments of the artists are particularly bold
[...]
Ms. Neshat is right: Many of the artists in the show have addressed the exilic condition and geopolitics in their art, but you wouldn't know that from Without Boundary. There's not a single reference in the show to the United States being at war in two Muslim countries, to its running intelligence operations in others, to its "war" against an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization, or to how the civil liberties of many Muslims have been affected by the governmental response to 9/11. Without Boundary often seems more a product of RISD than Ramallah."

via NYObserver:
MoMA Keeps the Walls Clean; Islamic Show Sans Politics

[...] Much of the work in the show, such as Shahzia Sikander's painted and drawn manuscript-style works, or Rachid Koraïchi's silk tapestry, update traditional Islamic media. Mona Hatoum and Shirana Shahbazi present takes on the traditional prayer mat, as does Mr. [Mike] Kelley. What relation Mr. Kelley has to the other artists on view is unclear, except that his piece pokes traditional Islamic art in the arabesque. Artists such as Emily Jacir, Ms. Hatoum and Ms. Neshat, who are best known for aestheticizing complicated sociopolitical situations, are represented by less sensitive work.

 

"Given the conservative nature of the United States and the restrictive policies in American institutions, there is not the freedom to directly address certain sociopolitical situations like Iraq and Afghanistan," Ms. Jacir said.

Shahzia Sikander combines elements from Hindu mythology, Persian tales, and personal experience in paintings such as Pleasure Pillars, 2001.
COLLECTION AMITA AND PURNENDU CHATTERJEE
[image source]

That artists included in a show at the Museum of Modern Art would speak out against that show is highly unusual. MoMA is the most powerful art museum in the world, and the pressure from gallerists and collectors to not criticize the museum is intense. Outspokenness can hurt relationships that could lead to important sales or inclusion in exhibitions. For Ms. Neshat and Ms. Jacir to be willing to speak out is an indication of the complicated politics involved in this kind of show—and of how the show's apolitical nature has frustrated its artists.

 

MoMA has ensured that its presentation elides global affairs. Museum director Glenn Lowry even wrote an essay for the magazine ARTnews about the exhibit, an uncommon step for a museum director to take. "The tension between old and new, past and present," he wrote, "is still being played out today as artists from the Islamic world confront the challenge of making contemporary art for an international audience grounded in European values and ideas."

[...]
The show's introductory wall text also steers viewers away from thinking about geopolitics: "This exhibition addresses the application of the unexamined rubric 'Islamic' to contemporary artists," wrote curator Fereshteh Daftari. (Ms. Daftari was unavailable for an interview, according to MoMA, as was Mr. Lowry.) "In the complex expressions that draw inspiration from different traditions and defy simplistic categorizations, these artists belie the mentality of division and the binary oppositions of present-day politics."

 

In other words: There are no politics here. Come look at the pretty things that are all, somehow, 'Islamic.'

 

"What I found disappointing was how, when Glenn Lowry wrote a lengthy article discussing the exhibition, he managed to reduce his discussion and analysis of so-called 'contemporary Islamic art' to only those who avoided the subject of politics all together," Ms. Neshat said, adding that she had already shared these thoughts with Mr. Lowry. "Much of the discussion remained on, for example, how certain artists have succeeded in transforming traditional Islamic art and aesthetics into a contemporary interpretation.

 

"My conclusion was then that either Mr. Lowry had a distaste for political content in art, or that by avoiding discussion of political artists, he was avoiding political discussion altogether." [read on...]

Note to Tyler: Are you and Barbara Pollack really not on the same page?

Tyler Green via MAN, 3/21/06:

On Artinfo, Barbara Pollack asks: Where has all the political art gone? Hopefully gone forever: Art as agitprop is dull and temporal.

But art that engages the human condition of the moment, perhaps rooted in a present political condition but artistically expressed in a timeless way (see Neshat, Shirin or Kentridge, William), is plentiful. Pollack writes in defense of the former: "It seems that 'didactic' has replaced 'derivative' as the dirtiest word in contemporary art." Thomas Kinkade is didactic but in a right-wing way; is Pollack down with him? Pollack also uses the George W. Bush Shortcut in discussing Hans Haacke. (Here's how I wrote about Haacke's Paula Cooper show.) [...]

 

Stanislaw Lem, RIP

via BBC News, 3/28/06:

Solaris author Stanislaw Lem dies

Polish author Stanislaw Lem, most famous for science fiction works including Solaris, has died aged 84, after suffering from heart disease.

He sold more than 27 million copies of his works, translated into about 40 languages, and a number were filmed.

His 1961 novel Solaris was made into a movie by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971 and again by American Steven Soderbergh in 2002.

Soderbergh's version starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.

Thaw
Lem was born in 1921 in Lviv, then a Polish city but now part of Ukraine. He studied medicine there before World War II. In 1946 he moved to Krakow.

He concentrated on science fiction writing, a genre regarded by the Polish socialist government as fairly harmless in terms of censorship.

However, his first major novel, Hospital of the Transfiguration, went unpublished for eight years until the ideological thaw that followed Soviet leader Josef Stalin's death in 1953.

Other key works included The Cyberiad in 1965.

After the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, Lem turned to writing reports on future trends, including computer crime and the ethical problems of the internet.                   

Appropriation, Advertising and Misplaced Blog Outrage

UPDATE 4/14/06: The best part of the story is Simon Doonan had never seen the Jack Piersons before. Here's his riposte to the art world: How Did I Become The Typhoid Mary Of the Art World?, The NYObserver. Also excerpted at artsoldier.

Here's a story that's made the blog rounds lately, about a commercial window dresser (Simon Doonan) who appropriated an idea from a well-known artist (Jack Pierson) for his design of Barneys' current windows. It's certainly not a first, in fact there's a "tradition" of going both ways with this kind of appropriation, "borrowing", "rip-off" or what ever you wish to call it: consider Helmut Lang windows vis-a-vis Dan Flavin, or just pick any Fifth Avenue store and play a game of "which artist is that knocked off from?". Consider the influence of various moments and movements on advertising in general. Consider Barbara Kruger, or and ask yourself where she borrowed her own ideas from. Hell. if culture is a stew and it's about mixing, sharing, and exchange, then it's also got to be about knock-offs. "Remix is how we live," remember? So since when is it okay for artists to appropriate from advertising but not ok for designers to appropriate from artists? Some bloggers are calling the Barneys knock-offs crass, but I think these bloggers doth protest too much.

Anyway, Jack Pierson has undoubtedly been knocked off by designers before, (by other artists too), but not in so high-profile a NYC spot. Honestly, bottom line? these knock-offs don't hurt him or his market, they can only enhance it, and Cheim & Reid is just having a fit of "Intellectual Property Anxiety." Also, consider that Simon Doonan makes it his business to make knock-offs, that it's part of his "branding" and he's known for it. We should all be so lucky as to have him knock off our ideas for his windows. (Hey, uh, Simon, come on over...) Remember that you can't copyright an idea, only the expression of that idea, and that is the basic tenet of copyright law that, at least in theory, allows us all to experiment and be creative, no matter how noble or crass or transformative or derivative we are...

UPDATE 3/29/06: Here's a smart summation by Tom Moody, who quips that it's "a bit like Duchamp writing an indignant letter to a urinal manufacturer."

via edward_ winkleman, Tuesday, March 28, 2006:

Barneys Vs. Pierson: or The Irony of "Owning" an Appropriated Vocabulary

Tyler and Barry have both been all over this, but I still wanted to flesh out some of the details on the Barneys vs. Jack Pierson scrap (which is really playing itself out in public as Barneys vs. Cheim & Read, but...[image to right, Jack Pierson, Fame, 2005, Plastic, metal, wood, and neon, 160" x 45" x 4" vertical install, image from Cheim and Read website]). As fate would have it, the day before the gallery's letter hit the blogosphere, I had walked by Barney's Co-op store in Soho and caught a glimpse of the fake Piersons there. My first thought, being the naive country bumpkin I am, was "Wow, Barneys has quite an impressive art budget to be able to afford such big Piersons for their boutique...and rare ones at that...I've never seen those before."

A few feet later it did dawn on me (yes, I'm slow like that) that the text was too obvious to be a real Pierson and that the store had likely appropriated the vocabulary in an attempt to lure in art savvy types...or that they just liked the aesthetic.

Now if you haven't seen it, the gist of Pierson's gallery's complaint is as follows:

Around a year or so ago, imitations or forgeries of [Pierson's] works began to appear in Barney’s clothing stores throughout the country saying such things as "fabulous, courageous, and outrageous." They are formally weak plagiarized versions of Jack Pierson’s work and we want you to know that they are not by Jack Pierson. Many people have assumed they are. They are, in fact, made by Simon Doonan, the chief window dresser at Barney’s. Jack Pierson has asked that he remove them but he has refused.

We regret this lack of integrity on the part of Simon Doonan and Barney’s. They obviously have no respect for artists or the art world. [emphasis edward_ winkleman's]

And I fully agree with C&R's assessment of the pieces...they stretch out too far and, again, the text is lame...they're lazy knock-offs designed to appeal to folks who know just enough to be flattered that their sophisticated tastes are being catered to (er, yes, I was temporarily fooled...make of that what you will).

Now there's an argument to be made that indeed Barneys is showing a lack of respect for the art world here (i.e., who else would assume the text was "art"?), but what really intrigues me about this episode is the assertion that a visual vocabulary of appropriated lettering is now owned by the artist who assembled it. [emphahsis newgrist's]

Obviously, I immediately recognized the text as Pierson-esque, so in that sense, Jack does own it. But the argument C&R makes (while I viscerally agree) does seem as if it might fall apart in court. When an artist appropriates other vocabularies, images, styles, etc., at what point can he/she claim that new mix as his/her own? When the art world recongizes it as theirs or when the general public recognizes it as theirs or never? [emphahsis newgrist's]

Consider this an open thread.

read the comments

Talkin' About the Gift Economy @ Art in General

Man Ray, Gift, 1958
Image source


Gift and Commodity
Transactions in Contemporary Artistic Practice

Sunday, April 2, 2006, 4:00 p.m.
ART IN GENERAL
79 Walker Street
New York, NY 10013
T. 212-219-0473  
Free admission.

A panel discussion with:

Adam Simon
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Reinaldo Laddaga

Moderated by Katy Siegel

Organized by CUNY Queens College MFA Student Committee

Commodity exchange is a closed transaction, one that leaves parties independent of each other. Gift exchange has the opposite effect: it creates a bond. Approaching artistic practice as a transactional enterprise, how can contemporary art processes and products be creatively situated within the spectrum defined by the poles of gift and commodity?