NEWSgrist - where spin is art

High Desert Test Sites: May 6 & 7

A project of A-Z. For more info visit:

http://www.zittel.org/
http://www.highdeserttestsites.com/

The "November" Matrix: Art, Theory, Criticism, Palaver

via Artnet News 4/26/06:

"NOVEMBER" SKEWERS CRITICS
  Is the influential October magazine, the flagship journal of art theory, a spent force? The editors of the newly released November certainly seem to think so. The 46-page inaugural issue of the parody mag offers a savage send-up of the widely copied, jargon-heavy style of October, via, among other things, contributions from "Lukács G.C. Hechnoh" (an analogue of neo-Marxist critic and frequent Artforum contributor Benjamin H.D. Buchloh), who provides a text sternly condemning "Ikea’s Historic Amnesia," and an essay by "Rosamund Kauffmann" titled "A Picturesque Stroll around Jeff Koons’ Porcelain Pink Panther," employing the fragmentary, French-interspersed style of Rosalind Krauss. The publication concludes with Hechnoh, Kauffmann and stand-ins for fellow October heavys Yve-Alain Bois ("Jean-Luc Salive") and Hal Foster ("Chip Chapman") engaged in a roundtable discussion on the perks that roundtables afford neo-Marxist intellectuals.

Responding to an inquiry from Artnet News about where fans might pick up the spoof, the editors of November wrote that, "The matrix of NOVEMBER's current distribution is constructed largely from the result of aleatory scatterings and (re)inscribed focus groups in an attempt to maintain the dialectical tension between preserving a revolutionary aura of objecthood in this age of debased mechanical inauthenticity and self-reflexively complete the text's projected feedback loop by having others recognize our own editorial subjectivity." They did, however, suggest that parties interested in obtaining a copy could write [email protected]

Sharing is Daring @ Harvard

reBlogged via Rhizome.org :

Sharing Is Daring: CC art show in Boston opens on April 27

April 23rd, 2006, 1:44 pm

   

Elizabeth Stark of Harvard Free Culture reports that Sharing Is Daring -- a terrific art show featuring works offered under Creative Commons licenses -- is ready to rock with an opening reception on April 27.

Harvard Free Culture presents Sharing is Daring, a showcase of new & derivative artworks released under flexible licenses that allow for sharing & remixing. The exhibition will feature a range of graphic, photography, video, and multimedia works by:

~ Abram Stern ~ Matt Vance ~ Elton Lovelace ~ Brian Zbriger ~ Suburban Kids with Biblical Names ~ Shanying Cui ~ Ben Sisto ~ Tim Jacques ~ Rebecca Rojer ~ Greg Perkins ~ Ryan Sciaino ~ David Meme ~ Matt Boch & Claire Chanel ~ selections from the 100 Second Film Festival ~

Please join us for our opening event on Thurs., Apr. 27, 2006 at 8pm at the Adams ArtSpace, Harvard University, Plympton at Bow St., in Cambridge, MA. Food and drink will be served.

For more information, visit sharingisdaring.com.

Originally by Eric Steuer from Creative Commons Blog - rss at April 20, 2006, 11:09, published by Marisa S. Olson

The Donald Judd Auction: A Most Beautiful Survey

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
An untitled piece by Donald Judd at the Christie's presale show: a free-standing piece from 1988.

via NYTimes: Critic's Notebook
Christie's Presale Show: Light and Space Enough to Really See Judd
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: April 24, 2006

For the next two weeks, New York has something it may never have again: a small, unpretentious single-artist museum devoted to the achievements of the Minimalist sculptor Donald Judd.

This museum has been rather hastily assembled by an unlikely entity: Christie's New York. Its unlikely setting is two floors atop the Simon & Schuster Building, around the corner from the auction house at Rockefeller Center. The show is, in fact, the presale exhibition of 35 Judd works offered for sale by the Judd Foundation, established by the artist's estate in 1996, two years after his death. Everything on view is to be sold to the highest bidder on May 9, the final day of the show.

The works, which date from around 1970 to 1993, form a haphazard, partial and sometimes redundant survey of Judd's sculpture. They are clearly pieces that the foundation, which is in dire economic straits, has decided it can do without.

So I'm as surprised to be writing the following as you may be to read it: This exhibition is the most beautiful survey of Judd's work ever seen in New York, and the first to be displayed under conditions of space and light that the famously demanding artist might have found satisfactory. Christie's has made an unusual effort with this display, stripping the light-flooded space — there are windows on four sides — to its bare-bones cement surfaces. Judd's son, Flavin, who has some of his father's sense of proportion, had a role in planning both the raw-looking interior and the spare installation. And in the end the pieces work fairly well together, illustrating Judd's thinking about the box — the basic of unit of his art — as it moves between wall and floor, and from single-unit to multi-part pieces.

The conditions of the sale have been reported. Christie's is said to have guaranteed the foundation around $20 million, which it needs to pay off debts and establish an endowment; maintain the 16 buildings it owns in New York and in Marfa, Tex.; conserve the collections and library amassed by Judd; catalog his archives; and start converting his extensive unpublished writings into book form. His legacy, as complex physically as it is intellectually, is a national treasure that should be much more accessible to the public.

It has been argued that this sale, in releasing so many works at one time, could deflate the Judd market and that a slower, private, more dignified weeding process would have permitted more pieces to be placed in public collections.

Yet Judd might have viewed the sale with a certain pragmatic equanimity. I worked for him briefly in the early 1970's, mostly on his catalogue raisonné. He remarked more than once that one purpose of his smaller, portable sculptures was to make money to pay for larger projects.

The foundation Judd mandated in his will is a very large project. He might even have liked the bold gesture of one big, widely publicized get-it-over-with auction. Besides, he famously hated museums, especially American ones.

Questions will always remain about whether the foundation exhausted all fund-raising possibilities before setting this course. And only time will tell if the influx of money can solve problems that may be more than simply financial. Adding peripheral heat to the discussion is the spectacle of Christie's promoting this presale show as the largest exhibition of Judd's work in this country since 1988, the year of his second retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. First auction houses supersede galleries, then they move in on museums? Christie's has even provided an Acoustiguide.

Christie's has indeed behaved like a museum — or at least in a way more museums should act. Basically, it has put art before architecture in an uncluttered display that makes the work optimally visible. The presentation is undoubtedly a fantastic sales tool, but it is also a temporary gift to the city, one that every museum professional should see.

Judd went to Marfa because he found the conditions under which New York museums displayed contemporary art to be deplorable. His point remains a good one: art cannot be fully understood if it is not fully experienced. And if not fully experienced, it cannot meet one of its chief responsibilities: to give subsequent generations of artists something to build on. Looking at the Christie's show, New York can finally see what Judd meant. It makes his case with his art, on his home turf, in the city that nurtured his genius.
[read on...]

It's Showtime at the Smithsonian

via NYTimes:
Filmmakers and Others Petition Against Smithsonian's Showtime Deal
By LORNE MANLY
Published: April 18, 2006 [excerpted]

As the recent coupling between the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks continues to roil the documentary film world, more than 215 filmmakers, television executives and academics have signed a letter demanding that the Smithsonian, a publicly financed museum, not only reveal financial details of the joint venture but also abandon it.

The signers of the letter, delivered yesterday to a Smithsonian official, include the filmmakers Michael Moore ("Fahrenheit 9/11"), R. J. Cutler ("The War Room") and Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"); the actress and writer Anna Deavere Smith ("Twilight: Los Angeles"); the law professor Lawrence Lessig; and Jacoba Atlas, a senior PBS executive.

The uproar was set off last month when Showtime and the Smithsonian announced the creation of Smithsonian Networks, a joint venture for original television programming on scientific, cultural and historical subjects whose first service would be an on-demand cable channel beginning this December. As part of the deal, Smithsonian Networks was to get the right of first refusal on commercial documentaries that relied significantly on the museum's archives, curators or scientists.

The underfinanced Smithsonian has argued that while the agreement might restrict some commercial filmmakers from selling their handiwork elsewhere, it would affect only a limited number of projects. [...]

[...] the idea of a public institution's granting preferential treatment to a commercial entity has alarmed many in the documentary and academic worlds, who worry that the venture will discourage independent filmmakers from taking their projects to other outlets or from putting their work on the Internet on a noncommercial basis.

The letter states that it is a troubling prospect to require independent filmmakers, video bloggers, historians or educators who make nonincidental use of the Smithsonian's collections or staff to offer their projects commercially to "this new business venture."

Such a requirement, the letter says, is "an anticompetitive practice that is extremely troubling." Put together by the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization, the letter was sent to Lawrence M. Small, secretary of the Smithsonian..

"Closing off one of the most important collections of source materials and limiting access to staff," the letter adds, "will have a chilling effect on creativity, will create disincentives for digitization of the collections for access by all Americans, and violates the mission and purpose of the Smithsonian Institution."

Also angering the letter writers is the secrecy about the contract details, which the Smithsonian has declined to publicize for competitive reasons. "It just doesn't seem to be the way a public trust should operate," said Carl Malamud, a senior fellow and chief technology officer for the Center for American Progress, who has spearheaded the letter-writing campaign and a Freedom of Information Act request for contract details. The letter writers also demand that the Smithsonian hold public hearings before it undertakes any similar efforts in the future. [read on...]