NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Theresa and Jeremy, still dead, now caught in The Media's (read: mediocre authors') crosshairs

UPDATE 12/13/07: VANITY FAIR (January 2008)
The Golden Suicides
By Nancy Jo Sales

Update 9/11/07: THE INDEPENDENT
The beautiful and damned: The shocking suicide of the art world's most glamorous couple

Artists Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan had it all – looks, talent and a lifestyle to match. Then, in July, Duncan took an overdose and died. A week later, Blake drowned himself at sea. Were dark forces really conspiring against them? Or was it a tragic case of charmed lives gone awry?
By Charles Darwent. Published: 09 September 2007

...

August 31:

Today's Newsweek article's claim that Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake were driven crazy by technology and killed themselves because they were "mesmerized" by the Internet is so mindboggglingly stupid it's (almost) beyond commentary: I only see three possible explanations for its author's moronic angle:

1) the author is competing with the New York Mag piece, and wants his story to be optioned as a post-cyberpunk post-911 paranoia-era genre flick (to be directed by Tony Scott);

2) the author is desperate to leave Newsweek so he can finally go write for Gawker.com (but he lacks the essential combo of a filthy mouth, a modicum of intelligence and irony, so he may as well get used to writing for Newsweek until he dies of old age -- or commits suicide);

3) the author is actually an agent for the Church of Scientology and is a victim of mind control by crazy idiots from another planet.

Read the backlog of articles on the troubled duo's double suicide, if you have the stomach for it, here.

A NEWSgrist reader comments:

oh god, this one [newsweek article] is the worst yet. Blaming the tubes!! And casting theresa as the villain and a loser to boot. somebody should slap the writer around. This is truly disgusting. Each one of these articles feeds on the other. I would blame THE MEDIA. This one is yet another pitch for Sid and Nancy meets The Player. The "Truly Madly Deeply" pitch. I can only guess whats coming...

Burma Protests: Defying Myanmar Junta

Pro-democracy demonstrators link arms to try to protect prominent labor activist Su Su Nway, center, from arrest (The Associated Press)

via Int'l Herald Tribune, August 30, 2007:

Myanmar junta fails to quell protests
or NYTimes:Continuing Myanmar Protests Defy Junta By SETH MYDANS

BANGKOK, Aug. 30 — Linking arms for mutual support, grim in the face of plainclothes paramilitary gangs, small groups of protesters in Myanmar have staged street demonstrations for nearly two weeks in the most sustained defiance of the country’s ruling junta in a decade.

The protests have dwindled in size since they began on Aug. 19, but to the surprise of outside analysts, they have continued to erupt in several parts of the country. They do not appear to be centrally organized and have continued despite the arrests of a number of antigovernment leaders.
[...]
The protests may also be spreading because of transmissions through the Internet of photographs and video that have slipped past government controls.
[...]
The readily accessible visual images have given the small demonstrations a disproportionate impact both abroad and at home.

"That's the big difference from 1988," said Mr. Mathieson, of Human Rights Watch, referring to antigovernment demonstrations that swept the country then. "The technology is completely different. Even though the military's power may be the same, the ability of the protesters to get their message around the country has grown."

The 1988 demonstrations were crushed by the military, bringing to power the current junta. Thousands of people were killed. read full article

Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight: the sublime as transformative agent

Katie Holten, "Untitled," 2007
Courtesy of the artist and LMAKprojects, New York 

GREENER PASTURES, PERMANENT MIDNIGHT
Curated by Ingrid Chu
Moti Hasson Gallery
Through September 1
535 West 25th Street
(212-268-4444; motihasson.com)

via CHELSEA NOW, Volume 1, Number 49 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | Aug. 24 - 30, 2007:

Landscape on the installation plan
By Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

In an age when information is relayed digitally and media can nullify and numb our experiences, what does it mean to recreate nature and instill a visceral or emotional response?

In addressing this question, curator Ingrid Chu chose artists who combined an "ecological sensibility" with the "obscure, subtle and aesthetic." And she felt it was important to present an actual 3-D landscape replete with trees and lightning.

Katie Holten began her installation of seven trees by looking at pictures taken after a forest fire and replicating the charred trunks. While remaining faithful to reality, she uses simple materials that carry their own implications. The shiny black gaffer tape that wraps around the trees like bark hints at global warming, thus politicizing the work. The shapes, removed from their original context, become like spires, inciting a spiritual reaction.

In pitch-perfect contrast, white lightning bolts descend like roots from the ceiling. Emilie Halpern's thermoplastic-coated aluminum wires come down with jagged awe. The shock associated with such elemental force is compressed and relayed.

Disaster—alluring and terribly beautiful—is at the heart of painter Joy Garnett's vistas. She is known for finding dramatic photos and painting them very quickly (in a day). The triple play of composition, gesture and color provides an immediacy that is truly transportive. In "Storm" broiling clouds ride over a downpour of wraiths as the sun is surrounded.

"Road" is a siren song. Up ahead, around the bend and behind a bank of bulging fauna, an awful profusion of light pulls like a magnet and pushes like a flood. Hints of improbable and ghastly green and virulent lavender are dabbed into the vortex. Faint fence-posts reassuringly guide us toward catastrophe in this nocturne gone perfectly awry.

Sticking with nocturnes, Emilie Halpern's three c-prints court darkness and distance. Inky blackness splattered by a few stars pours down like fine dust to isolate a glittering skyline. Our vantage is telescoped as if we were standing in a cave mouth or on the threshold of a portal. A sense of utter vulnerability is both availed and softened by Halpern's reintroduction of texture as she manipulates her image and adds evidence of materiality in a slippery world.

Emilie Halpern, The Dark Side of the Moon, 2004 (detail)
Courtesy of the artist and Anna Helwing Gallery

In "the dark side of the moon," Halpern reintroduces texture conceptually, by taking a picture of what scientists imagined the unseen side of the moon looked like.

Examining the constraints of landscape, Dike Blair's pair of windows moves to the interior. Even though we look out over a geometrically lined runway with all its implications of escape, we feel trapped behind a double pane. Likewise, in a cropped section of a window and jamb, the outdoors seems unattainable. We look up and out into nothing but a bluntly seductive blue.

A dark shadow slashes across the wall. Blair's minimalism is tempered by the velvety gouache and rough pencil. These untitled pieces just plain out look good.

A digital video animation by Franklin Evans explores a regenerative aspect of landscape. Wily trees grow out of the tops of trees in a collage of textures cut out of art history classics as the screen scrolls down. An Indian chant changes into a slow, catchy song as a pinwheel of colors bursts out from a face. Finally, a voice says "okay," suggesting a genuine connection in this delicious high-tech/down-home concoction. His busy, bright and convoluted watercolors, however, weren't for me.

In a culminating installation in the side gallery, Halpern's dramatic ceiling-to-floor "Lightning #4" is commanding. Two arms of "electricity" snake out diagonally from the upper corners and join at eye level, then splinter and spill. An acrylic mirror on the floor resembling water and invoking infinity carries the charge deep below, reminding us that lightning travels through water. Here at the edge of annihilation, the sublime is a transformative agent.

Art Market Death Watch?

undated handout photo of "For the Love of God" by Damien Hirst. Source: Bolton & Quinn via Bloomberg News.

via NYTimes, Aug 29:
Volatile Markets? Art World Takes Stock
By ROBIN POGREBIN

The fall art auctions are almost three months away, galleries are still in their summer hiatus, and the Dow keeps fluctuating. But the art world is wondering how volatile financial markets might affect its own specialized market. What will happen at the major art auctions in November? Will collectors pull back on buying sprees until the mortgage lending industry stabilizes? Will sellers decline to consign their art, assuming that the run of record prices in recent years is due for a reversal? Or will they rush to sell now, fearing that by spring prices will be lower?[...]

via Bloomberg, Aug 29:
Hirst Sells Skull for $100 Million, Manager Says
By Linda Sandler

[...]The skull was part of a Hirst show at the White Cube's two galleries that took in 130 million pounds ($261.7 million), said exhibitions director Tim Marlow on July 17. Including the skull, the total of 180 million pounds would probably break the record for a dealer sale of an artist's works, said Marlow.[...]

via ed_winkleman, Aug 24:
Is It Gonna Be a Bumpy Ride?

As the art market death watch heats up (see MAO's post on Eli Broad's predicitons), the two big auctions houses seem hellbent on discouraging collectors from pestering them to take on lower-priced works.[...]

via Bloomberg, Aug. 23:
Sotheby's Raises Fees on Sales of Lower-Priced Art
By Linda Sandler

Sotheby's, which sold a Mark Rothko painting for more than $70 million in May, said it will raise fees by one-quarter for buyers of lower-priced art, following a similar move by Christie's International.[...]

via Modern Art Obsession, Aug 18:
Eli Broad suggests difficult times ahead for the art market!!

[...]Well... the party was nice while it lasted.. I hope everyone had fun![...]

Burning Man Sets Fire To Self?

Carla Roccapriore/Reno Gazette-Journal
Someone set the Burning Man ablaze early this morning. Fire crews were able to put it out. The regular burn is still set for this weekend.

Burning Man set ablaze today; one arrested
CARLA ROCCAPRIORE
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
Posted: 8/28/2007
An arson investigation is underway and one person is in custody in relation to a fire that was unexpectedly set to the man early Tuesday at the Burning Man counterculture arts festival, attracting thousands of burners who watched in awe and speculated about how it happened.

The official man-burning ceremony is scheduled late Saturday.

Crews put out the fire in 23 minutes as staff worked to keep spectators behind a perimeter.  The fire was reported at 2:58 a.m.

The man was salvaged but singed and the Saturday celebration is still scheduled.

Burners yelled things such as "save the man" and cheered as fire crews began spraying it with hoses. No injuries were reported and there is no confirmed cause of the ignition, a statement from Burning Man spokeswoman Andie Grace said.

Rumors abounded but Burning Man staff said there was no confirmed cause about how the fire started. The pavilion underneath the man is closed until the structure is deemed safe.