Crowdsourcing

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Ministry of Photoshop has been working overtime. Via Cory Doctorow, a marked-up image from a pro-Ahmadinejad rally:

You'll recall the digitally altered photograph that was circulated by the PR department of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Agence France-Presse (and other outlets). That photograph was subsequently retracted, but not before it inspired Oliver Laric to consider the international incident in terms of its ramifications for the authenticity of the image.

Oliver Laric, Versions, 2009

A video piece, pew pew pew! It's part of a show called "Image Search", which wins out in the category of group show titles this year.

On the rally image, the Ahmadinejad administration must be doubling down on domestic audience. At this point any image they file is going to be scrutinized by image nerds, but the benefit at home must outweight the cost abroad.

Infinite DFW

I'm joining Ezra in this Infinite Summer business but I don't know that I want to post thoughts on a group forum. (At least, not one that isn't devoted to barbecue or Magic: The Gathering.) Now, I know that The Governess is reading too, and I'm going to try to twist a few more arms (Ryan? Tommy? Yglesias?) and see if we can't form a quorum to do what we do best: Highly public navel gazing, cut-copied from mail to html. Who's game?

I picked up my copy of Infinite Jest at Kramerbooks the other day and it cost significantly more than $10—my cover must have been a misprint. Also, every cover along the new-books promenade featured the same float-y, PowerPoint, 3D script.

You're wasting too much time on that blog.
I hope you don't think I have time to read your blog.
I hate blogs. (Big sigh)

Regina Hackett on media and criticism, riffing on some of the same topics I mentioned below: "Art magazines and art blogs are the journalistic equivalent of studio art, while an art review in a newspaper is like public art. Anyone from any background might happen upon it." Service is important and so is reaching who don't seek you out, but still, the writing's on the wall. I can't think of any newspaper that wouldn't be better served moving most, if not all, of their visual arts coverage to the Web.

Maggie Michael's Conflict Theory of Painting

Maggie Michael, To Make a Long Story Short, 2005–2008

My feature review of Maggie Michael's solo show from a while back appears in the issue of Art Papers that's currently on newsstands (I think). Finding a permalink to the review online was tricky, so you'll have to click here for the Google cached version. There's a lot of discussion of text and "text" as those things work in painting today. Here's a snippet:

In the end, Michael's recent work references uprisings: found objects, text-as-markmaking, proto-Pop strategies, and New Wave cinema. The works cite pivotal discoveries in abstraction, the uprisings that ushered the transition from the modern to the contemporary period. Michael has redirected these upheavals toward her own formal concerns: symmetry and coherence. It's a conflict theory of contemporary painting, with one formalist urge supplanting another, which makes for a sort of progress with an uncertain exit strategy. A Farewell to Arms, 2008, provides a bare-boned, bleak assessment of the state of abstraction. Like To Make a Long Story Short, it features text as a transparent window through which we see a veiled composition, whose features barely register through the narrow pane of the letters. The outer abstraction is textured but featureless, rendered in foggy gray.

And you'll have to read on for more.

So anyway. When I was writing this story, I had an interesting conversation. I'd mentioned to someone who'd asked me what I was up to that I was working on this feature. He replied (and I paraphrase) that of course Maggie Michael would warrant this kind of larger review spot in a magazine—the sort of slot that not many D.C. gallery shows receive. I don't remember what I said at the time, but thinking on it now, I think yes—that's right.

I don't hold to a hierarchy of media and have done stuff (and hope to continue to do stuff) for magazines, newspapers, Web enterprises, this blog, whatever. But I wouldn't think about doing the same things for all those places. Let me refer you to Jeffry Cudlin, praising this think piece by Blake Gopnik:

Blake did something really fabulous in this piece that made me want to jump out of my chair and applaud him. Did you notice? In laying out these practices, Blake examined international/Biennale artists, and offered them as a context for both what's happening in D.C. museums right now—including what Vesela Sretenovic's doing at the Phillips with this is not that Café, a project I am terribly remiss for not discussing here—and what's going on in local galleries, with a mention of Chan Chao's recent show at G Fine Art.

That strikes me as the right approach and really praiseworthy. I think newspaper reviews are at their best when critics draw from the broader universe in order to illuminate the local, unknown artist or artwork. Magazines, on the other hand, are better for figuring out how the star fits into the constellation.

Briefly,

I'll write something from the Institute each day here on G.p, but for more exclusive, behind-the-scenes action you can follow me here on Twitter.

Art Camp!

Richard Burnett, from The Boys Are All Right, 2007.

I'm happy to officially make it known that I've been accepted to participate in the 2009 International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts, a program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. State Department and hosted by American University. This institute — which brings together 12 U.S. critics with 12 critics from abroad for a two-week conference — follows in the mold of journalism institutes for dance, music, and theater.

This year, the Institute is based in Washington, D.C., which means specifically for me that I will be decamping at American University for two weeks, just miles from my home (and bed, and fridge, and dog). A regular work staycation. Over the course of the Institute (June 12–26), we fellows will travel to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; meet with various cultural workers, attend lectures, and participate in workshops; and otherwise share our work and our opinions.

Here are the participating writers from the States:

Gretchen Giles (California)
Leanne Naase Goebel (Colorado)
Kriston Capps (DC chillin', PG chillin')
Janina Ciezadlo (Illinois)
Doug MacCash (Louisiana)
Kent Wolgamott (Nebraska)
Phillip Harvey (New York)
Rachel Wolff (New York)
A.M. Weaver (Pennsylvania)
Michelle Jones (Tennessee)
Gaile Robinson (Texas)
Jen Graves (Washington)

And from across the world:

Adisa Basic (Bosnia)
Kathleen May (Colombia)
Giovanni Mosquera (Colombia)
Amira El-Naqeeb (Egypt)
Heba El-Sheikh (Egypt)
Vinayak Parab (India)
Ilham Khoiri (Indonesia)
Bambang Widjanarko (Indonesia)
Maria Sharon Arriola (Philippines)
Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez (Philippines)
Bongani Madondo (South Africa)
Milagros Socorro (Venezuela)

Now, Gaile Robinson's byline I know well from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. And Jen Graves should be a Stranger to no one. Rachel Wolff is a regular contributor to New York Magazine and so on. But none of the writers from other nations are names I know, and I'm thrilled to meet them. I feel a like a Lantern making the trip to Oa for the first time.