Mia Feuer, Collapse, 2009.
During the NEA art journalism institute (that would be art camp), several of us visited the Lynda Benglis/Robert Morris show at Susan Inglett in New York and came away impressed enough to write up the show. Jen Graves reviewed the show for The Stranger and Rachel Wolff had a writeup for New York Magazine. Collect them all.
Now, everyone thinks dildos are funny and since this exhibit involves double-pronged cast-metal dildos it's especially something. But is it possible that there's a viewer out there who doesn't know about the editorial history of Artforum? Would that person look at this show and think: frivolous, nostalgic, navelgazing? There isn't a lot of work to the show and it all plays a supporting role; at least, I didn't feel that the letters and controversy surrounding Benglis's 1974 Artforum ad illuminated any of the works or images on display. If anything, it read like a director's cut of the controversy itself, complete with deleted scenes, bonus content, etc.
Maybe it is inside baseball—but it was definitely a significant curatorial effort, and the feminist critique and journalist's credo themes are broadly relevant, and again, dildo. Much more exciting than your average Chelsea summer show, which looks a little something like this:
Rachel Whiteread, John McCracken, and Anish Kapoor.
That's up the road at Fredericks & Freiser. Has this work ever looked so boring?
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.
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.
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)And from across the world:
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)
Adisa Basic (Bosnia)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.
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)
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14, 1978.
So, I wrote a review of Guest of Cindy Sherman that turned into a broader rumination about the ways misogyny is expressed by the market. The piece was kindly picked up by Art Fag City and Jezebel and discussed at length in those comments sections. I should get a comments section!
Greg Allen, who penned a piece on gender dynamics within the market for the New York Times back when the market going was good, had some further thoughts in AFC's comments on Sherman's place in the art world:
Sherman's rise coincides with the emergence of gender equity and institutional bias as an art market issue. [The Guerrilla Girls launched in '85 and ran their $17.7 million Jasper Johns campaign in '89.] She was a good, easy buy for "solving" collections' female problem. [sic] But then it was "solved," so the imperative to buy another Woman’s Work was lessened. But that same boxchecking afflicts artists like Minimalists Who Aren’t Named Judd or Flavin, too.That squares some circles, especially when you look at some of the relevant examples. When prodded by the Guerrilla Girls last year after opening with an inaugural exhibit featuring 97 percent male artists, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum was quick to point out to the NYT that 33 percent of the works in the show were by women. Of course, all of these were photographs by Cindy Sherman.
Tyler Green twitters: "So far that News Hour art blog has been notable for its commitment to error-making. I stopped reading."
What mistakes, specifically?
Look, lord knows that Twitter is a no-man's land. It's journalism's version of the Bleed, connecting bloggers and wire reports with cell phones and desktops. I'm sure if you ask someone like Tommy, he'd describe it in a way that betrays a very different understanding and use. For myself, I prefer to twitter dumb jokes, intimate texts meant for one person alone, or names of venues I'm standing in. Very useless and, I think, still totally in keeping with the medium.
But calling out a publication on its accuracy probably transcends even the boundlessness of Twitter, no?
this.heart's.on.fire. breaks the news that Stella McCartney has a vagina. The Glam Network is understandably upset by the revelation. Kenneth Courtney suggests that Madonna and a number of other women also bear vaginas, but those reports are at best unconfirmed at this time.
This morning, Art in America launched a new content-driven Web site under the editorial direction of Sarah Hromack, a longtime blogger and the former editor of Curbed SF. The site features a number of writers who have come to the publication by way of the Internet—writers such as Bosko Blagojevic and Paddy Johnson and yours truly.
Fittingly, the content on the Web site does not correspond precisely with the magazine. AiA has done a step better than promoting its features and reviews online. (A step that art magazines are loathe to take, even a decade into the 21st century. You would be surprised.) Rather than direct imports from print to Web, online content will feature the healthy mix of news-cycle commentary and astute art insight that makes online criticism so much more, well, relevant. See, for example, Bartholomew Ryan's reported feature on the 100th anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto.
And see also my own take on Brandon Morse's show at Conner Contemporary and its visual affinity to the ongoing global financial crisis. It isn't exactly a review—it's not supposed to be a review. Rather (I hope) it's a sort of real-time observation of the way that art responds to and corresponds with the lived-in world.
Brandon Morse, Achilles, 2008–9.
UPDATE: On a related note, Jeffry Cudlin takes the hatchet to Brandon Morse (in a matter of speaking).
That's Portfolio's Felix Salmon and I on Bloggingheads discussing the art market: from Eli Broad and supercollectors to the Russian oligarchs to parallels between an art world in crisis today (Murakami, Koons, Hirst) and yesterday (Halley, Salle, and Fischl). Did I forget to mention Julian Schnabel?!
Click here to reach a screen with chapter headings and permalinks as well as other Bloggingheads features with such estimable characters as Chris Hayes and Eve Fairbanks.
One theme Salmon and I touch on during the recording is the sense that poverty is a virtue and that artists and dealers operating in a declining market are free in a way that they are not when they are selling art. I call this a crock in the Guardian.
In print: Reviews in Art in America, Art Papers, and Art Lies.
And one more thing! I am part of an Internet Food Association. Also! I helped to jury the "Unlimited Edition" show for the Arlington Arts Center.
The British press have been reporting heavily on a story about a British couple accused of having sex in public in Dubai, a crime with serious penalties—I'm sure you've heard about it. But the story that they're continuing to push has changed in significant ways. Instead of a story about a British couple committing a felony abroad that would barely merit a misdemeanor at home, in headlines and ledes papers like the Guardian broadcast that a British woman, singular, has been arrested for having sex. Vince Acors, the man who is associated with the accusation (that is, the other person having sex in that spot on the beach), is only ever introduced several grafs into the article—and in such a way that the reader would be forgiven for guessing that the woman will be convicted while the man will be vindicated by circumstances as a hapless accomplice. Acors, described as the "co-accused," appears only in the fourth graf of this Times story, which features a profile picture of the sultry Jezebel.
Of course, this whole thing is a crying shame—but the British press can hardly say so. By focusing on Palmer, by peddling the subtext that the real sensation here is that a slut had sex in public, British editors are basically knowingly toeing the Islamofascist line.
While Tyler Green was working on a story for the Washingtonian on the National Gallery of Art and looking to include information on the upcoming Leo Villareal show, I was working on a story about the Leo Villareal show for a contemporary art magazine—and I, too, could not get the National Gallery of Art to confirm the show. For the same reason: The National Gallery of Art, like many art institutions, pledges news items exclusively to the New York Times, or else those institutions can't be guaranteed coverage.
The National Gallery must feel some real pressure from the Grey Lady to pledge exclusivity: otherwise, while the museum might not shop the story around, it would at least answer other journalists' questions. Is the pressure so great on institutions that it prompts museum press to lie to journalists? Though I explained that I was not writing as a blogger, though I was clear about where and when the piece would appear, and though I was emphatic that I knew the show was happening, the National Gallery of Art press office told me repeatedly that it was not. (This was some time ago and on several occasions.)
Today, Carol Vogel for the NYT breaks the news in the third of three 300-word-ish bullets. The story comes months after the actual news, because the Times has a queer interest in ensuring that no art news runs over the summer.
While it annoys me when press offices lie to me, it puzzles me that anyone would lie for this: an also-ran blurb in the Friday roundup. Is the National Gallery pledging the NYT the exclusive merely for coverage—any coverage? Are fingers in PR always crossed that the NYT will give them some value in return? Other publications that reach similar (if certainly smaller) audiences would give this story much more prominent play. Some still will, but losing on the exclusive is enough to make some editors lose interest.
Today Spencer leaves for Afghanistan to report for the Washington Independent. Again for the Indy, Laura McGann is in Alaska doing the vice-presidential vetting that John McCain never did. Yglesias has a rebuttal in the Washington Post to a Matt Continetti op-ed. Phoebe Connelly has a pair of book reviews on the long history of newly fashionable agribusiness reform and the "dwindling disease" roots of colony collapse disorder in Bookforum. (Bees need labor protections! Who knew?) Megan McArdle has written possibly the most irritating Palinalysis to date. And Jeffry Cudlin's review of Martin Puryear at the National Gallery is handsome and thoroughly researched, hitting high notes on the contrast with Picasso.
I call all these writers friends so I feel a twinge of namedroppingly nepotistic guilt for advertising them together, but these are all among the more interesting things I'm reading this week.
The Austin American-Statesman hosts a poll asking readers to identify the best art gallery in town. Readers give the top nod to Art on 5th, an art outlet that, while hip, sells primarily by consignment and doesn't exactly exhibit shows from the bleeding edge of contemporary art. In response, Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, the paper's arts critic, takes to the blog ("Seeing Things") to complain (in the grand tradition of critics) about the wisdom of crowds—and slams the paper for running the survey.
Someone at the Statesman took notice and by all appearances wasn't pleased—the post's been scrubbed from the blog. (Hat tip: Eric Zimmerman.) Deleting published articles is messin' with critics at its worst. The Statesman ought to clarify whether that's what's happened.
Kudos to Spanish-language press for providing the "most timely, serious, and civic-minded" news to the Los Angeles media market, and shame on Governor Schwarzenegger for his wrong-headed assumption that it obviously should be otherwise. At the other end of the bell curve, Mexico's Milenio has the best and bluntest wrapup of the international scene over the last 8 years:
Courtesy Eyeteeth.
I don't believe Weingarten got a Pulitzer for this. I still remember thinking how silly it is when I read it the first time. Weingarten set this up like an experiment—how much will you pay to hear a world-famous classical musician if you aren't told he's a world-famous classical musician?
But the experiment trades on a second variable, too, though Weingarten doesn't recognize it: How much would you pay, etc. etc., during your rush-hour commute as opposed to during your after-dinner hour in which you enjoy leisurely pursuits?
Why, nothing at all, because you're on your way to work, and you like to think about the coming day or you like to read the news, because you don't like art before you've had coffee, because you're running late, because you hate it when people are standing around obstructing your perfect route to the metro, because you don't like sounds in the morning, because if you had your dithers you'd just be back in bed not seeing or hearing anything. Mostly because you're on your way to work, though.
Meanwhile, Weingarten gets points for illustrating the notion that he failed to prove in print, i.e., that there's a little bit of fiction behind all things. Subtract the stunt, and this profile doesn't garner the attention that it did. I suppose that is an accomplishment but a journalism that considers the art itself first and foremost does not do so as "an experiment in context, perception and priorities."
UPDATE: Does this make me the grumpiest reader in America? I suppose so, but really, have any of you ever used the Metro? The Gallery Place transfer I used to have to make every morning for my commute would fill me with thoughts of murder. Even thinking about it on the walk to the Metro would make me irritable. I kept my head down and disregarded other riders as best as I was able and expected the same of everyone around me.
Weingarten and Bell find an unsuspecting, captive audience at their worst, and they respond by doing as obligations and circumstances would have them do. What did these guys think would happen?
Annie Leibovitz for Condé Nast, 2007–8.
A bewildering essay on Annie Leibovitz by Choire Sicha for the New York Observer. He says that in the 80s, editors at Rolling Stone, clutching stats in hand, pushed out design and photo talent in favor of covers that polled well with consumers and moved newsstand sales. "Then as magazines went, so went Annie Leibovitz," writes Sicha.
Then comes the more provocative thesis that as Leibovitz continued shooting the same people she was unable to strike gold twice. "There is Mikhail Baryshnikov on the beach in 1990—and then, in 2006, he is rappelling down or up a building, looking nothing so much like a Bruce Willis stand-in. And then again also as an incredibly old Peter Pan in one of the latest Disney campaigns."
But neither idea pairs with Sicha's stated thesis: that "An artist who was once fascinated with her subjects lately seems largely fascinated with herself." Granted, that's a dek line and editors write those, not writers. Nevertheless, the thesis is either that something changed about Leibovitz's work or something changed Leibovitz's work and by the end of the piece it isn't clear which Sicha believes.
In fact, I think there's no problem if you just refuse to take Leibovitz at her word when she says she was never a journalist. In fact, she was and still is. At one point her editors asked her to live among her subjects and produce provocative photographs getting to the bottom of them, whatever she thought that entailed, and that's what she did, reliably and at a fast clip. Now people ask her to lend her brand name to their pursuits, whether that's a Disney campaign or an editorial spread, and it doesn't matter whatsoever to anyone what she produces so long as her name's on the project and a beautiful face is in the frame. There's no overarching structural factor behind her professional decline unless you want to call Tina Brown an overarching structural factor, and I don't. It's really very simple: Annie Leibovitz used to be a great journalist, but now she's a hack.
Fema stages a bogus news conference, complete with agency employees posing as reporters, in order to promote the agency's handling of the wildfires in Southern California.
It's funny to me that the equivalent agency in Russia (Ministry of Extraordinary Situations) has an American-sounding acronym: Emercom. Fema, on the other hand, has a Slavic ring to it and is an agency from the Soviet Union.
