Observations on Art 3.8.1

Here is another walkthough  from VernissageTV, this one is from Armory Week's newest show the Spring/Break Art Show. In its second year it's little bit different in that it focuses on curators and not on galleries. Rather than simply show what a gallery would like the curators bring together works to interpret the Spring/Break Art Show's theme which this year is New Mysticism. On the show's website the founders describe the theme as "examining how digital semiotics, the Internet, and technology at large, along with the old relics of 20th century visual culture together." There are no Brillo pad boxes here.

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Published on Mar 6, 2013

"Art TV pioneer Vernissage TV provides you with an authentic insight into the world of contemporary fine arts, design and architecture. With its two main series "No Comment" and "Interviews", art tv channel VernissageTV attends opening receptions of exhibitions worldwide, interviews artists, designers, architects. VTV provides art lovers with news, reports and features from the international art scene. VernissageTV: the window to the art world."

Observations on Art 3.8

Of art shows and Brillo pads ....

Every year the Armory Show brings something that everybody falls over themselves to rave about and I just don't care for at all. A couple years ago it was Ivan Navarro's glowing neon "Armory Fence" that was sold for $40,000 per seven foot section. This it was Charles Lutz’s massive pile of cardboard Brillo boxes, literally hundreds of them. A supposed homage to Andy Warhol the boxes were free for the taking so Brillo boxes fought for space in the aisles already crowded with art lovers, art collectors, and wannabes of both varieties. It wasn't so much that I didn't get it, what wasn't to get, but I couldn't fathom the waste of space. A good piece of art should inspire an artist, give them ideas, but all I was inspired to do was paint the inside of a Walmart warehouse. I also felt totally sorry for the cabbies that had to deal with the boxes.

The Brillo boxes are better explained by the show's review in this morning's New York Times. I knew about the changes to the format, what the Times calls a sudden desire to please, and I get that. There is so much competition now with shows and fairs all over town this week and the second Frieze New York in May. The Focus section of the Armory Show is normally dedicated to new markets and their artists, last year it was the Nordic countries, but this year the Focus was on America. It's pretty much an art show in the middle of an art fair with nothing especially new about it. What I didn't know was that Eric Shiner, director of Pittsburgh's Warhol Museum, was the Focus organizer and that explains a lot.

Personally I think that if competition is the Armory Show's biggest worry they would be better off not toying with the makeup of the show but just moving it back a few weeks. Looking out the window at hopefully winter's last gasp, it has been snowing on and off for two days, that seems like a good idea. If I were an art tourist planning a trip to the city for a big art show and I had to choose between the Armory in March or the Frieze in May it wouldn't be much of a decision. Or maybe I would just plan a trip to the Warhol Museum instead, it's probably much cheaper trip but than again it's in Pittsburgh.

This video is a walk through from the first day of the Armory Show by VernissageTV. VTV is an online art channel founded in 2005 and is also free as a podcast on iTunes. Their website has a huge archive of videos worth a look on a rainy or snowy day. Watch for those ever present Brillo pad boxes.

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Observations on Art 3.6

Contrary to prevailing opinion, and as you can see from this film of last year's Volta, art people don't wear exclusively black, it isn't a rule written in some secret handbook of art. Sometimes they do wear bits of other color including white, gray, and khaki. I like the girl just before the one minute mark because she pretty much shows you the method I use when taking in a large show.


Volta NY 2012 from David Willems on Vimeo.
Music by Reefrider - Kinky Cowgirl

PS - I saw some turquoise in this too. Turquoise is a personal favorite and always good for jewelry  It looks good with all the black.

Observations on Art 3.5

To me Art Week has become another of those unofficial indicators that spring is almost here. It also seems to be the opening of the warmer weather tourist season with people wandering and exploring more and not just coming to the city to shop or go to the theatre. In this current political world where we debate even emergency aid visitors may be in for a surprise when the get here. Sandy was the story for a long time but as with everything it passed as other things made headlines. Everybody knows, or should know, that Staten Island and the beach areas of Brooklyn are still devastated but even in Manhattan some areas have yet to recover. Some may never again be what they were.

One of New York main gallery districts is in Chelsea along the Hudson River. During the worst of the storm almost every gallery south and west of 21^st street was flooded and parts of the area were under twenty feet of water. Galleries on the ground floors of buildings were wiped out with thousands of art works destroyed and Reuters now estimates insurance claims for just art will reach $500 million. One totally unforeseen problem is who is responsible for an art work that was paid for by a collector but never picked up. Many of Chelsea's galleries have reopened, some just last week, but whether the district remains as it was is an open question. Galleries like Gargosian and Zwirner can afford to move their inventory at a moments notice, most can't, and with a future of rising sea levels the best option is probably to move the galleries to higher ground. Global warming comes to the art world.

Tourists walking or riding through the gallery districts will have no clue of the turmoil still just under the surface so they probably will be in wonder of the recovery. A visit to the South Street Seaport, another tourist favorite, will probably change their minds.

We decided to do a bit of wandering Sunday and eventually got to the Seaport. To be honest the area looks like it was visited by the zombie apocalypse. By that I mean on fist look it seems fine but look a little closer and something is missing, people. It's eerie to walk down the street between buildings that look just as they did before Sandy hit down to masking tape on the windows and locks on the doors. While the museum and piers are open a majority of the shops and restaurants remain closed months after the storm. Some buildings in the area still have no ll phone service or internet because Verizon's underground cables were destroyed as the East River moved to the west.

Granted the seaport area is a warm weather spot, and it normally is quiet in the winter, but it just seems so dead for lack of a better word. I read somewhere that businesses in the area are having trouble negotiating their leases with property owners who want to charge higher rents to people that lost everything. Other tenants, principally on Front Street, have been told their buildings wont reopen until spring or even early summer. Many businesses will probably move elsewhere, the streets a few blocks off the river seem fine, and wait for the rising river to make the shops waterfront again.

When all is said and done the Seaport will probably be a major tourist spot again but of a different kind. A tourist spot to remind people of what once was before super storms and rising sea levels became the norm or just a reminder of the havoc those storms can cause.

If I seem climate cynical sometimes blame my brother, he fills me with dread at times.

Observations from the Window 3.4

Hairstyle is something I have never in my life worried about, my hair is what it is, long, wild and for the most part unmanageable. Now I may not worry about hairstyles but that doesn't mean I have never thought about them. I was catching up on magazines a few weeks ago and it just struck me as funny that the two supposedly new hot styles for this spring are so different from each other. The first is perfect for me, Vogue calls it gym hair, because it's long, wild, and looks pretty much unmanageable. "The hair is meant to look disheveled," said one stylist. What it means is I could go to a salon and pay to have my hair look like it did when I walked in. The other style they call slick hair and is usually extremely short, pulled back if not, shiny, and saturated with mousse. Before you ask slick hair was in the magazine before Charlize Theron's appearance at the Academy Awards, maybe she saw it. Honestly i didn't know mousse still existed so I'll just skip this style.

Coincidentally Sunday morning's Up With Chris Hayes panel featured Liz Mair with uber-short slick hair and Stephanie Kelton looking like she had just gotten out of bed. Than again maybe that early on a Sunday it wasn't a style statement at all, maybe Kelton had just gotten out of bed.

Yes you actually just read a post about hairstyles. I had it written for some Sunday Observations that never happened and now it doesn't fit with anything I'm working on. So there it is.

Observations on Art 3.3

Have I mentioned yet that this is Art Week? It's another sure sign that spring isn't too far off. Among other things this year's edition brings the 100^th anniversary of the original Armory Show, the 25^th anniversary of the ADAA Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory, the 15^th anniversary of the current Armory Show on Piers 92 and 94, and the 5^th anniversary of the Salon Zürcher. It's going to be a very busy week and one of the few times of the year I decide to write about art and little else.

Because of the centennial of the original show I think a bit of history and a trivia lesson are called for. Known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art the 1913 Armory Show ran in New York from February 17^th until March 15^th. From there it traveled to Chicago where it was at the Art Institute of Chicago from March 24^th until April 16^th. It became known as the Armory show because in New York it was housed in the 69^th Regiment Armory. Attendance in Chicago was actually twice what it was in New York but, New York being New York, the name stuck.

One of the organizers of the show was Lille P. Bliss who was one of the major art collectors of the day. Bliss, who was never married, devoted her life to bringing modern art to the U.S. and her collection eventually included works by Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. Not only was Bliss one of the show's organizers she also became one its largest buyers. In May 1929 Bliss had lunch with Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and the result was that the Bliss and Rockefeller collections became the foundations of the Museum Of Modern Art which opened later that year.

Not to be outdone Chicago has its own claim to Armory Show fame. Because of the show The Art Institute of Chicago became the first American art museum to show the work of Pablo Picasso, because technically the Regiment Armory wasn't an art museum, but at the time the seven works were labeled with the Americanized Paul Picasso. The Chicago stop is also remembered because AIC students burned Henri Matisse in effigy as the Midwest didn't seem ready for modern art, not that it is now. The Institute is currently running the show "Picasso and Chicago" which includes over 200 of his works. It should be noted that Pablo Picasso himself never set foot in the United States.

After seeing the modern art show photographer Alfred Stieglitz said it was made up of "painters and sculptors who decline to go on doing what the camera does better. You’ll go back to your habitual worship of eternal repetitions of mere externals of people and things that cram all the museums and galleries, but you won’t feel happy. The mere outside of things won’t satisfy you as it used to."

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia has a huge site devoted to the 1913 show which includes works, vintage reviews and criticism along with current opinions and essays. It's work a look or an afternoon.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 2.28

Next week is Armory Week but the kids who play at politics in Washington just wont to get out of the way. I say play at politics because at the moment they seem more like spoiled brats on the playground than leaders of anything important. Tomorrow the sequester will take effect, yes will take effect, and the current debate centers more on whose idea it was than on how to deal with it. Even Wall Street may have finally said the hell with them as the stock market nears an all time record high. Of course eventually the cuts will be felt and we can all watch as it crashes back down. The only idea Republicans have is to give President Obama the authority to move the cuts around, in effect making all the cuts the President's, something he refuses to accept.

Elsewhere in the nation's capitol Senators for all practical purposes scolded police chiefs who support background checks for gun purchases. During the Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told the police chief of Milwaukee that the limited resources of police departments is a reason to bolster gun ownership and not limit it.

Also The Supreme Court, on the same day a statue of Rosa Parks was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol, announced it is considering part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and whether there is still a need for an important part of it. The section SCOTUS will look at requires that states with a history of discrimination get approval before making changes to how they hold elections. Rather than try and explain it I'll leave this link to a good article in the Miami Herald.

Turning to the petty side of politics the wingnuts continue to snub New Jersey Governor Chris Christie by not inviting him to speak at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Apparently the conservatives still blame Christie for President Obama's reelection and don't care that he is the only Republican with an approval rating, currently an unreal 74%, to rival Hillary Clinton's. To Christie's credit he said this; "So I didn't know that I hadn't been invited to CPAC until like two days ago when I saw it in the news. It’s not like I’m lacking for invitations to speak, both here or around the country, it’s not like I have a whole lot of openings in my schedule."

The current list of those speaking instead of Christie includes the winners Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Allen West, Rick Santorum, and Sarah Palin. As a bonus Wayne LaPierre will be speaking. Somehow the wingnuts see their losing past as the best hope for their winning future.

I have no words.

update - Barring any totally unforeseen and just as totally unexpected, changes the sequester games officially begin at 11:59 p.m. Friday. Why than? According to both sides, the White House and Republicans actually agree, President Obama can decide at what time to start the cuts. He just has to do it by 11:59 p.m. Friday.

Observations from the Window 2.26

Paperman, the mixed animation film from Disney that I love, won the Best Animated Short Film award at Sunday night's Academy Awards. If you haven't seen it, or if you saw my post after the video went private, I updated my original post with a new embed/link and you really need to see it. Besides, the little story I'm about to tell you will make much more sense if you do.

Paperman director John Kahrs accepted the award as Kristina Reed, the film's producer, began throwing paper airplanes with kisses on them from her seat on the balcony. As paper planes tend to do they didn't fly well at all but dove straight down into Hollywood's finest. While the crowd didn't seem to notice, or understood the planes meaning, security wasn't thrilled at all with the 'stunt' and Reed was evicted from the auditorium. After ten minutes of protest the party pooping guards allowed Reed back to her seat with a slap on the wrist.

Consider this a warning, if you ever win an Academy Award don't even think about confetti, noise makers, or any other form of celebration other than some polite clapping. It may be the night of your life but proper decorum will be displayed at all times.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 2.25

I wasn't planning on writing anything more about last night's Academy Awards but I have to get something out of my system. Before I get to that I'll mention Anne Hathaway won as expected and looked adorable as always, I really don't care if most of twitter seems to hate her. I was a little disappointed there was no Scarlett Johansson sighting but I totally forgot about Cat On A Hot Tin Roof so that was understandable.

What I need to get out of my system started with a very late night tweet by The Onion concerning nine year old Quvenzhane Wallis who was nominated for Best Actress; "Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhane Wallis is kind of a c***, right?" The tweet has since been deleted. Yes it was totally offensive, especially when directed at a nine year old girl, but come on it was The Onion. I'm sure whoever was tweeting for The Onion was drinking just as much as everybody else and, looking at my tweets from last night, tweeting and drinking is never a good idea. As I said the tweet has been deleted and hopefully they apologize to her in some way. Wallis is attacked with almost as much relish as Hathaway and I'm sure it was meant as sarcasm but sometimes sarcasm goes too far.

End of story right? This is America, of course that isn't the end of it. The rapidly becoming irrelevant Keith Olbermann jumped on the soapbox he hasn't been on since the Penn State scandal broke and demanded a full public apology which I'm sure wouldn't satisfy him anyway. It has also been said the tweet was only acceptable because Wallis is a "woman of color" even though nobody anywhere has remotely considered it acceptable at all. Others are demanding to know who wrote the offensive tweet and want him, personally I'm sure it was a him, fired and severely punished. Whether or not the writer is fired is up to how The Onion handles the fickle court of public opinion but otherwise punished? What happened to the supposedly liberal Hollywood's love of the freedom of speech? If somebody can be punished for writing something stupid or crude I'm totally screwed.

It was offensive and totally over the line but was it surprising at a all? Not really, not in the world we currently live in and what is considered normal conversation and I'm quite sure the person tweeting thought it was his edgiest ever. Not in a world where gays and women seem to be perfectly acceptable punchlines of stupid stereotypical humor. Maybe it was me but I don't ever remember watching a more white and male dominated Academy Awards show than the one last night. I shouldn't be surprised, current Oscar voters are 90% white, 77% male, and have an average age of 62. Change the age and I probably just described the writing staff at The Onion too.

I may be totally wrong about all of this. If I am feel free to tell me.

There is something to be remembered here, something we all should remember sometimes. As Yahoo Canada's Greg Hughes wrote; "The Onion made a pretty significant faux pas tonight on Quvenzhane Wallis. They deleted the tweet, but the Internet doesn't ever forget."

update - For what it's worth, since I posted this morning Steve Hannah, CEO of The Onion, apologized by way of its Facebook page. "On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive." You can read the full letter here.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 2.24

The Academy Awards are tonight so hopefully I can go from Danica Patrick in victory lane to Anne Hathaway on the red carpet. That sounds like a good way to spend a Sunday. I'm not going to make any Oscar winning predictions because in all honesty I care more about what people are wearing than who wins. Seriously, does winning an Oscar mean anything anymore other than that you made a relatively uncontroversial film and played the Oscar game just right? As a public service I'll leave this link to Nate Silver's predictions from his blog in The New York Times. Silver uses the same models he used to predict the Presidential election, when he predicted 49 of the 50 states correctly, and as he says, "Anne Hathaway is about as safe a bet to win for Les Misérables as Mitt Romney was to win Utah."

Other than that my Academy Award preview consists of sharing the documentary Chasing Ice which should win the Best Documentary Award but wasn't even nominated. Chasing Ice did win the Excellence In Cinematography Award at last year's Sundance Festival where it premiered and was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. In Chasing Ice the National Geographic photographer James Balog uses thirty of the ultimate in time-lapse cameras, at the time the new and revolutionary Nikon D200, to capture proof of climate change. Years are compressed into seconds as you watch glaciers and ice from Alaska to the Alps quickly disappear. As of now the movie isn't supposed to be released on video until September and it isn't streaming anywhere so you might have to make do with this clip.

It isn't much of a consolation prize but "Before My Time" from Chasing Ice is nominated for Best Original Song tonight. Hopefully we will get to see Scarlett Johansson perform and, yes, that is how I get both Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johansson in my Academy Award preview.


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Before My Time
Written and produced by J. Ralph, performed by Scarlett Johansson, and accompanied by violinist Joshua Bell. "Before My Time" was played under the credits of the documentary Chasing Ice.

Observations from the Window 2.23

Sunday Danica Patrick will be starting the Daytona 500 from the poll position, the fastest qualifier at Daytona with a speed of 196.434 miles per hour, and the world becomes just a little bit better. There was a time I spent nearly every Sunday afternoon watching a race and discussing the fine art of pit stop times with my dad. I don't follow racing as much as I once did, then again I don't spend as much time with my dad as I once did, but I remember watching the Indianapolis 500 in 2005 when she became the first woman to lead that race in her very first trip there. I was watching again in 2008 when she became the first woman to win any IndyCar race.

This will be Patrick's first full season running the NASCAR Sprint Cup series. For the racing novices that is the series where you drive pseudo stock cats by punching the gas and turning to the left for two hours. Sprint Cup racing is the pride of southerners, future southerners, and wannabe southerners the world over.

It has never been easy for Patrick to be taken seriously in the totally male dominated world of auto racing. They always said she was a flash in the pan, that she got so much media attention because of her looks or just because she was a woman. It was never because of her skill as a driver because everybody knows a woman just can't handle a car like a man can. Multiple champion and team owner Richard Petty is the father of my onetime fav driver Kyle and a now sort of the Queen Father of NASCAR. Just last week Petty said this while discussing media coverage of Patrick and her new boyfriend NASCAR rookie Ricky Stenhouse. "It takes away from the racing deal, the stars that really bring the people and the show that brings the people and the people that put on the show. Peyton Place and the racetrack, I keep them separated." I haven't heard if 'King Richard' revised his comments after Patrick won the pole.

So why does it even matter? Five year old Ella Gordon, daughter of driver Jeff Gordon, told her dad she wanted a picture with Patrick in Victory Lane after Patrick won the pole. Jeff Gordon happens to be starting in the front row next to Patrick yet I still wonder who Ella will be cheering for tomorrow. It matters because it's just another way for young girls to see they can do whatever they want to do.

When the flag drops with Danica on the poll the good ole boys in the Daytona infield will be crying in their cans of Budweiser. The confederate flags may still be flying over their tricked out Winnebagos but their world will never be the same.

I like the thought of that.

Observations from the Window 2.20

In a little over a week the sequester returns. Sequester is a word that will go down i history as a euphemism for totally self-inflicted unnecessary economic pain on a national scale. It's also one of the reasons politics isn't exactly my favorite thing right now. While a majority of the American people worry about jobs the Republican party obsesses over spending cuts that will cut those jobs. You think letting the auto industry crash and burn would have hurt the economy watch the ripple effects of cutting government spending to the bone.*

A few examples off the top of my head. Police, fire, teachers, and EMT will see job cuts around the country. Those free national museums your'e going to visit in Washington? Closed. The national parks on your itinerary this summer? Closed. If you are flying anywhere get to the airport early because the TSA lines will be unreal then once you get through pray that lonely air traffic controller at the end of a double shift is awake. Oh and be careful what you buy at the grocery store because there wont be as many meat, fish, and poultry inspectors, not that there are nearly enough now. Worried about the border and immigration? Worry some more because there will be fewer border guards. Traveling overseas legally? You better have your passport because it will probably take longer to get one and when you return be ready for longer waits at customs.

The Pentagon will see massive, probably necessary, cuts but at all the wrong places. We can keep fighting our wars, because the cost of them is not in the budget, but wont be able to hold military funerals at Arlington or pay for prosthetic limbs for disabled veterans.

You get the idea, it goes on and on. The problem is Congress members will have none of these problems because a majority are rich anyway. They have the best healthcare in the world and pensions that set them up for life. I wont even get into the unlimited "campaign" contributions they now can take from corporations thanks to SCOTUS' Citizens United decision.

The hell I wont.

While you were out walking the dog or looking for a job SCOTUS quietly made a minor announcement yesterday. It seems they have decided to hear a case brought by our friends at the Republican National Committee. Some of the few election fiance controls remaining are the amount of money individuals can donate to a candidate, currently $2,000, and the total an individual can donate to all parties or candidates in any election cycle, currently $123,000. In a lower court decision Judge Janice Brown, one of the most conservative judges in the country, said that lifting these limits would corrupt the system even more than it now is.** Not good enough for the GOP, they may be fiscally conservative when it comes to spending on you but they themselves want to drown in cash. The Supreme Court that gave them Citizens United is probably about to let them.

Was there another time in American history where an entire political party didn't care about anything but cold hard cash?

* OMB Report Pursuant to the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012

** Shaun McCutcheon, et al., v. Federal Election Commission 

2/21 update - Yesterday USA Today had a good article about the effects the sequester would have on air travel. Each member of the FAA's work force will be furloughed one day out of every two weeks while customs employees will be off 12 to 14 days each over the course of the year. Taken together all the cuts will add up to three hours to the time it will take to get through an airport before and after an international flight. Also the Department of Defense announced 800,000 civilian employees will be laid-off should the cuts take effect. So much for the Republican Party's caring about jobs. The sequester could add two percentage points to the unemployment rate.

Observations on Art 2.18

With Armory Week just two weeks away my mind is turning more towards art and warm weather and away from politics and cold, both of which have me totally irritated right now.

I'm taking the time to post this video because I think it is just so dead on. I have this thing about art projects that are more theatre than anything else. I mean seriously if I stand on a street corner smoking a cigarette and call it an art project does that make it so? It's the question that will never be answered and if it suddenly was we artists wouldn't have anything to argue about all the time because, and this is surprising, not many want to discuss politics with me.

If you have never seen Portlandia it is a quirky comedy sketch show on IFC Friday nights that is now in its third season. Portlandia is produced by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels' company so you get the idea. I haven't seen many episodes, even though it's a current VQ favorite, but Ash showed me this sketch and I have to say ... yes, yes, yes, my thoughts exactly! I especially like the purse snatcher project called "Meditation on Property."

Just watch, and be sure to watch it to the end, it needs absolutely no other description. I do have one question now and it's this, is this sketch an art project?

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Sunday Observations 2.17

This Sunday morning I'm going to be short, simple, and to the point. I woke up and found that I had been retweeted by Mika Brzezinski. So yes, I can die happy now. It's going to be a good day.

update - Not long ago after 46 hours of dancing THON 2013 came to an end. The total amount raised this year was was a record $12,374,034.46 bringing the total raised over the years to $101,477,271.88, all for the Four Diamonds Fund. I must also inform you, at my brother's insistence, that the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences raised $92,481.23 on its own, the most of any general organization. No word on the College of Arts and Architecture, not that I'm competitive or anything.