March 2011 – criticismism ii

March 29, 2011

Pino Pascali, Farm Tools (1968)

Leading agriculturalists, politicians and intellectuals got together this March to explore how Roman farming techniques can help us protect the environment in 2011. The setting was Italy’s leading school of agriculture in Florence and the occasion was to mark 50 years of a journal of farming history, namely Rivista di…

March 25, 2011March 26, 2011

Pino Pascali, Vedova Blu (1968)

There is nothing like an early death to fuse an artist’s biography and work in the minds of his audience. Here is Pino Pascali, beside one of his best known works, inseparable. Common sense tells us that a motorcycle crash should not affect the worth of the Italian sculptor’s art.…

March 21, 2011

Nancy Spero, Maypole: Take No Prisoners II (2008)

Antonin Artaud only wrote one play, said to be impossible to restage. So we might now find the best example of the writer’s so-called Theatre of Cruelty at a Nancy Spero show Certainly, the only performance of Spurt of Blood which this blogger ever witnessed would be difficult to review.…

March 18, 2011

Edwina Ashton, Peaceful serious creatures (lobster arranging), 2011

Most of those lucky enough to see Edwina Ashton’s performance at Jerwood Space in the next five weeks will be, presumably, non-plussed. How else to react to people dressed as lobsters? For three hour stretches the lobsters may be seen to rearrange objects. There may be more to it, but…

March 15, 2011March 15, 2011

Coco Cartier and Ezili Lagerfeld, Voodoo Chanel (2011)

Brand power is interesting because brands are power. They can attract money and votes. They can set the conditions for certain types of behaviour. Even weapons have brands. This show makes a target out of one luxury fashion brand and at first you wonder why. It is after all only…

March 11, 2011

Gordon Matta-Clark, Reality Properties: Fake Estates (1973)

Reality can seem a debatable term. But is worth considering that the word came into use in the 1540s as a legal reference to a fixed property. Of course, the word realty still means possession. So you could make a case for Fake Estates being a realist artwork par excellence.…

March 9, 2011March 15, 2011

Interview: Melissa Logan and Nadine Jessen

There is something unholy going on, although it is not clear quite what, and there was nothing about bones and hair in the manifesto for the show. â€œVoodoofesto,â€ Melissa Logan corrects me. Stacks of folded t-shirts are laid out on a white shelf. The logos say Chanel, but the slogans…

March 6, 2011March 6, 2011

Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting (1974)

Novelist Philip Roth is known for having said: â€œWhen a writer is born into a family, that family is finished.â€ And this work by Gordon Matta-Clark suggests a comparable model for artists. The house which he literally saws in two is described in a caption to the film of the…

March 3, 2011

Marcus Coates, The Trip (2011)

Towards the end of this 35 minute film, a horrible thought occurred to me. Maybe Marcus Coates is making the whole thing up and playing an unethical trick on a terminally ill man. In voiceover, with a view from a hospice room, he describes a trip up the Amazon in…