<h1>Archives</h1>
    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 17/04/2011

    April 17, 2011

    Some links from the last  seven days. Peruse away:

    • This week it was revealed that Andy Warhol accounted for 17% of all auction sales in 2010. Well, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon can explain why (via/ @Hyperallergic).
    • In The Telegraph, Clive Aslet seems prepared to forgive the modernist architecture and the art establishment’s impudence, so long as Turner Contemporary is good for Margate. But as a local, he at least has a stake in the matter.
    • The Guardian carries a horror story in the form of an interview: Marina Lutz is a film-maker who works with a hoard of Super-8 footage and 10,000 photographs taken of her by her dad before she reached the age of 16. Trauma by camera.
    • Meanwhile The Observer lets us in on Bob and Roberta Smith’s plans for the royal wedding. Their (his) likenesses of the happy couple are quite something. (I’ll try and refrain from any further reference to that forthcoming day.)
    • Not content with nicking the odd idea, the ad industry is now lifting the whole presentational style of the art world. Christopher Bedford tells it like it is in Frieze.
    • Can’t wait for this new feature film about the life of the President of Kazakhstan. If this piece in The Independent is anything to go by it should be the comedy of the year.
    • The Street Art show at MOCA in Los Angeles has made for some spectacular photos on Unurth blog and, according to the Culture Monster blog, some deplorable outbreaks of, erm, street art.
    • Astra Taylor’s Zizek documentary is now available on Google Video at least until April 29 it will be (via/ The New Inquiry)
    • I was delighted to find that gangsta rapper and contemporary art guru Hennessy Youngman has added some twee Scottish indie music to the mix.
    • And here’s Klaus Kinski getting very worked up about a doll in an international language.

    contemporary art, installation art, light installation, sound art

    Angie Atmadjaja, Intrinsic (2011)

    April 16, 2011

    Lights which flash in time with music will be familiar to anyone under the age of about 80. They are the trappings of a nightclub or rock concert. They gear people up for action.

    It seems appropriate that younger folk take drugs, get drunk and seek out intensities like this on a Saturday night. But it feels wrong for me to be here, sober, on a Friday lunchtime.

    Light tubes hang from the ceiling and flicker to a building rhythm. At given interludes, they offer an illuminated pause as if waiting for you. They are alive and it is a trip.

    While white cube galleries promote measured contemplation, blacked-out Phoenix is currently a dark cube, giving rise to late night or subterranean impulses.

    It is like being the first to arrive at a stark, atonal disco. The space is defined by dangerous strobing and noise. There’s that same libidinous rush, just no dancing, no bar, no sex.

    But maybe dancing etc is the scourge of the modern nightspot. Sound/light installations like this suggest there could be other agendas or other uses for the dark. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

    Brightonians may want to hurry along to Phoenix because the current show closes tomorrow. Intrinsic by Angie Atmadjaja is one of three works in Actuate My Void. See gallery website for more details.

    contemporary art, sculpture

    Interview: Jaume Plensa

    April 14, 2011
    © Lorne Campbell / Guzelian. Courtesy YSP

    When a bronze gong is struck in the middle of an art gallery, does it make a sound? Well, according to Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, that might depend on you. The solemn clang of his well known work Jerusalem is not so much an aural phenomenon as a vibration of the heart.

    There are 11 gongs in a darkened room, waiting for a visitor to become number 12. They are suspended next to malletas and inscribed with text from the Biblical Song of Songs. One might also ask if the sound of the ancient instrument is the reason one strikes it, and not vice versa. Plensa seems keen on poetic logic.

    “I have said many times that for me sculpture is the best way to pose a question – that is, the most conceptual way,” says the softly spoken artist. His serious mood is amplified by the ten monumental alabaster heads in the gallery where I speak to him. They radiate solemnity.

    “But on other levels sculpture has a tremendous capacity to talk about abstraction,” Plensa continues. He says it is so difficult to create portraits with sculpture that sculptural gestures are more conceptual than concrete.

    “Attitude is key,” he adds, “because you are not only talking about materials but also ethics, philosophy, the nature of religion. Whatever is part of the human condition is part of the sculpture and that I guess is very interesting to my way of working.”

    So like any decent gong, sculpture depends on what the viewer brings to the party. There go the laws of objectivity again. In Plensa’s hands reason is as soft as alabaster and as malleable as one of the many lines of poetry he gives three-dimensional form to in this show.

    Given the ancient appeal of these deity-like Alabaster Heads, it comes as a surprise to learn that here, as elsewhere in his work, computer modelling has been used to elongate the forms. And when I ask about the extensive use of technology in his work, the answer is also unexpected.

    Technology, he argues, is, like sculpture, just a means of enquiry: “What spirituality means is to continue to try to think about the main questions generation after generation. Technology is probably the vehicle that every generation is using to ask those questions.”

    Plensa mentions a recent visit to York Cathedral as an example of a previous form of hi-tech, and mentions the standing stones at Carnac in Britanny as an example of applied repetition. Rhythm in sculpture does for the brain what in music it does for the body. “It helps you to concentrate,” he says.

    The alabaster heads number ten or so and do indeed focus the mind. Rhythm here leads to a feeling of timelessness. “I’m also emphasising the repetition because my intention was to create something like old museum pieces coming from we don’t know where.”

    It should be pointed out that many other works by this sculptor have contemporary written all over them. In adjacent galleries are luminous fibreglass creations: In the Midst of Dreams and Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil. Outdoors are more virtually dreamed up sculptures comprised of grids and alphabets, including the eight-metre high figure House of Knowledge.

    However, Plensa insists, “the piece should not be for today, it should be forever.” And this is not, he adds, “in terms of preservation of materials because I love also ephemeral things. No, it’s a concept – because when you are in front of things you get this flash of eternity.”

    It is not unlike Plensa to quote a writer to make his point: “I like very much the explanation that William Faulkner said once. He said ‘I could not accept that people were put in the world only to endure – we are here to prevail.’ And I like that as a concept in sculpture.”

    Perhaps there’s even an echo of Faulkner’s novel, Wild Palms, in the 58-metre sculpture Twenty-Nine Palms. This showstopper is made from 17,000 stainless steel letters which spell lines from a range of the artist’s favourite authors. Plensa trails a hand across the curtain to demonstrate the jangle.

    So if a breeze disturbed this work in a gallery with no one around to hear, would it still make a sound? Well, that depends…

    Written for Culture24. Jaume Plensa was interviewed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, where his show runs until 25 September 2011. See gallery website for further details.

    contemporary art, intervention

    James Turrell, Deer Shelter Skyspace (2006)

    April 12, 2011

    It was not a day you would think you might need protection. My recent visit here was on a mild Spring afternoon. But once inside the skyspace, the breeze up there carried the force of a roar.

    The clouds or perhaps the Earth appeared to be moving twice as fast. It brought to mind footage which had been speeded up to make a disturbing point about the unstable climate.

    Shelter is not necessarily the point of James Turrell’s work. In a number of similar skyscapes, it has been said the American artist is more keen to simply bring the cosmos closer.

    But it happens that this piece of work is built into a listed 19th century fold for livestock belonging to the Bretton Park Estate in West Yorkshire. It has a certain historical purpose.

    Now, as a restless wind skims overhead, the opening in the roof reveals how exposed we might have been as we wandered o’er nearby dale and distant city streets.

    Stone benches tilt back to allow a perfect view of the elements. A square aperture helps accentuate the pictorial drama of the skies above, or at very least their infinite indifference.

    This prospect of oblivion is troubling and Deer Shelter offers only limited physical cover. But for a moment or two of contemplation, existence does seem here at least as solid as the four walls.

    There’s a PBS documentary featuring an interview with James Turrell available here. Deer Shelter meanwhile can be seen at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and further details including press at time of opening can be seen here.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 09/04/2011

    April 9, 2011
    • Ai Weiwei’s arrest has been a gift to the blogosphere with much better coverage at Hyperallergic and Eyeteeth than you will find here. But here’s a curious thing: the dissident artist’s collected blog posts are briefly reviewed in the Guardian today. He posted every day for 4 years.
    • Meanwhile Russia’s most troublesome artists have just been awarded a state prize worth 400,000 roubles. Kriston Capps at the Washington Post gives you some idea of what the group has had to endure before now and he’s surely done well to secure a few quotes.
    • Colm Tóibín has written an informed and readable piece about the life of Joan Miró. Among other things, the story in the Guardian argues that Barcelona was once a bit too provincial for the Catalan painter. Another snippet of Miro news this week details his friendship with Hemingway.
    • In an even more gossipy vein, here is a piece from Vanity Fair about the love life of Pablo Picasso. The painter was “a bit of a vampire” it seems.
    • Just as scary is the report on this show at CCCS Florence on the ever interesting We Make Money Not Art blog. It features sound art you really don’t want to be hearing.
    • Paris Review has an interview with Pavel Zoubok, whose New York gallery is the city’s only space devoted to collage. He explains the medium’s popularity with writers, women and web-users.
    • If you haven’t seen the new public art installation outside Craven Cottage (home of Fulham Football Club), it’s worth a peek. Footie blog Off the Post sums it up just about as well as anyone.
    • And if that doesn’t make your smile, this might. Someone writing under the pseudonym Facebike has written a very engaging story for Artsdesk. But whether it’s a pisstake of art or their local council, I’ll leave you to decide.

    contemporary art, contemporary sculpture, intervention

    Leo Fitzmaurice, Arcadia (2007)

    April 7, 2011

    This sign is at once ironic, illusory and completely superfluous. So it ticks a lot of boxes to signal that it really just labels itself. Arcadia is after all the name of this artwork.

    More irony comes from the introduction of roadside signage into such a wild, mythical realm. A nearby motorway would kill the atmosphere. It would make shepherding a nightmare.

    Then illusion comes from the fact that, lovely as this scene be, it is far from unspoiled nature. It is the heavily landscaped nature of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and it certainly isn’t Greece.

    And thirdly, there is this sign’s lack of necessity. We can see this is an attractive view. So Leo Fitzmaurice’s artwork really just gets in the way. Culture is unavoidable like that.

    It will always speak of the millions who have gone before us. So the heritage-brown sign reminds us Arcadia has been at times a battlefield, a historic industry and a ruin.

    It also recalls that famous tomb painted by Nicolas Poussin. His signage reads: Et in Arcadia ego; an “I woz ere” by death.

    Death in this case may come by road or industrialised sightseeing. There may be an environmental message here, and what are those any more if not momento mori?

    The above work is one of a series Leo Fitzmaurice has installed around the idyllic grounds of YSP near Wakefield. This is by the visitor centre. For directions etc, see gallery website.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 03/04/11

    April 3, 2011

    It seems about time criticismism did some aggregation. So from now on I’ll try to post links to some of the news stories, features, blog posts, videos etc, which I’ve enjoyed on any given week.

    So here goes:

    • My first virtual found object has to be the first show by Dead Hare Radio. It features a chat with art blogger Caroline Miranda from C-Monster.net, who among other things can tell you how and why to aggregate web links. Thanks to all involved!
    • Journalists or bloggers of any description may like this celebration of the trade by Jeff McMahon at Contrary Magazine. Journos get a William Burroughs-style junk sickness, apparently.
    • I really enjoyed this urgent report about the progress of Kasimir Malevich’s Black Sqaure. Blogger Vvoi from New Art describes his encounter with the painting at the State Gallery in Moscow.
    • After reading these two reviews of the Watteau show currently at the Wallace Collection, I feel satisfied and yet dissatisfied: the former because they tell me so much about it; the latter because I now so much want to see the exhibition for myself. They are by Fisun Güner in New Statesman and Charles Darwent in the Independent.
    • But here’s an altogether different sort of review by Hrag Vartanian at Hyperallergic. The future of art criticism? Perhaps.
    • The usual sight of a farmer’s market in Brighton this weekend got a bit more interesting after reading this piece in Frieze about locavorism, urban agriculture and restaurants as art. It also includes a couple of tasty tidbits about Gordon Matta-Clark.
    • In the wake of Tate’s acquisition of a £65.5m Picasso, here’s the most racy analysis of artwork-as-commodity you are likely to read all year, from Ben Street’s blog on Art21.
    • Jonathan Jones at the Guardian makes the shocking claim that artists should (occasionally) be able to paint and draw.
    • A press release can still reach where a spray can can’t: Street Art at MoCA in Los Angeles. Oh, and there’s this.

    Arts Council England, contemporary art

    Arts Council funding – a modest proposal

    April 1, 2011

    If you’re heading out to look at some art this weekend, it may be with some relief. Chances are that on Wednesday your nearest gallery made it onto Arts Council England’s list of National portfolio organisations.

    NPOs will continue to get funding, albeit reduced by some percentage figure: typically 11%. So most galleries are going to have to scale back by more than a tenth, to offer much less of what they offer so well.

    The quality of exhibitions will no doubt suffer and there will be less support for artists. And that varied programmes of talks may have to charge at levels which preclude some non-Etonians.

    Of course, there will be job losses too. But even these are unlikely to make headlines. In fact as far as most people in will realise, it will be business as usual. The galleries will still be there.

    For this reason, I would suggest ACE change their decision and withdraw all funding from 15 of the most high profile art venues in the country, who in turn should close up shop the next day.

    Galleries that must close include: BALTIC, Nottingham Contemporary, Ikon Birmingham, FACT Liverpool, Cornerhouse Manchester, New Art Gallery Walsall, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the beautiful De La Warr Pavilion on the South Coast.

    ACE should of course put all several London galleries out of business: Serpentine, Whitechapel, Camden and ICA. And most deliciously of all Kettle’s Yard Cambridge and Modern Art Oxford.

    This would save about £14m a year. We would still need to cut another £0.9m, but that could easily come from abandoning work on Turner Contemporary and The Hepworth Wakefield.

    Okay, that might be an incalculable loss. But think how 17 major empty and unfinished galleries would play in the hearts and minds of anyone with a scrap of sensitivity: worse than a cancelled outreach programme.

    If we are living in a society of the spectacle, why not give this government the spectacle they deserve?

    agriculture, arte povera, sculpture

    Pino Pascali, Farm Tools (1968)

    March 29, 2011

    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 storia dell’ agricoltura.

    This publication would have been seven years old when Pascali made Farm Tools, so here both the artwork and the academic world appear to have been ploughing the same furrow.

    Both ventures seem to express the Italian tendency to cast back in time to antiqiuity. Understandable, but artists had previously been more interested in art and architecture than farming.

    This may have been an oversight, mind you. Historian Pliny the Elder makes an observation on the very theme which must have informed the arte povera movement:

    “In what manner then are lands to be cultivated to the best advantage? In the cheapest manner if it is good, or by good bad things.” Source: this 19th century encyclopaedia.

    Received wisdom and perhaps revived wisdom said that you could give the land too much “culture” or cultivation. And the same might be said of an audience, so Pascali uses rudimentary tools.

    Once they are propped against a gallery wall, they remind me, if nothing else, of how little I know about rural life. So “good bad things” indeed, to quote Pliny quoting the ancients.

    This work is on show at Camden Arts Centre, London, until 1 May 2011, in the Pino Pascali show mentioned in the last post.

    arte povera

    Pino Pascali, Vedova Blu (1968)

    March 25, 2011

    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. Yet it does, and this fact even seems to tell us something about the function of art.

    Pascali himself spoke of his sculptures as tombs. Since his death in 1968 they are what indeed survive him. We have photographs and footage too, but the art is more vital.

    But solemnity has gone out the window along with marble and bronze. Along with other artists from the arte povera movement, Pascali rejected traditional materials.

    In light of his death, the gesture says: you can’t take it with you. This fur-covered spider has outlived every Italian Prime Minister of the 1960s. Bet you can’t name any of them.

    Vedova Blu was created in a spirit of play, mind you. It is not very threatening, not even real, only the name suggests this Blue Widow is deadly. And this photo, of course, of a man at one with his own memorial.

    Work can be seen in ‘…a multitude of soap bubbles which explode from time to time…’: Pino Pascali’s final works 1967-1968. This show is at Camden Arts Centre until May 1 2011.