November 2004 Archives

Great post over at artblog.net about art-world gobbledygook. The layers of jargon in Franklin's example show the inaccessible elitism that walls off art from a wider audience - and it ain't $20 museum entrance fees.

26th Street is not Midtown, I know. But I'm not going to make a whole Flatiron category just for Senior and Shopmaker Gallery.

This show's title comes from a series by John Pfahl, whose work is included in the show. Most of the imagery is landscapes, many with languid, misty dawns or dusks, continuing a strong and long theme in painting that transferred to photography. Jem Southam and Richard Misrach are among this crew. Tim Maul looks the most promising; he was included in last year's ICP triennieal. Joni Sternbach provides the requisite retro, alternative process take on the theme.

Through Jan. 8th, 2005 at Senior & Shopmaker Gallery
21 East 26th St.
(212) 213-6767

So, apparently the NY Times Arts staff gets their editorial ideas from the Real Estate desk. This weekend's "Chelsea Enters Its Baroque Period" is a longer entry on the same theme covered from a real estate angle earlier in the week. I wasn't around for the SoHo boom, but apparently dealer Christian Haye was. His early 90s turn of phrase "SoHo on crack" both describes Chelsea today and sums up the article.

This was an interesting article personally because I find it fascinating to see a trend in my own life described as a larger bit of the zeitgeist. I started making Chelsea expeditions with my wife a couple of years ago to hunt out the photography shows there - which led to this blog. I knew this - take a look around any given Saturday - but it seems this cheap form of urban entertainment has been catching on with a lot of other people, too. It's the paradoxical feeling of a crowd's affirmation of one's interest and the desire to horde a cool thing. Too big a crowd and cool goes cold.

My first kid was born yesterday, a boy. August Henry Walker arrived at 4:19 pm weighing in at a respectable 7 pounds 2 ounces. Give 'im a couple of weeks and he'll be tagging along on the Chelsea gallery crawls.

I'm tardy on this, but congratulations to Caryn over at art.blogging.la. Her gallery, sixspace, has opened its first photography show entitled "snapshot".

The show collects works from five emerging LA photographers. The most promising is Andy Mueller whose work is shown above. Most pieces would qualify as affordable, even by my thrifty standards.

Through Dec. 4 at sixspace
549 West 23rd St
Los Angeles, CA
(213) 765-0248

Over the weekend, Gallery Hopper hit 1000 unique visitors in a month for the first time. Most of you appear to be stopping by once a week. All good news. Keeps me motivated to keep this up; I'm vain. I need an audience.

More importantly, my first kid will arrive today. My wife's scheduled for a c-section birth this afternoon, so by day's end, if all goes as planned, we'll have a bouncing baby boy. I promise to keep baby picture posts to a minimum. But posts of any kind will likely drop off. Trying to load up the queue in advance.

"Rhizome.org Director of Technology Francis Hwang will lead a panel discussion entitled 'Blogging and the Arts'. The panel includes artist Kabir Carter, photoblogger and journalist David Gallagher, artist and critic Tom Moody, and artist T.Whid. The discussion will address questions such as whether blogs will change the nature of discourse in the fine arts field, and ways that artists and critics are integrating this new form of communications into their own work."

Tuesday, November 23, 6:30-8pm
New Museum of Contemporary Art / Chelsea
556 West 22nd Street

Moody gives a preview of his thoughts... on his blog.

I will otherwise disposed, but obviously of interest to me. At this point, I think the art blogging "community" or "gang" is a small group talking mostly amongst ourselves. That could change, and its not necessarily a bad thing. Oddly, I couldn't give a rip about artists blogging. They tend towards the self-indulgent.

Thanks for the tip, Eliot.

We may be on the verge of a backlash against large scale color photography. I'm seeing more small scale, black and white, alternative process stuff, like the Nancy Rexroth show at Robert Mann. Rexroth's "Iowa" was shot with the Diana toy camera, a medium format plastic dynamo that has caught on with the Williamsburg crowd in the form of the Holga. Yet, Rexroth's work was done in the early- to mid-70s, about the time all those hipsters were being born.

The show consists of 10x8 silver prints vignetted on the edges from the Diana's poor optics. All are blurred to a greater or lesser degree, but obviously that was Rexroth's intent. Personally I don't get the point of that sort of thing. Rexroth was previously highlighted on flux and mutability.

Through Jan. 8 at Robert Mann Gallery
210 Eleventh Ave.
(212) 989-7600

The NY Times real estate section today had a good article on the commercial development of Chelsea and fears among gallery owners that the very gentrification they started will ruin the neighborhood with residential properties and - gasp - grocery stores. Douglas Baxter of Pace/Wildenstein says, ""It is hard to imagine where the art world will go if it has to leave Chelsea."

The Times suggests the Fashion District. Which would be great since that's where I work.

Jessica Hafford
Photographs of Green Haven Correctional Facility
Through Nov. 27 at OK Harris
383 West Broadway (btwn Spring and Broome)
(212) 431-3600

3 on the Subway
Photos by Bruce Davidson, Camilo José Vergara, and Sam Hollenshead
Through Jan. 17, 2005 at Museum of the City of New York
Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
(212) 534-1672

Hans-Peter Feldmann: 100 Years
Through Mar. 4, 2005 at PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave at the intersection of 46th Ave in Long Island City
(718)784-2084

Few Are Chosen: Street Photography and the Book, '36-'66
Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Robert Frank and more
Through Mar. 6, 2005 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
(212) 535-7710

The NY Times has reviewed the new biography of art dealer extrordinaire Joseph Duveen:

More than six decades after his death, Duveen's saga remains unrivaled in the history of his trade. Meryle Secrest's new biography, "Duveen,'' recounts his life and career, which were largely identical, in remarkable fullness. He was by all accounts, but most of all by his own, larger than life and full of contradictions: an effete impresario you might say. Exquisite taste, a highly developed eye and an encyclopedic visual memory were joined in him with a drive for attention, money and control that verged on a kind of mania.

Tyler Green over at Modern Art Notes has posted a portion of his Bloomberg review of the National Gallery of Art's Roger Fenton show. He also makes some insightful comments comparing a Fenton photograph to Luis Sinco's recent image of Marine Lance Corporal James Miller in Fallujah.

Take a minute and examine Sinco's two photos of Corporal Miller in the LA Times follow-up article. The helmet, blood, mud, camo-paint, and cigarette appear to add ten years to Miller's baby face. Then compare the Fallujah image with this iconic WWII photo from W. Eugene Smith:

Smith's shot, despite the similar subject, is packed with optimistic drama. Yes, the soldier is haggard and grizzled, but his face is fully lit, his body dramatically angled forward into the light and the darkness in the shot is behind him. Sinco's shot, in contrast, is flatly lit and squared up, creating a sense of objectivity. The NY Times' Ashley Gilbertson captured some similar images from Fallujah.

Back to Tyler's review, I'd like to hear his take on other aspects of the Fenton image he reproduced. There is the obvious use of a canvas in the background, but it is half out of frame and the side of an exterior slat-board wall is clearly visible. It's almost like one of Fenton's outtakes or prep images rather than a final product.

Rising star Alec Soth is interviewed on InterReview.org. [via Over 2000 Photo Links]

"What's your story?" Soth asked John as soon as Dave fell quiet and we ordered drinks. John told his story. He's a builder, off early for the day from a job. He has a cabin he's building in the North woods and someday he plans to retire there. "I want to get up there and replant a lot of the trees," he said.

And despite himself, just like that, John was poised to agree to something he probably had never considered doing before--exposing his life to the artist's sharp eye.

Those of you who are tired of the current rage for large-scale color photography should check out the Machiel Botman show at Gitterman Gallery. Botman's work is small scale black and white old school stuff. At first glance he appears to have no monotonous gimmicks, no recurring themes or techniques. No monomaniacal attraction for a single subject. Just a collection of richly textured photos that together just maybe tell a story.

Through Nov. 20th at Gitterman Gallery
170 East 75th Street
(212) 734-0868
Open Wed-Sat, 11-6

So, Todd Gibson over at From the Floor got press credentials to the MoMA press preview. I assume mine are hung up in the mail. And I hadn't yet posted the piece where I say I've always thought MoMA was an overrated bore.

Abelardo Morell
Through Dec. 4 at Bonni Benrubi
41 E. 57th St. (at Madison)
(212) 888-6007

Topographics - Photographs from 1844 to the Present
Closes tomorrow, Nov. 13 at Bruce Silverstein Gallery
535 W. 24th St. (at 10th Ave)
(212) 627-3930

Bill Brandt - The Nude: A Centenary Exhibition
Through Jan 8, 2005 at Edwynn Houk Gallery
745 Fifth Ave. (at 57th St.)
(212) 750-7070

I Wanna Be Loved By You: Photographs of Marilyn Monroe from the Leon and Michaela Constantiner Collection
Through March 20, 2005 at Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
(718) 638-5000

If you're an "economically disadvantaged" person in New York City and you have a burning desire to see the treasures of MoMA but can't afford that wildly outlandish $20 admission fee that sets so many people's teeth on edge, here are a few suggestions about how you can climb that garden fence and hobnob with the moderately affluent anointed:

Skip Christmas with the Kranks and Bridget Jones 2. Cha-ching, twenty bucks!

Wait a few months until Halo 2 becomes a "classic" and you can pick it up for $19. Not everyone has to have it on opening day and you'll save $30. Now you can sip a latte while you're relishing the Van Gogh.

Trust me, the Yankees will be in the playoffs again next year. If you skip just one regular season game, your entry to MoMA is assured.

Alternatively, visit galleries. While the hours are often inconvenient, they're free of charge to all - highborn and low, rich and poor, fools and wise men.

To hear some tell it, you'd think there was only one museum in all of New York.

From a former co-worker's blog, meditations on Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid's "The Most Wanted" paintings:

paint-by-numbers shows a suddenly monied group of working people struggling to enrich themselves and their children.

"Enrich" in the cultural sense, of course. If only they'd had free access to MoMA.

While the recent auctions of paintings and other such fluff at Christie's and Sotheby's garnered mixed results, depending on who you talk to, yesterdays photography auction at Phillips du Pury & Co. was an unqualified success. Read the round up in the NY Times.

The high flyer for the night was the last item, this Barbara Kruger image, estimated at $80-120k. Final price was $601,600. A fitting and ironic end to the auction.

Auction action continues this week. Most importantly for the photo aficionados , the Phillips de Pury auction of "Veronica's Revenge" (just what the heck does that mean, anyway) photos from the Lambert Art Collection, in two sessions today and tomorrow. Apparently the collection has been milked dry for travelling exhibitions and is being broken up. Included are the luminaries of comtemporary photography: Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Sam Taylor-Wood, Barbara Kruger, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, Andreas Gursky, the Bechers, etc. And lots of Matthew Barney, though I wouldn't strictly define him as a photographer. While the Phillips de Pury Web site is, like many art world sites, a tangle of dead ends and confusing links, you can view all the works - and bid on them - at the iCollector auction site.

Phillips de Pury auctions on iCollector
Session 1, Nov. 8th
Session 2, Nov. 9th

If only I'd majored in finance instead of marketing, maybe this would be hanging in my apartment at week's end:

Next week, on Nov. 16th, Christie's London will be holding another photo auction, this one mostly consisting of late 19th and early 20th century prints.

If you're really interested in the auction scene, I highly recommend checking into the iPhotoCentral ePhoto Newsletter. This is probably the longest email I get, containing detailed recaps of various photo auctions. They are also available online, without requiring a subscription.

More roundups of the November auctions, thus far:

Modern Art Notes auction report

BBC report on Christie's Nov. 3 auction

NY Times article on Sotheby's auction

The Telegraph weighs in

Auction post on From the Floor

So I'm perusing the NY Times this morning and I run across this NetJets ad in the Saturday Arts section (not the big Sunday section.) If you're interested in visiting the major art shows over the next year - Art Basel Miami, Maastricht Art Faire, The Venice Biennial, Frieze Art Fair - you might look into NetJet, basically a timeshare for private planes. A not-so-quick scan of their Web site comes up with this little gem: "You can purchase a 1/16th interest in a new Citation Encore for as little as $487,500." That's about 50 hours of flying time for a year, but you still have to pay monthly maintenance fees and fueling/catering/landing/etc. fees when you use the plane.

I can't wait for tomorrow to come so that all my art blogging compadres will go back to talking about art and put this election business behind them. You have no idea how badly I want to wake up tomorrow and discover that John McCain has won the presidential election with a 11th hour write-in campaign.

It's hard to believe that half-a-billion dollars of art is up for auction in the next few weeks. Keep that figure in mind the next time someone says we spend too much money on determining the next president. It's about the same amount.

Articles from the NY Times and UK's Guardian. The Guardian quotes Christie's chairman Marc Porter: "There has been an acceleration of interest in art because of the psychic and calming benefit it provides." About 1/2 of Americans will need that after today's election, we just don't know which half.

If only work didn't interfere, I'd attend the photography auction at Phillips de Pury & Co. next week. Unfortunately, scheduling it during the work week discourages the casual collector or merely curious.