May 2005 Archives
"You only have to imagine the dreariness of a world without art to know that it is a good thing. The problem is to explain how and why in terms that apply to all the arts." What Good Are the Arts? by John Carey, reviewed in The Times (of London.)
Three German giants of modern color photography are showing in their last week at Barbara Mathes Gallery: Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, and Elger Esser. The show closes on Saturday and you may want to check this out if you missed last October's Höfer show or the recent Esser and Struth shows.
Through June 4th at Barbara Mathes Gallery
41 E. 57th St.
(212) 752-5145
A common rule of thumb is that it takes upwards of ten years to master a given activity. 19th century British photographer Roger Fenton spent just ten years as a master photographer in a full range of genres before mysteriously putting away his camera forever and retiring from the art to be a lawyer. "All the Mighty World", the travelling Fenton show assembled in a partnership between the Met, the Getty and the National Gallery, is now showing at the Met. The photographs shown cover the full range of Fenton's career, not just his well-known war photography.
The Times has published it's review, which focuses on the frustrations Fenton felt in photography's slow acceptance as art, something only realized in the last few decades. Modern Art Notes' Tyler Green reviewed the show when it was at the National Gallery.
Tomorrow, I will do my best to get to the Met for the gallery talk with photography curator Malcolm Daniel, one of the show's curators. The talk starts at 11am and will be held again on June 2nd and 30th. I discovered this morning that I misread the info and this gallery talk was yesterday! Even worse, I found this out as I was standing at the tour collection point and heard the guide say "Now then, we'll be visitng several galleries in our tour of the Spanish Renaissance.." Argh!
The Library of Congress has an extensive collection of Fenton's Crimea War photographs, all digitized in hi-resolution format. Download and print your own "Valley of the Shadow of Death"!
Through August 21 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave (at 82nd St)
212-535-7710
Heads up, Alec Soth shot the cover story for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. You may want to grab a copy if it doesn't come to your door.
I've added Lightra to the blog links. It seems to mostly highlight emerging talent around the world rather than photo superstars (though there are some of those, too.) Lots of links to interesting work, categorized by genre.
Tyler Green posted a cornucopia of links and extended commentary about Edward Burtynsky today, including a novel take on his work in the LA Times. Recently, Burtynsky's work has begun to be presented as directly and explicitly environmental message.
When my wife and I went to see his mid-career retrospective in Ottawa in 2003, I recall that Burtynsky explicitly disavowed this positioning of his work in video/text accompanying the show. However, as his profile rises (based purely on the amazing aethetics of this images) I suspect there is probably a temptation to draw a bigger meaning for the work (which is there implicitly, of course) and create a "Burtynsky brand". Which strikes me as unnecessary.
UPDATE: Chris Hoff at OC Art Blog is trying to decide which Burtynsky to buy. Of his three options, my vote.
Last month, photographer Brian Ulrich kicked off his own blog to complement his portfolio site. Brian's work centers around American retailing and consumerism (probably an oversimplification). In the course of his project work he's picked up amusing examples of "found" photography from some of today's highest profile art photographers. How ironic to find "spontaneous" examples of some of the most deliberate photographers's works.
Many contemporary artists and collectors just make this sort of criticism write itself.
Meanwhile, Tyler Green seems to think this demonstrates "cluelessness" on the part of the Post. Sorry, but calling bullshit on this sort of scam only demonstrates discernment, maybe even common sense.
While it appears to be structured more as a conversation, a la Inside the Actors Studio, Hiroshi Sugimoto will be giving a "lecture" at the Whitney on Wednesday. He will be discussing his career thus far with Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney's director. It's a free event.
Sugimoto is currently showing "Conceptual Forms" at Sonnabend Gallery through June 11th. Aperture has a related interview.Looks to be a mostly intellectual exercise, as was his last show there, "Architecture".
Wed May 18, 7pm - 8:30pm
The Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave (at 75th St.)
UPDATE: via greg.org, an interview with Sugimoto at kultureflash.
Tonight, Rhizome.org will present part two of a previous panel discussion on arts and blogging. While this appears to be more about "artists who blog" than "blogging about the arts", it might be of interest to the art nerds in the audience.
Tuesday, May 17th, 6:30pm -8:00pm
New Museum of Contemporary Art / Chelsea
556 W. 22nd St. (btwn 10th and 11th Aves)
(Click on images to enlarge)
On a whim last weekend (we were in the neighborhood), my family and a friend stopped by the Robert Mann gallery to see the work of Dutch photographer Robbert Flick, three series collectively titled "Trajectories." This work was previously shown at LACMA a few months back - further illustrating the erosion of differentiation between museums and galleries in NYC.
"Midwest Diary", completed in the early and mid 1970s reflects a minimalistic vision of the rural areas of Iowa where Flick was teaching at the time. Personally, it's very reminiscent of the plains of eastern Colorado, where my wife is from. Black and white, as is Flick's meditation on a parking garage, detailed work with a wide range of tones in large blocks of light and shadow.
But the most interesting work in the show is "LA Documents" (Or LA Diary, depending on where you look), a series of near-collage color landscapes of southern California beaches and sprawl. The linked example above does no justice to these images. Each piece is constructed of small images that make up a wholistic view of the subject area. There is some repetition of images, there is some hint of sequentiality. Flick started the project using traditional film photography, but eventually wound up using a video camera pointed out the window of his car. In a weird case of deja vu, Amazon.com has used a similar process to catalog street-level views of businesses in various cities around the US for use in their business directory. My office, for instance.
Flick is a professor at the University of Southern California. On his University site, he presents a number of his photos using a special compression technique, allowing the fine detail to be viewed in a Web browser. (As you can see by the example I've posted above, his latest approach makes ordinary Web viewing a bit fruitless.)
Through June 28 at Robert Mann Gallery
210 11th Ave (btwn 24th and 25th St)
(212) 989-7600
This month, Bank of America is sponsoring free museum admission for its customers. Among the NYC area museums of interest are ICP, the Met, the Whitney, and El Museo del Barrio. Just flash your BoA credit or debit card and supposedly you'll be whisked inside free of charge.
Photo exhibits of interest at these museums:
Met: Diane Arbus, through May 30th
Museo del Barrio: Casasola 1900-1940, through July 31st
ICP: Recent acquisitions
Whitney: Recent photography acquisitions, through June 26th
There are museums in other areas that are participating in the BoA program as well.
Mona Kuhn's "nude but not naked" portraits seems to be in vogue these days. She'll be signing copies of her new book at ICP this Friday. It seems someone at ICP must have read my nasty-gram about the lack of info on their last signing because the info is much better for this one, even touted on their homepage.
Lens Culture has a rather lengthy audio interview with Kuhn.
Friday, May 13th from 6:00 - 7:30
International Center of Photography
1133 6th Ave (at 43rd St)
(212) 857-9725
Untitled by Gregory Crewdson
More clausterphobia. More crushed flowers. More strange twilight stillness. More cinematic lighting. More droopy boobs. More alienated couples. More painstakingly arranged sets. More strange holes in the floor and/or ground. More blankly staring into space. More suburban banality. More cars in suspended animation. More giant color prints.
May 7 - June 18th at Lurhing Augustine
531 W. 24th St.
(212) 206-9100
Through May 21st at White Cube
48 Hoxton Sq.
London N1 6PB
UK
+44 20 7930 5373
May 21 - July 1 at Gagosian Gallery
456 N. Camden Dr.
Beverly Hills, CA
(310) 271-9400
In the front section of the New Yorker, they list all the various goings on around town. Ordinarily the art section is broken down into museums, galleries (by neighborhood) and photography. I really like this breakdown because it allows me to go staright for the museum and photography shows without wading through the rest of the art. Well, someone at the New Yorker has decided that photography is just another kind of art and doesn't deserve its own section, so now the photo shows are mixed in with everything else. Grrrr. What a pain.
Over at art.blogging.la, Caryn is chortling over gallery owner Matthew Marks' New York snobbishness, exposed in comments about LA and Leonard Nimoy in New York Magazine. While Caryn rattled off Nimoy's various financial contributions to the arts, what both she and Marks missed is that in addition to being "like, a really elegant older man", as Marks put it, Nimoy is also a fine art photographer. A couple of years ago, my wife and I were stopping in to see an Abelardo Morell show at Bonni Benrubi Gallery which was in an Upper East Side brownstone at the time. There in the back room, the gallery attendant informed us, was Leonard Nimoy, signing copies of his new book of photography. He was chatting away with the two or three people who happened back to meet him. We felt bad that so few people had some to see him, being so famous, but I'm sure any real publicity would have brought in the drooling fanboy crowd.
UPDATE: Tyler Green has posted more about Nimoy's arts philanthropy and photography.
The contemporary black and white photography show seems to be a rare event these days, but Gitterman Gallery is showing Allen Frame's terrific stark, grainy portraits. Unlike a lot of contemporary portraiture, Frames' subjects are caught in medium and long shots and often in silhouette.
Through June 4 at Gitterman Gallery
170 E. 75th St.
(212) 734-0869
