January 2006 Archives

I haven't been able to get out to see anything for a while, aside from my first trip to the new MoMA. Mostly this is attributable to the lull in late Jan. as shows end, so I was pleased to find several interesting shows opening this weekend and last.

Alec Soth, Niagra
Through Feb 25 at Gagosian Chelsea
555 W 24th St
(212) 741-1111

Eirik Johnson, Borderlands
Through Feb 25 at Yossi Milo
525 W 25th St
(212) 414-0370

Caitlin Atkinson, Chapters
Through Mar 4 at Foley Gallery
547 W 27th Street, 5th floor
(212) 244-9081

Erwin Olaf
Through Feb 18 at Hasted Hunt
529 W 20th St, 3rd Flr
(212) 627-0006

Chinese contemporary art is all the rage these days as the hedge funders look to score an undiscovered future superstar. So it makes sense that the confluence of Chinese art and photography - also hot - should start getting some attention.

On Friday, The School of Visual Arts will host Artists Talk on Art: Contemporary Photography in China featuring respected photo critic A.D. Coleman discussing highlights of China's contemporary documentary photography scene. Technically this is not an artist talking on art, but why pick nits?

Friday, Jan 27, 7pm
SVU Amphitheater
209 East 23rd Street, 3rd floor
$7 admission (SVA students, free)

If you're in Chicago, check out the "Made in China" exhibit now showing at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. The show is accompanied by a number lectures and gallery talks, including a Chinese New Year's Party tonight (though it's held a little early in the evening to be called a party. More like a soiree.)

Through March 4 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography
Columbia College Chicago
600 S. Michigan
Chicago, IL
(312) 663-5554

Todd Gibson's posted a photography-palooza of links this morning over at From the Floor, including several I was intending to get to today.

Metropolis profiles architectural photographer Olivo Barbieri. Barbieri turns real life landscapes into miniature dioramas with an aerial view, spot focus (to mimic macro depth of field) and a desaturated color palette. Compare to the work of Finnish photographer Miklos Gaal.

Michael Golembewski's scanner photography project is not a new idea, but his combination of desktop scanner as a camera back to a traditional view camera body is a good documentation of the set-up. The effects of long exposure are particularly interesting.

Tyler has posted part two of his profile of Julius Schulman.

Tyler Green is posting a series on architectural photographer Julius Schulman over the course of the coming days. The first bit is up on Modern Art Notes now. The Getty's Schulman retrospective closes on Sunday.

NPR has posted an interview with Gregory Crewdson, tied to his new book, I suppose. Though that came out in November. In any case, if you were looking for some insight as to the meaning of all those vacant stares, you'll be disappointed. Crewdson hasn't the first clue what they mean, either.

Of interest is Crewdson's relationship with his subject, in this case a small Massachusetts town. When he wanted to burn down a house for one shot, his past experiences with the town led them to eagerly offer up a selection for him to choose from. He also talks about the specific narrative qualities of photographs, particularly the limitations of capturing just a few split seconds in time.

It's about 6 minutes long and requires Real Player or Windows Media Player.

In the Voice, Jerry Saltz muses over the impact of iconic photography on cementing artistic reputations.

At their best, photographs of artists can be totemic: They establish status within the tribe, produce value, dazzle with allure, and manufacture myth...

There is a particular power about images of famous people taken before they became generally known. The image becomes a special sort of time machine, taking you back to a version of a person you know, yet you don't know.

I initially had a muted response to Sarah Pickering's US debut show. At first glance there is little to recommend the series of mock explosions in terms of framing, printing, technique, etc. (I say "mock" because though the explosions are very real, they are practice pyrotechnics used in military and police training.) Upon further reflection, the choice of subject is weightier than I'd first considered.

Large Maroon by Sarah Pickering

Blake Gopnik's review in The Washington Post is mostly about explosions and little about the photographs themselves. What immediately came to my mind upon seeing the images were Dr. Harold Edgerton's strobe-lit abstracts of milk droplets and rifle bullets. A little investigation shows Edgerton also did some work on explosions, though his subjects were a bit bigger than Pickering's.

In the case of Edgerton's best known work, the value of the images lean heavily on making what is unseen seen - a milk drop frozen in time faster than the eye can understand or a playing card shredded by a speeding bullet. Likewise, Pickering's photographs freeze the destructive force of an explosion into a blooming sculpture of fire and smoke. In the larger images such as the one above, the explosions feel small and manageable in the expanse of the proving ground. These images do not, however, bring us closer to an understanding of war. On a different level, Pickering's photos harken back to some of the earliest photographs - still life of reproductions of classical masterpieces. They are a representation of a representation, distancing us a further generation from the original subject - the explosion of landmine or a napalm blast.

Through Feb 25 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 W 25th St, #506
(212) 255-8158

I'm not sure exactly what works this refers to or where the installation is hung (if it's the small display on the first floor , then it's probably not worth a special trip), but the Met is having a gallery talk on its modern photography in the permanent collection. As usual, it's aimed at retired folks and the independently wealthy, scheduled at 11am on Wednesday.

The Smithsonian's art blog, Eye Level, is soliciting questions for a future video interview with pioneering color photographer William Christenberry. I was first introduced to a smattering of Christenberry's work PMA last fall. The images there were small color prints, made with a Kodak brownie. Images centered up, mostly of the "vernacular architecture", as they say, of his native Alabama, taken without intent for broader display and made as part of the larger fabric of his work.

Hot on the heels of last week's Times article about gifting private collections comes the news that Hallmark's corporate photography collection numbering some 6500 prints by 900 American photographers has landed at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the location of Hallmark's headquarters office. The acquisition is a combination gift & purchase from Hallmark. I'm still trying to figure out why it wasn't a full-on gift and required some portion to be purchased, but the Byzantine strictures of corporate giving are frequently beyond fathom. The collection will be featured in new galleries specifically designed and designated to the exhibition of photography scheduled to be opened in 2007. Hallmark's collection is nearly as large as the Gilman Paper Collection that the Met acquired last May, though Hallmark's collection covers the full history of photography while the Gilman collection focuses mainly on the first century.

The collection was published in book form in 1999.

Arthur Danto's work has been added to my reading list after being introduced to his thinking last year by the excellent art blogs Iconoduel and Modern Kicks. he has a couple of lectures/panels this month that you might be interested in. My initial understanding of his work is that it will be infomative on my own thinking about photography's place in the larger world of art being created today. The first lecture is tonight, the second is on the 17th.

Arthur Danto at 92nd St. Y
Tuesday, Jan 10, 2006, 8:15pm, Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
Robert Storr, moderator

Arthur Danto: Embodied Meanings as Aesthetic Ideas
Tuesday, January 17, 7pm at SVU
Distinguished author and scholar Arthur Danto will discuss Clement Greenberg, Immanuel Kant and his own critical practice based on three decades of writing about art. This is the first of a series of lectures sponsored by the newly-formed MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department.

Amphitheater at SVU
209 East 23rd Street, 3rd floor
Free and open to the public.

Minnesota art site mnartists.org has a review of the Minnesota Center for Photography jurried show exhibition. There are a lot of great photographers working in the mid-west; Alec Soth has gained the greatest prominence and his influence is felt here as well.

That several of the artists have an aesthetic similar to Soth’s is both a testament to Soth’s vision, as well as an intimation of the Upper Midwestern psyche: if one had to categorize the region’s photographs, it would be with these isolated, spare images – with an aesthetic of sorrow, pride, and the lower-middle class – an aesthetic that’s just beginning to be explored.

Through Jan 15th (Sunday!) at Minnesota Center for Photography
165 13th Avenue NE
Minneapolis, MN
(612) 824-5500

Some of Robert Polidori's photographs of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were published in this week's New Yorker. A more extensive collection of photos plus an audio commentary have been posted on the Web.

Polidori sounds like a pretty trippy guy, but thoughtful: "Is it ethical to make such human disasters aesthetically beautiful?"

I frequently approach the Arts section of the Sunday Times with an expectation of disappointment. The monster is chock full of Broadway show ads and page upon page of analysis of the performing arts with usually nary a word about photography or the visual arts. (I only receive the paper on the weekends. Am I reading on the wrong day?)

This weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to see an extensive analysis of the impact of private photography collections on the curatorial direction of major museums, such as the Met, MoMA, SFMoMA, and the deYoung Museum, amongst others. A well-researched article on a subtle topic.

(Read this quick. I wasn't able to get a permanent link for the article and the Times has this charming habit of pulling articles after two weeks, I think.)