On the Web: September 2004 Archives
Joerg over at Conscientious has dug up some outstanding color photographs from World War I at Der Stern. The color is wonderfully subtle, not so garish as is often seen in World War II-era color photography. Particularly interesting are the images of French children playing war. The range of subjects and locations makes me wonder about the source(s) of these images and, of course, want to see more.
John Perreault at Artopia has written up his weekend in the Chelsea gallery district. Much better than the Wash. Post article I referenced below. I found both articles interesting because for me, as a relatively new gallery visitor, Chelsea has always been the destination for seeing new photography. Apparently, this is a development of just the past 6-8 years - exactly contemporary with my move to the city. John's musings on the development of industry-specific ghettos and strategies for planning a gallery crawl are particularly interesting (and familiar).
A bunch of us art bloggers, headed by Todd Gibson over at From the Floor, are running a short survey of our readers to find out a little about your reading/surfing/art preferences. While the consolidated survey results will be shared with the participating blogs, your indivual answers will remain confidential, so if you've got a spare ten minutes, go fill out the survey.
Set aside for a moment the humor of someone down in the Beltway ascertaining whether Chelsea has "arrived" as a suitable art mecca. Blake Gopnik's review of the neighbohood is mostly just a series of gallery reviews, but it contains a good review of An-My Le's "29 Palms" at Murray Guy. (registration required)
Jim Lewis has an interesting article over at Slate about assertions that the early 20th Cent. child-phenom photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue was maybe not exactly the prodigy he made himself out to be. The new book Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Invention of an Artist claims he was not an amateur artist and was actually well versed in contemporary photography technique and themes when he made his earliest work at the age of 6 (or 8). Lewis discusses whether this really matters or not when assessing the value of the work. Though I'm only familiar with a smattering of Lartigue's photographs, I say it doesn't matter. The images stand on their own. Lewis writes:
Taking pictures is, in many ways, a kind of performance, and a camera is more like a musical instrument than a paintbrush or a pen. So, looking at a Lartigue print is very much like beholding, say, one of those brilliant child soul singers who come along every so often. You know they can't possibly have the wisdom that their work suggests, but it doesn't seem to matter.
Via Conscientious
Gallery Hopper received its first instance of comment spam this morning, so I must be doing something right.
I noticed in my referral logs a new art-related site called Gallery Driver. One of my fellow New Yorkers has put this site together to aggregate the
syndication feeds of art-related blogs, like Gallery Hopper, into one, easy-to-use site. From what I can tell, it also hosts micro-sites for individual artists and/or galleries.
Lastly, if you are using a blog aggregator, either offline or online, you can subscribe to the Gallery Hopper xml feed using the syndication link near the bottom of the right-hand column of links. If you use Bloglines as your online aggregator, there is also a handy link to add a Bloglines subscription, as well.
On cue, everyone else has begun posting their initial surveys of the new gallery season. The commentary seems to be a mixed lot, with a fair bit of criticism for New York’s early offerings. My knee jerk reaction is to defend our stuff (as if it was our stuff) but seeing as I haven’t been able to get out and see anything yet, that’d be premature. And to be fair to the NYC scene, a lot of shows have yet to open. This weekend the bulk of stuff will be out, but I’ll be traveling next weekend and unable to get down to the neighborhoods until the last weekend of September.
I’ve been scouring the gallery announcements for interesting stuff to see and the slate looks a bit sparse. Here’s a short list of shows to see:
Todd Hido at Julie Saul
Larry Sultan at Janet Borden (Web site hasn't been updated since last winter)
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders at Mary Boone
Wijnanda Deroo at Robert Mann
An-My Lê at Murray Guy
Candida Höfer at Sonnabend and the Goethe Institute
Lynn Davis at Edwynn Houk
Reviews of the new season, from around the Web:
Modern Art Notes
art.blogging.la
From the Floor
Project Rebirth is a time-lapse photography project recording the rebuilding efforts at Ground Zero. There are several cameras and locations recording the construction activities from a variety of heights and angles. The NY Times has an article about it today.
The project is also recording ten years in the lives of ten 9/11 survivors, though the character sketches they've posted sound like they were written for a low-budget TV mini-series.
I seem to recall there was going to be a similar time-lapse record made of the construction of the expanded MoMA, but I can't find anything about it online.
