Day by Day: Dec 6

joint compound, paint, fish hooks

Day by Day: Dec 5

 paper

Day by Day: Dec 4

 styrofoam, coated wire

Tanks for the memories

For Thanksgiving we spent a couple of nights at the Braccioforte Brewhaus in Brooklyn relaxing, reading, and administering the occasional kitty laxative.
On the actual day of Thanks frau noodle and I strolled around Chinatown and Little Italy, up to the Whole Foods on Bowery and Houston to pick up fixin's for dinner - and to play with some fresh fish, then a stroll over the Brooklyn Bridge.  A gratitude inducing day, for sure.

 

The beginnings of Kenny Sharf's Mural on Bowery & Houston. 

 

David Salle, John Baldessari & Pure Beauty @ the Met

David Salle and John Baldessari prior to their talk.

(Note: I say PRIOR to the talk.since we were informed that pictures were not allowed during the event.)

A packed house in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Met (I didn't know there was an auditorium in the museum) was on hand for a talk between David Salle and his former professor John Baldessari on Nov 21.  The presentation was less a conversation than a straight question and answer session, which made for a more focused and informative exchange.

A video of the talk should be available on the Met's website at some point. Once it is posted, I'm sure you'll find it worth a viewing.  Until then here are a few notes I jotted down.

Baldessari considers himself a closet formalist. 

The work "Baldessari Sings Lewitt, 1972 - "Product of being bored on a Sunday afternoon."

Advantage of video: "movie poloroid"

Informality provides an opening for a sense of play.

"Teaching is not Lecturing.  Tell students something, it goes in one ear and out the same ear."

"Civilization is a thin veneer"

Generally despises labels

Conceptualism is "a meaningless term."

'Idea preceding art' speaks to all art..

There's a thin line between good and bad.

Stupid ideas can really work.

Aesthetics play  "in no overt way."

Most tenacious misconception about JB: Dismissed in NY as a psuedo-conceptualist artist.

Agrees with Duchamp:  "When a work is out in the world, you can't control its meaning."

No artist does anything new.  Art comes out of art. Any artist mush continue the argument."

JB's goal is to continue the tradition of Matisse, "making things look simple enough that a child could do it, yet make it so profound."

Advice from Kienholz on Big Intl. shows: 1. Get there first to claim the best space. 2. make the work big and heavy so the curator will think twice before moving the work.

Make students articulate and aware of what they're doing; knowing why they do what they did.  Doesn't care about intention.

"Even flies need art." - something he remembers Smithson telling him once @ Max's Kansas City.

Music, film big influences.  Cage, Newman and Goya influences. 

Describes the role of money in the art world as a "huge sea change."

Fear of copying self.

"Nobody wants to produce product. Then you're just making trinkets."

Laughs at the use of the word "practice" to describe the artist's endeavors.

Thinks of himself as a failed writer.

Claims to not know what art is. "Once that certainty is reached, that's the end."

Question: "Is it a crime to sacrifice meaning for rhyme?"

Answer: "No."

Feels current culture is in a fallow period.  Yearns for regionalism.  Thinks we're on a treadmill.

Consistency is important.  Avoid being bored.

Duchamp considered the viewer's intelligence.

Quoted DeKooning: "Masterpiece is anything that speaks to the present."

One can't be definitive:  "ambiguity feeds the work and bedevils it."

Sanford Schwartz's personification of Guston's work: "I'm a genius, Am I a fraud? I'm dying."

On truth in art: "A lie for me might be the truth for someone else."

Conceptual art is a truthful lie.

Believes it's important to be sure about the work before you let it out into the world.

Shown & Known.  An artist has got to show his work.

Asked by an audience member about the conception of realism in relation to Brackage.  His answer, "that's too long an answer" drew some groans and a few hisses from the audience.  They wanted an answer.

Influence of Goya.

Re: the ABEX exhibit @ MoMA: work still looks terrific - still with us, including influences in different forms."

Doesn't know if work has value, but has feel it does.

Cloud Brain in the Met's atrium

Pure Beauty, the retrospective of JB's work will remain on view through January 9.  There's a lot to take in throughout the exhibit.  Aside from a few of his videos like Baldessari Sings LeWitt (Brilliant) and Teaching a Plant the Alphabet (Numbing), I haven't gone out of my way to see much of Baldessari's work, but there's a lot to take in in this exhibit and a lot of it is potent. Although there are many works that still feel to me that they could be better experienced in print even after the two visits I've made.  The massive exhibition catalogue: John Baldessari: Pure Beauty  looks like an essential buy.  

A handful of JB's films are viewable at ubu.com.

Palm Tree in the Met's atrium

Finally, I'd be remiss if I neglected to mention that I can never look at John Baldessari without thinking about Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes.  The resemblance; uncanny.

Day by Day: Dec 3

paper

Day by Day: Dec 2

paper, vinyl, skin of dried glue

If you're looking for other sources of your RDA (recommended daily art), please to enjoy Tyler Green's two great new Tumblr blogs:  The awsomely fun Advent, which I mentioned before.  And 3rd of May which highlights one of Green's strengths; enlisting specific works of art as vehicles to connect - eras, issues, and more.

Day by Day: Dec 1

A year ago today I embarked on sending out an email a day for the entire month of December for the kork Advent project.  It was a lot of work (more than it sounds like it would be), but thanks to the 31 mighty fine artists who participated and everyone who signed up to receive the emails, it was a very fulfilling endeavor.
I had every intention to repeat the project - with a few tweaks- this year, but I couldn't get it together.  However, it's definitely on for next year.

Last week, miss A brought home a chocolate advent calendar for me and I cracked it open today. My pathological tendency to create a project where none need exist kicked in, and I decided that everyday, after I pop open each little door and down the corresponding chocolate cached inside, I'm going to create a tiny sculpture in it's place.  I'll post an image everyday.

Here's today's kick off work:

 Dec 1,  paper and styrofoam.

For an extra treat, make a point of visiting Tyler Green's Tumblr Advent Calendar everyday. 

Don't (G)oogle My Junk!

Privacy is Dead Because Me and James Gilbert Said So!

 This post fulfills my end of the social contract enacted the moment I took one of James Gilbert's plastic skivvies from the #thesocialgraph exhibit which ended its run at the Outpost in Bushwick last weekend.

You can check out examples of what others have done with their see thru panties at the Hyperallergic Tumblr blog.

An Autumn Sunday Picnic

 I dug out the gingham painting from last year's installation in Ellenville, NY to play around amidst the jungle gym construction site that's inhabited our yard for the past couple of weeks. 
No intent, no point.  It's just like putting a hat on a baby or cat and photographing it. Just for the joy of it.

Peter Acheson at John Davis Gallery in Hudson NY.

Flag, 2008

I couldn't miss the opening of Peter Acheson's opening at John Davis Gallery on Nov 13.
I've mentioned Peter and his work here on this blog and on maykr many times before.  I've spent a lot of time with him talking about painting - and other things.
These conversations have had a major influence on how I look at painting and how I approach my own painting activity. 

Acheson's work has more often than not challenged my expectations of what a painting can or should be.  More often than not, his work, piece by piece has simply challenged me - directly - about each piece's validity as a work fit for the world.
My struggle to come to terms with the oddest of balls that spring from his hand has been rewarding too.  And even the works which, in the end still flag or fail do so with abandon and ballsy-ness - as should be the case. 

The artist in his formal opening attire.

So, Ok- to separate my relationship with the guy from the stuff he does, I'll say that walking into this show was a thrilling visceral experience, one that triggers a jones to get home and get painting - immediately.  I  relate the experience of entering this exhibit to that of discovering Norbert Prangenberg's work at Betty Cunningham Gallery.  It's funny that the works on the main floor are similar to Prangenberg's work in their slutty application of paint.  Never having done crack or suffered from a debilitating addiction of any kind, I can only guess in my assumption that the sense of walking into either of these two exhibits is like a recovered addict happening upon some den replete with the stuff of his addiction - regained intoxication, but without the torment or guilt.  My response to both these exhibits was the same; reveling in the residue of another's endeavor as if it were my own.
It's funny too that Peter's response to photos of that Prangenberger exhibit mirrored his reflection on his own show just a couple of days ago: "Too conservative."

John Davis' downstairs gallery features a sampling of the different threads of Peter's work, concurrently made, but divergent in intention.  Together they give the impression of a guy that is, at his core, a stick and mud man.

Painting for Ben La Rocco, 2010

So, as I alluded, there are two floors in the gallery, the top floor is predominated by what's been referred to as his vibratory paintings and the bottom being populated with variations of his production.

Martin Bromirski photographing Xochitl

Check out Martin's photos from the opening at anaba.  Also John Davis' website includes a pdf with images of all the works in the exhibit.  The show is up through Dec 5.

Close to Home at Van Brunt Gallery

Some images from the exhibit at Van Brunt Gallery featuring work by Colin Barclay, Peter Iannarelli and Stanford Kay.  The exhibit opened on Nov 6 and runs through Nov 28.
 

Stanford Kay, My Back Pages (The Birth and Death of Pictorial Space)

 

 Two of Iannarelli's plastic forms on the left with Barclay's Twillingate, Newfoundland on the right.

On left, Barclay's Storm on the Barrens, with Kay's Untitled, top right and Iannarelli's Untitled, below - 

another color coordinated grouping.

In what could be a stroke of conceptual brilliance, Colin Barclay has reprised his 2004 (or '05)  Van Brunt gallery exhibit on a slightly diminutive scale. Of course, I could be way off base here and reading more into this than there really is.

Stanford Kay, Mysteries of the Universe, on left, & two Untitled works by Peter Iannarelli.

Stanford Kay has been tweaking the shelved book motif that underpins his abstract works in recent years.  I have found each iteration has pushed the language forward.  This evolution continues on a couple of fronts in this show; both of them potentially interesting, although I prefer the smaller works; I find them to be are more brutal and direct statments in paint.

Peter Iannarelli, Untitled

 Iannarelli's Untitled sculpture with Kay's The Collector in the background.

This "pedestal" sculpture of Peter's steals the show.  It more fully embodies what Peter is interested in than the plastic cutlery pieces.  As with much of his work, this piece incorporates a degree of gravity defied.  Fortunately, Peter manages to escapes the trap of making this "magical" aspect from being the focus of the works; it's just another element, which along with the more tangible components work to support a broader aesthetic and philosophy.

Melissa Tatge's confluence of boot and skirt patterns was the highlight of opening night.

I was treated last week to a delightful and invigorating studio visit by Mark DeLura and Peter Acheson.  I'll be heading north to meet up with those two again to do a visit Mark's studio.  Later in the day, I'll continue on to Hudson to take in the opening reception of Peter's exhibit of new paintings at the John Davis Gallery. 

John Davis Gallery is located at 362 1/2 Warren St. in Hudson, NY.  Peter Acheson: Paintings runs through December 5, 2010. Tomorrow's reception runs from 6 to 8 pm.

John Davis has an awesome three-story carriage house behind the main gallery which is open during warm months.  I was able to catch Martin Bromirski's "Circus on Mars" show there a couple of years ago. I missed Sharon Butler's exhibit of Beacon Paintings last year, but I was pleased to exhibit two pieces from that body of work last month at kork.