Titled, 2008

The Coburn Amendment: It’s not too late

clairemazur — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:09:01 +0000

I just e-mailed Chuck Schumer to let him know he’s on my list of undesirables at the moment. You should too. Click here to learn more about the Coburn Amendment (it prevents any money from the stimulus bill from going to museums, theatres, and art centers [among others]) and to send your own letters to your senators. There’s still a chance for the language to be changed in the final version of the legislation.

form letter below courtesy Americans for the Arts…but the “extremely” before “disappointed” was ALL MINE.

———————————————

Dear Senator Schumer,

I am extremely disappointed that you voted for S.Amdt.309 offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (Roll Call #51) which prohibits funding for “museums, theaters, and arts centers” in the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act.

There are approximately 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations, which spend $63.1 billion annually. Without an economic stimulus for the nonprofit arts industry, experts expect about 10% of these organizations (ranging from large arts institutions like museums and orchestras to small community-based organizations in suburban, urban and rural areas) to shut their doors in 2009 — a loss of 260,000 jobs. According to the Americans for the Arts, a $50 million investment to the National Endowment for the Arts will provide critical funding to save 14,422 jobs from being lost in the U.S. economy. This is based on the ability of the NEA to leverage $7 in additional support through local, state and private donations, for every $1 in NEA support.

In a report released in mid-January, the National Governor’s Association stated, “Arts and culture are important to state economies. Arts and culture-related industries, also known as “creative industries,” provide direct economic benefits to states and communities: They create jobs, attract investments, generate tax revenues, and stimulate local economies through tourism and consumer purchases.”

I hope that you will agree to remove the arts-related language from the final legislation and include funding for the nonprofit arts community in conference.

Sincerely,

Claire Mazur

Our City Dreams

clairemazur — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:16:41 +0000

Ghada Amer, Knotty but Nice, 2005

Chiara Clemente, daughter of painter Francesco Clemente, follows five New York-based female artists for her documentary Our City Dreams. Swoon, Nancy Spero, Kiki Smith, Ghada Amer, and Maria Abramovich (all heavy hitters in the art world) were filmed over the course of two years as they lived and worked in New York City. Highlights of the film include:

Swoon’s first solo exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York, Ghada Amer’s return to her Egyptian homeland, Kiki Smith’s traveling retrospective, Marina Abramovic’s weeklong series of performances at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Nancy Spero’s preparations of a new piece for the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Clemente has chosen five completely fascinating and dynamic artists, so I’m naturally curious as to what they are like as people. I thought that the recent documentary about Alice Neel (filmed by her grandson Andrew Neel) did an exceptional job of portraying the plights experience of the female artist; this should be an interesting complement to that, as most of these artists are of a different generation than Neel. Our City Dreams debuts at Film Forum February 4 – 17. Film website is here.

Andrew Wyeth, 1917-2009

clairemazur — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:14:13 +0000

Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World, 1948

I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware and don’t have THAT many things to take pride in regarding my hometown, save for for tax-free shopping, Joe Biden…and George Thorogood. At any rate, the Wyeth family, and their close associations with Delaware and the surrounding area, are a point of pride for me. This past August on a trip home I visited the Brandwyine River Museum which has an exceptional collection of paintings (as well as some fascinating artifacts) by the Wyeths.

image via New York Times

clairemazur — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:45:57 +0000

The Goodman Theatre in Chicago recently put up The Wooster Group’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, in which a white actress plays a black male character, wearing blackface and employing various elements of minstrelsy. Bennett Jones Johnson, vice president of a Chicago-based publishing company that focuses on African-American issues, takes issue with the inclusion of minstrelsy and has publicly called for a boycott of the show. I’m not really interested in relaying his arguments, because I think they are more or less rendered moot by the fact that he’s never seen the show. That seems just crazy to me. I’ve not seen the show either, so I certainly can’t judge whether or not the elements of race that are dealt with are done so in a responsible or progressive way (although being familiar with the work of both The Goodman and The Wooster Group, I am inclined to believe that they are). But to take a grand public stance against a work of art you’ve never seen is to misunderstand the very function of art entirely. This is not to suggest that artists should invoke sensitive or potentially offensive topics with reckless abandon and be given a preemptive ‘pass’ simply because they are operating under the title of “artist”. But art does does have the ability to utilize even the most entrenched imagery and performance in ways that can provoke progressive and informed thought, debate, and action. To determine whether or not a work of art has successfully accomplished that feat it is necessary to experience the art, and not sufficient or productive to judge it based on its elements alone.

via Chicago Sun-Times

image via The Wooster Group

clairemazur — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:59:12 +0000

David Hockney, Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966, acrylic on two canvases

Remembering Betty Freeman – Modern Art Notes

Tyler Green writes a nice remembrance of art collector Betty Freeman, and in doing so makes some astute observations about David Hockney, who I have been sort of re-discovering lately. Green’s description of Freeman’s career as a collector presents a stark distinction with the new “breed” of collectors fuelled by the ascent of the finance industry and mega-galleries. I didn’t know much about Betty Freeman until the occasion of her death prompted a handful of thoughtful obituaries. I did perform some archival work for someone who was friends with her awhile ago, and the woman was a prolific letter writer. Hand written letters on personalized stationary, tons of them.

Jen Bekman, Hero

clairemazur — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:23:05 +0000

X Marks the Art @ Jen Bekman Gallery. On view through January 24th.

Exciting discovery today…Jen Bekman, the innovator behind 20×200, has a Tumblr! (So do I.)

I am the proud owner of a small print of the left-most work shown here, Many Mountains by Ky Anderson. You can be too!

Earlier throughts from me re: 20×200 here and here

And here is one of my favorite works from another of Ms. Bekman’s projects, Hey, Hot Shot!

image via Jen Bekman’s Blog

Cory Arcangel, Hack

clairemazur — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:36:06 +0000

Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Clouds, 2002-2005

I try not to be too negative on this blog, because ideally I’d like to use it as a vehicle to promote things I think are worth promoting. On the other hand, I think it’s pretty important to think critically and therefore be critical at times. With that in mind, I bring you digital artist Cory Arcangel. Over the past year Cory’s star has risen swiftly, landing his work in MoMA exhibits and granting him extensive coverage on blogs like Rhizome. My impression of him is somewhat biased by my encounter with him at an art event where he chose to comport himself in the manner of a vainglorious and disobedient rock star. That said, I recognize this as not uncommon behavior among successful (and/or deluded) artists, and I try to separate my personal impression of him from my attitudes regarding his artwork.

Cory is best known for his projects which involve hacking into old video game cartridges and altering their function or appearance in some way. The work I’ve posted here is a hack of Nintento Super Mario Brothers in which everything except the clouds has been removed. While Cory is, at times, clever, (Permanent Vacation, for example, has some merits) I think he is over-hyped. Much of his work is not so much clever as it is ironic, which is more or less my pet theory as to why he is so popular at the moment: irony, a la hipster culture, is popular at the moment. There is nothing necessarily wrong with irony, but if it is masquerading as art then I think it ought to be a means of conveying some sort of a statement or message. I am actually a very big fan of the topic central to most of Cory’s work: the intersection of technology and culture; unfortunately I think he, and his work, fail to communicate anything particularly constructive on the topic. Consider his explanation of a piece that plainly asks the viewer to consider the role of outsourcing and globalization (via Rhizome):

“Like, globalization, which I really don’t have a political stance on, but I know I don’t think it’s ‘funny.’ That’s why I felt I had to do the whole thing. I had to put in an enormous amount of work to at least hint at the fact that this wasn’t actually funny.”

Well, Cory, if all you know about globalization is that you don’t think it’s funny, I’m not really sure that’s enough of a reason to construct an elaborate and costly work of art on the topic. Furthermore, if you can’t take a stance on globalization, I think it’s unfair to ask your audience to do so in response to your work. While there is something to be said for art’s redemptive qualities standing separate from the artist’s intent, that aspect is lost if the artist chooses to speak publicly about his work at great length, as Cory often does. I believe this lecture that Cory gave at Columbia University does a pretty solid job of illustrating the artist’s lack of conceptual* understanding of his own work. In regards to the work shown above, Super Mario Clouds, Cory says: “It’s supposed to be, like, a place where you’d like to picnic”.

My biggest gripe about contemporary art is that it’s not political enough. And I don’t mean political in the sense of electoral college, government, and so on, I mean it in a more abstract sense—I think art should say or mean something significant, I think it should stake claims. Decorative art has it’s place, but I think the best art changes the way people consider the world around them. If one is producing artwork that claims to explore certain topics, I think it’s fair to expect a “stance” on those topics. Sometimes it can be hard to decide how you “feel” or what you “think” about something, and even harder to work up the courage to express those feelings and thoughts to others, but that’s part of the challenge of being an artist—or rather, a good artist (not to mention a responsible citizen).

Obviously a lot of curators and art world influencers see or appreciate something in Cory’s work that I simply don’t or can’t…I’m more than open to the possibility that my mind could be changed if presented with a strong argument in support of his work.

*his technological understanding of his work is quite sound, and seems to have contributed greatly to his superstar status

Prospect.1 New Orleans Biennial

clairemazur — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 01:49:34 +0000

Nari Ward, Diamond Gym, 2008

I don’t think that the arts need justifications like economic rejuvenation, but as residents of cities like Bilbao, Spain will tell you, monumental art can be a pretty effective way to revive a struggling local economy. I’m a little late on this, but I was really pleased to learn that New Orleans is the location of the largest biennial of contemporary art ever organized in the US. Launched this year, Prospect.1 New Orleans showcases contemporary art from around the world set in a diverse array of venues spread throughout the city. It seems to present a pretty stark distinction with something like Art Basel Miami, the other enormous art show in the US, which displays art in an entirely different setting with an entirely different tone. I don’t want to say too much about it since I haven’t been there and would just be speculating, but if you have the chance to get to New Orleans before it closes on January 19th, put it on your to-do list–and report back to me!

UPDATE: Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City has a two-part photo essay of Prospect.1 up at her blog: here and here

image via The New Yorker

Life Models take it out of the Studios and into the Streets

clairemazur — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:49:57 +0000

Parisian models protesting outside of City Hall

Last week in Paris, “life models” protested in the nude outside of City Hall. The demonstrators demanded higher pay and official contracts for their work posing as nude models for artists. The catalyst for the protest was the banning of the “cornet”, a tradition in life-drawing classes in which a rolled up piece of paper is passed around at the end of the class to collect tips for the model. Protesters hoped to raise awareness of their occupation as a legitimate career choice, deserving of the attendant benefits. I’d like to see some prominent artists come out in support of these models—after all, it’s the artists (and their art) who will suffer the most without them. Anyone who has ever taken a figure drawing class with a live model can attest to the fact that it’s an invaluable asset. For more on the plight of life models, see this article in the Guardian.

image via HuffPo

Youth

clairemazur — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:06:25 +0000

Jane Aldridge, of Sea of Shoes

I think it goes without saying that the art world’s obsession with youth is a potentially dangerous and harmful thing. With that little preamble out of the way: lately I have been consistently blown away by Jane Aldridge, of the fashion blog Sea of Shoes, who is sixteen yet ridiculously evolved and sophisticated in her taste—which comes across not only in her clothes, but in her writing and general sense of aesthetics. Then I came across this article by Regina Hackett, about Chrissie White, a fifteen year old photographer, some of whose shots are simply phenomenal—in execution, composition, design, and concept.

Chrissie White, Color Blind, 2008

I’m probably doing these girls a disservice by highlighting their youth—because I genuinely think that what they produce is remarkable regardless of their ages. I’ll be the first to admit that some of my fascination is borne from jealousy—I’m nearly a decade older and I have yet to develop any talent as fully as they have theirs. I’m also fascinated with how at such a young age they’ve managed to develop the confidence and awareness that is portrayed in their work. I was not nearly self assured enough at their age to put out the sort of craziness that they do–like most sixteen year olds, my creativity was stifled by my fear of peer-rejection–which means that even though I was fairly fashion-forward for Wilmington, Delaware, I never would have worn that tutu-getup to school (Jane put together the pictured outfit specially for the uniform-free day at her high school). Moreover, I didn’t have the same comprehensive knowledge of art and culture that they reference in their work. While I can’t speak to the source of their confidence (probably their parents’ doing) I wonder how much something like the internet has played a part in their artistic development—because neither of them have grown up in big cities where such inspiration might be more readily accessible. Or maybe it’s just that these sort of child-geniuses (I belive prodigy is the word?) have always existed and the internet is giving them earlier and wider exposure. It all comes back to the internet, right?

images via Sea of Shoes and Chrissie White’s Flickr