for your consideration: February 2010

26.2.10

what is a print?

A good interactive site if you're interested in learning about the history and processes of lithography, woodcut, etching, and screenprinting. Gotta love MOMA.

biennial on a budget: the whitney biennial

At a Biennial on a Budget, Tweaking and Provoking

by, Holland Cotter, New York Times

"In what felt like a pre-emptive effort at damage control, the Whitney Museum of American Art
did everything to underpitch its 2010 Biennial. With 55 artists, we were advised, it would be half the size of the 2006 show. Unlike the 2008 version, which spilled over into the Park Avenue Armory, this one would be confined to the museum’s premises. No frills. Tight belts. We’re doing our best. Don’t shoot.

The show lives up — or down — to its billing.

It has no theme; its catalog is slight; its installation, spartan.

Spectacle is out. Much of what’s in is quiet and hermetic to the point of initially looking blank. The prevailing aesthetic is the art of the tweak, minute variations on conventional forms and historical styles: abstract paintings stitched like quilts, performance pieces channeling the 1960s, and so on.

But if the museum gets full points for truth in advertising, it can also claim credit for a solid and considered product. The show has dead spots, mainly where it reflects the retrenched art-about-art spirit of the day. But it also has strong work (particularly in video) that speaks of life beyond the art factory."

See the rest of the article here: At a Biennial on a Budget, Tweaking and Provoking

See more photos of the Whitney Biennial here: Whitney Biennial 2010

19.2.10

reimagining the guggenheim

Saunders Architecture for "Contemplating the Void"

Contemplating the Void: An Exhibition Re-Imagines the Guggenheim Museum

By, Roberta Smith, New York Times

"The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is capping the 50th birthday festivities for its Frank Lloyd Wright building with some navel gazing. Still, there are worse navels to consider. Wright’s spiral rotunda, in fact, could be thought of as the greatest belly button in modern architecture: an innie and an outie all in one.

The rotunda is the inspiration for a frolicking, mostly feel-good show called “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum,” for which more than 200 artists, architects and designers were invited to redesign or repurpose the space."

Read the rest of the article here: Contemplating the Void

See what heavy hitters such as Zaha Hadid and Anish Kapoor imagined for the void a.k.a. the Guggenheim's belly button here: The Void

12.2.10

remembering alexander mcqueen

{Freshness Mag}

Fall '08
{Style.com}

Fall/Winter '08 Ad Campaign
{Frillr}

Finally, forever immortalized at the Met:

Oyster Dress, Spring/Summer 2003
{Metropolitan Museum of Art}

11.2.10

slander or censorship?

Officials See Slander in Uzbek Photos, but Artists See Censorship
By, Ellen Barry
New York Times

MOSCOW — How can a photographer defame her country?

Uzbekistan tried to answer that question this week in a slander trial that harked back to the days of Soviet censorship. The answer, in part: by showing people with sour expressions or bowed heads, children in ragged clothing, old people begging for change or other images so dreary that, according to a panel of experts convened by the prosecutors, “a foreigner unfamiliar with Uzbekistan will conclude that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages.”

Umida Akhmedova, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, was found guilty on Wednesday of slandering and insulting the Uzbek people, in a case that has stirred outrage in artistic circles throughout the region. Though the charges carried a prison sentence of up to three years, the judge waived the penalties, saying that Ms. Akhmedova had been granted an amnesty in honor of the 18th anniversary of Uzbek independence.

After the verdict, Ms. Akhmedova said she had been so deeply shaken by the prosecution that, even as she walked away free, it was difficult to feel relief.

“I can’t say my anxiety has subsided, I can’t say I’m suddenly O.K.,” she said. “There was a fear of going to prison. But to tell you the truth, I feel insulted, that’s the main thing. I still don’t understand how my creative work could have brought me to this courtroom.”

....

“The authorities want to show a rosy-cheeked face, a beautiful face, as if the wise rulers rule so well that nothing will ever happen,” he said. “And 99 percent of artists are afraid to get involved in anything problematic.”

See the whole article here.

At what point is it acceptable to censor work for state interest or at what point does it violate artistic liberties?

10.2.10

the decent drapery of life

A wonderful excerpt from a book contemplating the value and importance of money. It's written in an American context, but the message is applicable to all.

---------------------------------------------------------

Dear Reader,

The nation's political contests are (finally) entering the home stretch.

That means the candidates who are out of office - Democrats in some races, Republicans in others - are raising the age-old question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" When politicians pose this question, we know they are asking us to do a quick economic calculation. Is your salary higher? Is your home worth more? Is your 401(k) rising in value? Given the bruised condition of the U.S. economy, housing market and stock market, millions of Americans could be forgiven for responding with an emphatic "no" - and perhaps a few overripe tomatoes. Politics aside, though, there is a problem with turning this "better-off" question into a monetary equation. It neglects what Edmund Burke called "the decent drapery of life."

You may not be earning more than you were four years ago. Your home or your stock portfolio may be worth less. But is that really how we determine whether we are better off?

Maybe you fell in love over the last four years. Maybe you took up fly-fishing. Maybe you moved to an exciting new city. Maybe you spent the last four years honoring your profession, learning more about it, helping more people than ever before. Economic statistics are fine as far as they go. But they don't go far in measuring a life well lived. Life can't just be about the grim determination to get and have more.

As President Calvin Coolidge said, "No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."

Peggy Noonan agrees. "In a way, the world is a great liar," she writes. "It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That's what it really admires. That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, 'The thing about Joe was that he was rich.' We say, if we can, 'The thing about Joe was he took care of people.'"

It doesn't hurt to remember this. Because the one undeniable fact about the last four years is that you now have four less of them left. So maybe the important thing is not to make more, have more, or spend more. Maybe the important thing is to slow down and appreciate small things, ordinary things: The first frost. The town clock. The curl on your grandson's forehead.

At 79, my Dad has suddenly become an avid birder. What a surprise. When I was growing up, his free time was all about golfing, coaching Little League games or watching major league sports. He didn't own a pair of binoculars. And he certainly couldn't tell you the difference between a tufted titmouse and a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

When we're young, of course, we're going to live forever. There isn't time to notice things. We have places to go. Things to do. "We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well," wrote Paul Bowles near the end of his life. "Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty."

Rushing from one appointment to the next, we use up our time, putting off the non-urgent, the unessential. But in the second half - and no one knows when we reach that point exactly - life takes on a special poignancy precisely because our time is limited. It becomes richer and more meaningful because of it. It becomes more important than ever to spend time with the people and family we love. We need to create those opportunities - and to savor them. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Only you can determine what the question even means. But the answer shouldn't require a calculator.

"Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to," Ronald Reagan once remarked. They understand this in Scotland. When I lived in St. Andrews several years ago, the locals would often clink my glass, give me a wink, and announce in that distinct Scottish brogue: "Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."

---------------------------------------------

From The Secret of Shelter Island - Money and What Matters by, Alexander Green

9.2.10

tim burton at moma

Untitled (Cartoons). 1980–86
Pencil on paper, 13 x 16” (33 x 40.6 cm)

Currently, there is an amazing retrospective at the NY MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) featuring Tim Burton. While I know it' s halfway across the globe, I think that the exhibition site is quite interesting. And Tim Burton is so inspiring anyway, so why not? :)

"Taking inspiration from popular culture, Tim Burton (American, b. 1958) has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering for himself an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. This exhibition explores the full range of his creative work, tracing the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work in film. It brings together over seven hundred examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera from such films as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood, and Beetlejuice, and from unrealized and little-known personal projects that reveal his talent as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer working in the spirit of Pop Surrealism. The gallery exhibition is accompanied by a complete retrospective of Burton’s theatrical features and shorts, as well as a lavishly illustrated publication."

See the exhibition site: Tim Burton at the New York MOMA

See the trailer for Tim Burton's newest movie: Alice in Wonderland