Art in America articles from May 2009

Art in America archives from May 2009

Defining Hannah Wilke's legacy.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To the Editors: I am writing in response to your recent article about Hannah Wilke by Anna C. Chave ["'I Object': Hannah Wilke's Feminism," Mar. '09]. Although toward the end of her essay Chave seems to affirm...

Elizabeth Peyton's detractors.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... To the Editors: Two friends of mine recently attended Elizabeth Peyton's New Museum show. While they both were expressing their dismay at the poor quality of the work, a museum guard approached them and asked, "Are you painters"? When both...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
May 1, 2009... In "Photo Play: The Social Life of the Pictures Generation" by Linda Yablonsky [Apr. '09, p. 109], Jack Goldstein showed at Thomas-Lewallen Gallery in Santa Monica, not at Claire Copley Gallery in Los Angeles, as mentioned in the text. Due to...

Protecting culture: Baghdad.(FRONT PAGE)(Donny George and Michael Rakowitz)(Interview)
May 1, 2009... Following the latest "reopening," in February, of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, Stephanie Cash spoke with its former director, Donny George, and Chicago-based artist Michael Rakowitz, whose 2007 exhibition "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist,"...

Protecting culture: New York.(FRONT PAGE)(assemblyman Richard Brodsky)(Interview)
May 1, 2009... A bill introduced in the New York State Assembly on Mar. 17 would, if put into law, regulate museum deaccessions in the state. Drafted by Democratic assemblyman Richard Brodsky who represents the 92nd District, including Westchester County in...

Bleckner honored By United Nations.(FRONT PAGE)(painter Ross Bleckner)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In a ceremony at the United Nations in New York on May 12, painter Ross Bleckner is to be named UN Goodwill Ambassador, the first visual artist to be so honored. The recognition stems from his work earlier this year...

Customs delay prompts Chinese artist's freewheeling improv.(FRONT PAGE)(Qiu Zhijie)
May 1, 2009... What does an artist do when he arrives on the far side of the world, only to find that the works for his gallery show, scheduled to open in 48 hours, are sequestered in U.S. customs--with no reason given for their delay and no hint of when, if...

Revision number eight unconscious.(homage to "Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious" by Timothy D. Wilson)(Column)
May 1, 2009... I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE who would topple consciousness from its throne. In my acid-stained youth, I toppled it as often as I could. Since then I seem to have been drifting down this long, white corridor, past a million miles of art, snatching...

Learning through color.(Josef Albers: To Open Eyes - The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale; Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today; Colour)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Josef Albers: To Open Eyes; The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale, by Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, London and New York, Phaidon Press, 2006; 288 pages, $59.95. Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, by Ann...

Wending toward art.(Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Americans should know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. --Walt Whitman Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West, by Erin Hogan, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,...

Identity and locale: four Australian artists: a selection of recent solo shows touches on aboriginality, geographical isolation and framing a relationship with Western art.(AUSTRALIA REPORT)
May 1, 2009... LOOKING DOWN FROM a plane above the Australian interior, one sees vast expanses of red earth barely scratched here and there by roads. It could be a Martian landscape, devoid or nearly devoid of water and vegetation, which might explain why the...

Think again: with Double Take, Johan Grimonprez extends his exploration of the mirror worlds of news and entertainment, using Alfred Hitchcock--and his doubles--as suitably duplicitous guides.(FILM)
May 1, 2009... THE UNRELIABILITY OF MEMORY, the mutability of identity, and the tendency of real life to imitate the movies, especially in their tendency toward terror: these are not novel themes, but they are more or less inexhaustible, and in Johan...

New York.(art exhibits)(Calendar)
May 1, 2009... CHELSEA Denise Bibro Fine Art 529W. 20th St. 4th Fl, 10011 212-647-7030 Tuesday-Saturday: 11:00-6:00 www.denisebibrofineart.com Through May 9: In the Main Gallery, Roy Kinzer, "urban self-similarity," recent urban...

Tim Hawkinson with David Coggins.(IN THE STUDIO)(Interview)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] TIM HAWKINSON HAS A TALENT NOT JUST for invention, but for reinvention. His striking skill with unorthodox materials and methods is the common thread running through his elaborate and diverse projects, from the...

Be my mirror Dan Graham: widely admired but seldom considered comprehensively, Graham's work spans disposable printed material and steel-and-glass architecture, and reflects interests ranging from Conceptualism to hardcore rock. All are represented in a traveling survey.
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] LATELY, DAN GRAHAM SEEMS to be everywhere. A frequent reference point for artists today, he has been a key figure in the art of the past 30 years, and is by all accounts central to the history of Conceptual art. Yet...

Marina Abramovic: an interview by David Ebony.(Interview)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If there's anyone who can rightly be called an art-world diva, it's Marina Abramovic. A preeminent performance artist with a commanding presence on the international art scene for over 30 years, Abramovic is known...

Provisional painting: a tendency in recent (and not-so-recent) painting spurns high craft and finish in favor of a more makeshift, seemingly anti-market, esthetic.(Essay)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FOR THE PAST YEAR OR SO I've become increasingly aware of a kind of provisionality within the practice of painting. I first noticed it pervading the canvases of Raoul De Keyser, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Mary...

Another trip through "The Americans": looking back on Robert Frank's landmark book, a fellow photographer ponders what that dark, highly personal work can tell us afresh about life in the U.S. and the nature of camera art.
May 1, 2009... Robert Frank (b. 1924) emigrated from Switzerland to the United States in 1947 and went on to become the most influential American photographer of the later 20th century. Most of the work with which he so affected his contemporaries and heirs...

Tony Oursler: Metro Pictures.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To Tony Oursler's credit, he is not resting on his laurels but pushing at the boundaries of what he has accomplished so far with video projection. To judge from the 14 works (all 2009) in "Cell Phones Diagrams...

Alfredo Jaar: Lelong.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... Alfredo Jaar wrote the script on which The Sound of Silence is based in 1995, and then waited more than a decade before he figured out what to do with it. (Completed in 2006, the project varies slightly from one venue to the next; this was its...

Florian Maier-Aichen: 303.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Florian Maier-Aichen brings a contemporary sensibility to bear on a range of historical references, from German Romantic painting to 19th-century photographs of the American West. The German-born photographer shoots...

Charles Long: Tanya Bonakdar.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In an exhibition of five untitled sculptures, one wall-mounted and the rest freestanding (all but one 2009), Charles Long took a detour from the Los Angeles River and its detritus, from castaway shopping carts and...

Keren Cytter: Thierry Goldberg.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Two short video works by Keren Cytter recently on view in New York both feature, typically for this artist, bare interiors and non-actors from whom she draws performances that strike a delicate balance between...

Jenny Holzer: Whitney Museum of American Art.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... For over 80 years, Jenny Holzer's art has plumbed the relationship between didactic text and other visual conduits for language. In the late '70s, she wheat-pasted posters of Nietzsche-like Truisms across Lower Manhattan. The guerrilla-style...

Robert Barry: Yvon Lambert.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... Robert Barry's exhibition "RB 62-08" was stunning, perhaps the finest U.S. installation of his work. Two recent word pieces and two abstract paintings from the early '60s--one of them paired with a new painting--plus one word work re-created in...

Cordy Ryman: DCKT.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cordy Ryman's do-it-yourself esthetic is the visual equivalent of garage-band music. The work has a happy nonchalance and is spot-on in terms of color and scale. Using acrylic and materials at hand--wood (usually...

Nick Cave: Jack Shainman.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For the second showing of his "Soundsuits" at Jack Shainman Gallery, Nick Cave offered a profusion of opulent fabrics, porcelain birds and plastic flowers. A U-shaped platform in the main room displayed more than a...

Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison: Ronald Feldman.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ahead of the curve, Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison started addressing global warming in 1974. Over the years, working with scientists, architects, artists and city planners, among others, they have completed scores...

John Gerrard: Knoedler Project Space and Simon Preston.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... In a pair of solo appearances, his first in New York, John Gerrard showed three visually stunning, thematically related digital works (all 2008). One, at Knoedler, centers on an oil pump in a vast Colorado landscape. It appeared on a...

Andrew Lord: Gladstone.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The British-born ceramist Andrew Lord has been based in New York since the early 1980s, but this was his first show at Gladstone, and he responded to the opportunity with a dazzling expansion of his range. The...

Harriet Shorr: Cheryl Pelavin.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Harriet Shorr's luminous still lifes are based equally on fidelity to perception (the way things look in a certain light) and on the particular esthetic experience prompted by the harmonics of color and form on...

David Shapiro: Pierogi.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The 102 works of art in David Shapiro's "Everything Must Go" were meticulously arranged on three capacious drop cloths spread out on the gallery floor, mimicking low-end street vendors' preferred method of...

John Newman: New York Studio School.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] John Newman's sculpture is not like anything we have seen before. This exhibition, titled "Instruments of Argument," was made up of 14 modest-size sculptures arranged on a specially designed, angled and multilevel...

Liz Renay: Deitch Projects.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... Deitch recently filled the main room at its Grand Street space with confidently kitschy acrylic paintings of buxom, platinum-haired young women. Mostly half-length portraits, they flaunted an efficiently brushed illustrational style and were...

Peter Pinchbeck: Luise Ross and Gary Snyder/Project Space.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... Born in Brighton, England, and schooled in London, Peter Pinchbeck (1931-2000) moved as a young man to New York, where his playful, reductive sculpture earned him a berth in the seminal 1966 "Primary Structures" exhibition at the Jewish Museum....

Lucy Stein: Broadway 1602.(NEW YORK)
May 1, 2009... Toxic colors, broad gestural marks and droll girl-gone-wild protagonists characterize British painter Lucy Stein's work. She deliberately plays on the history of the medium, evoking Soutine and Munch as well as early Sue Williams and Rita...

Kenji Fujita: Samson Projects.(BOSTON)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The title of Kenji Fujita's recent show of abstract mixed-medium sculptures and works on paper, "Systematic Gaiety: 2000-2008," quotes a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne about the "moral gloom of the world [that]...

Cindy Tower: Sheldon Art Galleries.(ST. LOUIS)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cindy Tower's "Riding the Rubble Down" at the Sheldon Art Galleries presents (through May 2) 15 paintings from her recent "Workplaces" series, plus a short documentary video on the artist by Malcolm Gay. With...

Philip Vanderhyden: Light and Sie.(DALLAS)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Philip Vanderhyden's 10 easel-size paintings, hung on three walls of this spacious gallery, all appeared to be products of roughly the same procedure: a somber but richly colored ground, usually a red that tends...

Ranjani Shettar: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.(FORT WORTH)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ranjani Shettar's first solo museum show included three impressive multipart sculptures. Two works on paper, a cluster of wax-dribbled sheets and an 8-foot-tall print containing a stream of red, green and brown...

Mark Dutcher: Steve Turner.(LOS ANGELES)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For more than a decade, Mark Dutcher has been blurring the line between sculpture and painting with vibrant works in swirling circus colors. In his latest exhibition, he has further eroded a distinction between the...

Anish Kapoor: Regen Projects.(LOS ANGELES)
May 1, 2009... Ever since the Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor emerged in the early 1980s, success has quickly followed on success. The early geometric forms made of powdered pigment, followed by solid sculptures and reliefs featuring deep "voids" or...

Stephen Kaltenbach: Verge Gallery and Studio Project.(SACRAMENTO)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Known as a pioneering conceptual artist for his works with language and performance in the 1960s, Stephen Kaltenbach here showed a group of 18 "Time Capsules" he created more than 30 years ago. These modestly crafted...

Curt McDowell: 2nd Floor Projects.(SAN FRANCISCO)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In his accompanying note to the exhibition "an uneven dozen broken hearts," underground filmmaker George Kuchar writes of his friend, former student, sometime lover, and collaborator on the 1975 cult favorite...

Santiago Sierra: Helga de Alvear.(MADRID)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Spanish artist Santiago Sierra has a long history of creating controversial works that explore issues of capitalism and exploitation in various historical and social contexts. His art often combines installation and...

Claire Fontaine: Chantal Crousel.(PARIS)
May 1, 2009... In the context of the abysmal global economy, the latest solo show of Claire Fontaine is disturbingly relevant. Titled "Feux de detresse," or "Warning Lights" (like those on an automobile), it was conceived as an interrogation of the politics...

Tate Triennial: Tate Britain.(LONDON)
May 1, 2009... Judging by its recent surveys of current British art, the Tare is not sure whether it is coming or going. Its Turner Prize exhibition, which closed mid-January, was characterized by the arch postmodernism of Goshka Maeuga and Mark Leckey, who...

Francesco Vezzoli: Gagosian.(ROME)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Greed may be out of fashion these days, but it remains very much on the mind of Francesco Vezzoli. Demure and self-effacing, Vezzoli claims to live out of a suitcase in Milan, and would seem to be far removed from...

Gianni Caravaggio: Collezione Maramoti.(REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Gianni Caravaggio's "Scenario" (2008) featured what the artist called a "cast of characters," referring to the six installations in the exhibition and recalling Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an...

Xu Zhen: Long March Space.(BEIJING)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Xu Zhen's recent solo show raised issues of human exploitation that have surfaced occasionally in the contemporary art world since at least 1972, when Gino De Dominicis included a young man with Down Syndrome in his...

Miyako Ishiuchi: Meguro Museum of Art.(TOKYO)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Miyako Ishiuchi (b. 1947) has long used photography as a medium for expressing Japan's memory and mourning. This was particularly evident in her "Mother's" series (2000-05), exhibited in the Japanese Pavilion of the...

Commander of the Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic.(AWARDS & GRANTS)(Malcolm Rogers)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was recently made a Commander of the Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic, one of the highest honors given to foreign citizens. Rogers received the honor for the MFA's...

Order of Arts and Letters.(AWARDS & GRANTS)(curator John Elderfield)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was recently elevated by the French government to the rank of officier of the Order of Arts and Letters, having been a chevalier since...

The International Center of Photography in New York will present its annual Infinity Awards on May 12.(AWARDS & GRANTS)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The International Center of Photography in New York will present its annual Infinity Awards on May 12. Among the recipients are Annie Leibovitz (lifetime achievement), Rinko Kawauchi (art photography) and Lieko Shiga (young photographer).

The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York has announced the winners of its 2009 art awards, to be presented at a ceremony this month.(AWARDS & GRANTS)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York has announced the winners of its 2009 art awards, to be presented at a ceremony this month. Academy Awards in the arts, worth $7,500 each, will go to Stephen Antonakos, Gregory Crewdson, John...

Michael Visocchi has won the 2009 Jerwood Sculpture Prize.(AWARDS & GRANTS)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Michael Visocchi has won the 2009 Jerwood Sculpture Prize. He receives approximately $35,000 to create a work at the Jerwood Foundation's sculpture park in Warwickshire, England. His work, a 60-foot-high sculpture of stacked electricity pylons,...

Hanne Darboven 1941-2009.(ART WORLD)(Obituary)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Hanne Darboven was quite a character, to say the least She fought cancer for many years, without ever considering quitting or even cutting back on her smoking, When awake, she was smoking. Period, She lost the fight...

The Whitechapel Art Gallery in London reopened on Apr. 5 after a $20-million renovation and expansion that incorporates the former library building next door, increasing gallery space by 78 percent.(MUSEUM NEWS)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The Whitechapel Art Gallery in London reopened on Apr. 5 after a $20-million renovation and expansion that incorporates the former library building next door, increasing gallery space by 78 percent. The project was designed by Belgian...

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has launched a new exhibition program called "Intervals," initiated by chief curator Nancy Spector.(MUSEUM NEWS)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has launched a new exhibition program called "Intervals," initiated by chief curator Nancy Spector. Commissioned artists will install works in the interstitial spaces of the museum or outside the building. First...

The Brant Foundation Art Study Center opens this month in Greenwich, Conn. Housed in a 1902 stone barn renovated by Richard Gluckman, the center features works from the collection of Peter Brant, owner of Brant Publications (which includes this magazine), and his wife, Stephanie Seymour.(MUSEUM NEWS)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The Brant Foundation Art Study Center opens this month in Greenwich, Conn. Housed in a 1902 stone barn renovated by Richard Gluckman, the center features works from the collection of Peter Brant, owner of Brant Publications (which includes this...

Obituaries.(ART WORLD)(Schuyler Chapin, Ann Sperry and Shinkichi Tajiri)(Obituary)
May 1, 2009... Schuyler Chapin, 86, former cultural affairs commissioner for New York City, died in Manhattan on Mar. 7. Chapin was born into a well-to-do family whose wealth dwindled with the early death of his father. Though Chapin never completed high...

Higher rate of job losses for artists, says NEA study.(ART WORLD)(National Endowment for the Arts)
May 1, 2009... Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008, a study published in March by the National Endowment for the Arts, shows that artists--ranging from art directors to animators to dancers are suffering a higher unemployment rate than the...

Chicago's Modern Wing takes off.(ART WORLD)(Art Institute of Chicago)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Art Institute of Chicago is set to open its new Modern Wing on May 16. Designed by Renzo Piano, the $300-million, limestone-and-glass structure adds 264,000 square feet to the existing 1893 beaux arts building,...

CAA awards for 2009.(ART WORLD)(College Art Association)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The College Art Association recently presented its awards at its annual meeting, held this year in Los Angeles. Mary Heilmann won the artist award for a distinguished body of work, and Chris Burden was honored for lifetime achievement. The...

Daniel Belasco, assistant curator at the Jewish Museum in New York, and Sarah Lewis, independent curator and Yale doctoral candidate, have been appointed co-curators of the next SITE Santa Fe Biennial [June 20, 2010-Jan. 2, 2011].(PEOPLE)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Daniel Belasco, assistant curator at the Jewish Museum in New York, and Sarah Lewis, independent curator and Yale doctoral candidate, have been appointed co-curators of the next SITE Santa Fe Biennial [June 20, 2010-Jan. 2, 2011]. Titled "The...

Rochelle Steiner.(PEOPLE)(resignation as Public Art Fund director)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Rochelle Steiner, director since 2006 of the Public Art Fund in New York, has resigned. Among the projects she oversaw was New York City Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson (2008).

Judith Olch Richards, executive director for 11 years of iCI (Independent Curators International) will step down from the post on June 30.(PEOPLE)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Judith Olch Richards, executive director for 11 years of iCI (Independent Curators International) will step down from the post on June 30. She joined the staff of iCI in 1980 as associate director.