Art in America articles from September 2005

Art in America archives from September 2005

Durand exits New York.(FRONT PAGE)( Kindred Spirits by Asher B. Durand sold to Alice L. Walton)
September 1, 2005... Kindred Spirits (1849), considered by many to be the most important work by Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand, sold to Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton on May 12 in a silent, sealed-bid auction at Sotheby's in New York. Though the...

Iraq museum update.(FRONT PAGE)(National Museum of Iraq)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... The director of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, Donny George, recently spoke in New York as part of a U.S. lecture tour to offer Americans an update on the museum's problematic situation as well as to promote a new multi-author book,...

Drawing Center move to WTC site in doubt.(FRONT PAGE)(World Trade Center)(artistic freedom and censorship)
September 1, 2005... As a result of what many art world observers are calling censorship, the Drawing Center's planned relocation from 35 Wooster Street to the World Trade Center site seems increasingly uncertain. A non-profit formed in 1977 to showcase works on...

Private museum opens in Shanghai.(FRONT PAGE)
September 1, 2005... The new Zendai Museum of Modern Art marks several firsts for Shanghai. It is the first art museum in the rapidly developing Pudong district, as well as the city's first completely private art museum. Funding comes entirely from the Zheng Da...

Judy Pfaff takes the stage.(FRONT PAGE)(opera set design)(Bard College's Summerscape Festival)
September 1, 2005... In the hair-raising third act of Marc Blitzstein's 1949 opera Regina, the venal title character literally sings her husband to death as he (vainly) lurches up the stairs for his heart medicine. In a recent staging of the opera at Bard College's...

Turmoil at the Corcoran.(FRONT PAGE)(Frank Gehry-designed project on hold)
September 1, 2005... The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has put its expansion plans on hold and is now searching for a new director. Citing fund-raising difficulties for the $170-million, Frank Gehry-designed project, first announced in 1999, the...

Coast to coast museum boom.(FRONT PAGE)(openings of new and renovated museums)(de Young Museum, San Francisco)(Figge Museum, Iowa)(Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus)(Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina)(High Museum of Art, Atlanta)
September 1, 2005... This fall marks the much-anticipated openings of five new or renovated museum buildings across the U.S. Perhaps the highest-profile project is the de Young Museum in San Francisco, which will reopen on Oct. 15. After a 1989 earthquake severely...

Artists in your living room.(FRONT PAGE)(Art 21: Art in the 21st Century)(television program)(Calendar)
September 1, 2005... After the success of the first two seasons, "Art 21: Art in the 21st Century" will return to TV screens this fall. The first episode of the new four-part series will air on PBS on Sept. 16 at 10 P.M. [EDT], with subsequent installments on Sept....

Contemporary works boost spring auctions.(FRONT PAGE)(New York art auction houses)(sales and trends)
September 1, 2005... All three major New York auction houses chalked up strong totals for the big spring evening sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. However, the fortnight of auctions got off to a shaky start, and the results were uneven,...

Biennale gamble: doubling down: spawned by a curatorial feud, two international biennials now vie for viewer attention in the Czech capital.(REPORT FROM PRAGUE)(The International Biennale of Contemporary Art)(Prague Biennale 2)
September 1, 2005... Is there a glut of international art biennials? More than 50--an average of one every two weeks--now operate across the globe, many in places where the desire for tourism and critical validation far outstrips day-to-day support for local...

Financing "The Gates": temporarily installed last winter in Central Park, "The Gates" exemplified the nonprofit self-funding of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.(PUBLIC ART)(when art is not a commodity)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2005... Andy Warhol famously said, "Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art." (1) The fascination with the way that Christo and Jeanne-Claude run the business of their art reached a peak with the installation of their Central Park...

Plugged in and caffeinated: Seattle's vibrant economy fosters an arts scene marked by museum growth, a noted sculpture park, and lively alternative and commercial venues.(REPORT FROM SEATTLE)(Directory)
September 1, 2005... Since Seattle was last the focus of feature articles in this magazine--Bill Berkson's 1986 consideration of the city's notable public art program and his chronicle of its artists--Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon and Washington Mutual have become...

Painterly relations: recent exhibitions at the Royal Academy and Tate Britain reassessed the work of three British painters: William Nicholson and the John siblings, Gwen and Augustus.(REPORT FROM LONDON)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2005... Two significant museum exhibitions in London earlier this year--"The Art of William Nicholson" at the Royal Academy and "Gwen John and Augustus John" at Tate Britain--addressed three 20th-century British painters whose reputations have waxed...

NY galleries.(New York)(Directory)
September 1, 2005... Chelsea Bowery Gallery 530 West 25th Street, 4th Floor, NY, NY 10001 Tel/Fax: 646.230.6655 * Website: www.bowerygallery.org Tuesday-Saturday: 11:00-6:00 September 6-October 1: Christine Hartman, "Drawings & Paintings."...

Venice Biennale: be careful what you wish for.
September 1, 2005... Despite the unprecedented appointment of two women as visual-arts directors, the 2005 Biennale is a cautious affair, marked by close administrative oversight and curatorial temperance. More garden party than free-for-all, the event just might...

Venice Biennale: what befits a woman? A feminist art historian takes on the "feminist biennale," headed by women curators for the first time ever, and showcasing an unprecedented number of women artists.(New Feminism)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2005... Women are omnipresent in this year's Venice Biennale, beginning with the two visual-arts directors--Maria de Corral, organizing "The Experience of Art" in the Italian Pavilion, and Rosa Martinez, producing "Always a Little Further" at the...

Unfolding Matisse: Henri Matisse's "working library" of textiles, packed away in trunks and closets since the artist's death in 1954, is now the focus of a revelatory exhibition of artworks and fabrics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.(influences of recurring fabric motifs)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2005... Animals, as Claude Levi-Strauss put it in his study of totemism, are good for thinking with. Likewise, Henri Matisse might have affirmed that textiles are good for painting with. Good for exhibiting paintings with as well, as attested by a fine...

In a liquid medium: better known in Europe than in the U.S., Richard Jackson has been testing the confines of painting for over three decades. Recent shows in New York and London prompt new consideration of this quietly influential Los Angeles artist.(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2005... I've been fascinated by Richard Jackson's work for years without ever seeing any of it in person. Poring over photographs in exhibition catalogues and art magazines, many of them from the 1970s, I perceived an artist whose boundary-breaking...

The measure of heartbreak: in her multipart project "Exquisite Pain," Sophie Calle uses snapshots, letters and memorabilia to mark her progression toward an unexpected romantic rupture. Accounts of other people's tragedies, in stitched texts and photographs, help her to place the experience in perspective.(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2005... Sophisticated, deeply intelligent and often very funny in a mordant sort of way, Sophie Calle's work is nonetheless something like a performance by the food-slinging Kipper Kids. Both offer a fair amount of visceral messiness, and no safe seat...

Painting a paradox.(Caio Fonseca's painting processes)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2005... "Harder than finding the painting I am going to do," Caio Fonseca said in a recent interview, "is deciding what painting I am not going to do." (1) It's a puzzling statement from a painter whose work seems, at least at first acquaintance, to be...

Open source art: two recent exhibitions provided an introduction to the videos and altered software projections of computer artist Cory Arcangel, who makes his work with various collaborators.
September 1, 2005... Most artists would consider opening two prominent gallery exhibitions in Manhattan within the same month--especially solo debuts--at least a little daunting. But not Cory Arcangel, the prolific, unassuming 27-year-old computer geek who, despite...

Antony Gormley at Sean Kelly.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Antony Gormley is best known for making life-size figurative sculptures derived from molds of his own body. Typically cast in heavy metals that generalize his specific anatomy into sturdy, anonymous Everymen, Gormley's work has enjoyed the kind...

Sarah Sze at Marianne Boesky.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Although Sarah Sze has been a fixture on the international exhibition circuit for nearly a decade, her only previous solo gallery show occurred here in 2000. The site-specific nature of most of Sze's sculptures, which tend to infiltrate the...

Daniel Buren at the Guggenheim.(New York)
September 1, 2005... The Guggenheim International Exhibition of 1971 was intended to be a survey of 21 contemporary artists on the cutting edge. Many of the participants, including Daniel Buren, proposed work responsive to the site or to the challenge of Frank...

David Wakstein and the Painting Team at White Box.(New York)
September 1, 2005... A mosaic made of hand-cut Jerusalem stone covered the floor at White Box for the exhibition "Miss Liberty: Four Stations." Two variegated hues of stone--dark gray and a warm off-white--formed the image of the Statue of Liberty, sitting on a...

Gerald Laing at Spike.(New York)
September 1, 2005... While many American artists appear to ignore the country's current state of political affairs and remain eerily silent on the subject of the Iraq war, at least in their works, it was surprising to see the English Pop art pioneer Gerald Laing...

Jane Hammond at Galerie Lelong.(New York)
September 1, 2005... In Jane Hammond's work, meaning is built up from strings of associations, often using and reusing a set of quasi-pictographic images. For this exhibition, Hammond, who is best known for her paintings, dramatically expanded her range of mediums...

Amy Wilson at Bellwether.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Art that thoughtfully responds to the current insanity in American politics and the cravenness in our media is like rain on parched earth. Amy Wilson's exciting first solo show presented the perspective of a well-read conspiracy theorist and...

Joel Shapiro at PaceWildenstein.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Joel Shapiro is best known for humanizing the cold, impersonal forms of Minimalism. For nearly three decades, he has assembled geometric volumes into sculptures that evoke the human body and its potential for energetic movement. While traces of...

Leonardo Drew at Brent Sikkema.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Leonardo Drew is very good at suggesting infinity. In his monumental reliefs, innumerable elements varying in shape and size, made of the same materials or coated with uniform substances, are arranged in front of an imaginary grid that could...

Robert Gober at Matthew Marks.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Robert Gober's first New York exhibition in 11 years was full of Goberisms, among them the meticulous re-creation of quotidian objects out of unexpected materials, bodies mutating between human and animal (or in this case forest) forms,...

Lawrence Weiner at Marian Goodman.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Since 1968, Lawrence Weiner's chosen medium of expression has been language and its structure. EN ROUTE (2005), a single, complex work in five parts, applied in laser-cut vinyl letters to the gallery walls, introduced his recent exhibition....

Graham Nickson at Salander-O'Reilly.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Laid out like a frieze along a panorama of beach, water and sky, Graham Nickson's signature bathers are caught in arrested motion at water's edge, where they speak a wordless language of hieroglyphic shadows and semaphores, signaling the...

Markus Lupertz at Michael Werner.(New York)(Neo-Expressionist)
September 1, 2005... Markus Lupertz may not be the most formidable of the German Neo-Expressionist painters who came to prominence in the U.S. in the 1980s, but, as a recent solo at Michael Werner demonstrated, his work can stand apart by virtue of a certain...

Karin Davie at Mary Boone.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Karin Davie has made a name for herself painting stripes. For the past several years, her distinctive bands of vibrant color have rippled across her canvases in exaggerated S-curves. But just as these dizzily warped abstractions threatened to...

Cecily Brown at Gagosian.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Cecily Brown is an ambitious, historicizing artist with a taste for dynamic brushwork and visual overload. In her latest painterly abstractions, she once again creates landscapes that seem to be inhabited by figures--or at least by fragments of...

Don Celender at OK Harris.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Pioneering conceptual artist Don Celender's generous dialogue concerning art and esthetics with the world at large and its individuals and institutions follows a template he established early on in his long history with OK Harris, where he...

Louis Cameron at I-20.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Louis Cameron stole the pithy title of his recent solo show from the supermarket shelves. "Pop Secret" (the exhibition, not the popcorn) cleverly acknowledged the readymade sources of all the work on display, as well as Cameron's tendency to...

Donald Baechler at Cheim and Read.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Like Art Brut, Donald Baechler's seemingly ingenuous depictions of everyday objects and simple figures succeed in large part by tapping into our nostalgia for childhood, that period of life before the rivening onset of self-consciousness and...

Robert Arneson at George Adams.(New York)
September 1, 2005... Titled "Arneson and the Object," this exhibition, which was organized by the Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University, featured 20 sculptures in ceramic or bronze and 10 drawings from throughout the career of Robert Arneson...

George Quasha and John Cage at Baumgartner.(New York)
September 1, 2005... As a young artist, George Quasha was liberated by John Cage's esthetic. In celebration of that influence, this exhibition included a selection of Cage's New River Watercolors (1988). With their quiet forms and textures, these are the refined...

Wade Saunders at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts.(Philadelphia)
September 1, 2005... At first look, the works in this show don't seem to take themselves too seriously. Yes, it's a new body of work for the prolific sculptor Wade Saunders, who lives in Paris and writes for these pages. Perhaps it's the lightweight...

Alison Ruttan at 3Arts and Monique Meloche.(Chicago)
September 1, 2005... Departing from her earlier interests in abstraction and pornography, Alison Ruttan explores a new set of instinctual behaviors in four new video works recently exhibited at two locations. Her subject is the anxious state of human interaction, a...

Katy Stone at the Boise Art Museum.(Boise, Idaho)(post minimalism influences)
September 1, 2005... For her first museum solo, Seattle artist Katy Stone created a site-specific installation titled "Fall" for the sculpture court of the Boise Art Museum, scheduled to run nine months, until mid-October. Three monumental vertical elements of cut...

John Grade at the Boise Art Museum.(Boise, Idaho)
September 1, 2005... After completing BFA studies at Pratt Institute in 1992, John Grade (pronounced grah-dee) took advantage of a generous travel grant and headed for Mexico, beginning an extended period of travel abroad, visiting Central and South America, Asia,...

Tom Waldron at Richard Levy.(Albuquerque, New Mexico)
September 1, 2005... Tom Waldron's oeuvre presents multiple paradoxes. The work seems simple but proves complex, and initially looks stable but visually morphs in unexpected ways. Each highly refined form appears solid but is actually fabricated of welded...

Chris Jordan at Paul Kopeikin.(Los Angeles)
September 1, 2005... In the spirit of recycling, Seattle photographer Chris Jordan has found new use for other people's junk. For the works in his debut show in Los Angeles, he has taken pictures of various scrap heaps and dump sites, from the usual mix of cans and...

Sean Duffy at Suzanne Vielmetter LA Projects.(Los Angeles)
September 1, 2005... In scruffy group shows and solo exhibitions over the past decade, Sean Duffy has been praised for his offbeat delineations of Star Trek characters made of fake fur and for conceptually wacky sculptures such as Triple-Tumtable (2001), a record...

Rick Arnitz at Stephen Wirtz.(San Francisco)
September 1, 2005... A gallery regular for the last 16 years and a Bay Area resident who rarely shows outside California, Rick Arnitz offers a unique blend of abstraction that is informed by both Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, but which ultimately remains...

Jay DeFeo at Mills College Art Museum.(Oakland)(photo-collages)
September 1, 2005... Despite her iconic status as creator of the epic painting The Rose, whole bodies of work by Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) remain largely unknown. Following the exhausting and cathartic project of creating The Rose (19581966), DeFeo withdrew from making...

Joseph Park at the Frye Art Museum and Howard House.(Seattle)
September 1, 2005... At the heart of Seattle figurative painter Joseph Park's work is suspicion about the medium itself. Park did not want to be a painter, though today he produces interior scenes and landscapes mostly populated with anthropomorphic animals. He...

Scott Fife at Platform.(Seattle)
September 1, 2005... This small grouping of four sculptures by Scott Fife followed a larger survey at the Tacoma Art Museum. The 55-year-old Seattle artist showed his painted-cardboard figurative sculptures in Germany and Switzerland throughout the 1980s and '90s....

Peter Millett at Greg Kucera.(Seattle)
September 1, 2005... Peter Millett's exhibition last season was a culminating group of sculptures rather than a breakthrough set. All the simple approaches and signature geometric shapes the Chicago-born artist has developed since he moved to Seattle in 1973 came...

Roy McMakin at the Henry Art Gallery.(Seattle)
September 1, 2005... "Roy McMakin: A Door Meant as Adornment" at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery was a 20-year survey of the Wyoming-born, Seattle-based sculptor and furniture designer. McMakin shows regularly in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and...

Pat Hickman and David Hamilton at Maui Arts & Cultural Center.(Hawaii)(fiber influenced sculptures)
September 1, 2005... In the early 1990s, fiber artist Pat Hickman was commissioned to create a set of gates for the entrance to the Maul Arts & Cultural Center. Eight sections resembling large nets were cast in aluminum in a foundry at the University of Tasmania,...

Tino Sehgal at the ICA.(Institute of Contemporary Arts)
September 1, 2005... London-born, Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal puts a lot of thought into his work, and not much else. Literally. But his economy of means lends itself to experiential, thought-provoking work that is rich with meaning. His spare performance...

Marc Bijl at Upstream.(AMSTERDAM)
September 1, 2005... The young Dutch artist and rock musician Marc Bijl (pronounced "bile") has been showing extensively in Europe over the past several years. His witty and imaginative sculptures and installations address provocative, often politically charged...

Helga Natz at Arnaud Lefebvre.(Paris)(post-minimalist)
September 1, 2005... Helga Natz, an artist born in Germany, has been exhibiting internationally for 15 years. She is known for her Post-Minimalist sculptural objects as well as temporary, site-specific works, such as a group of nine sculptures situated in a sand...

Barthelemy Toguo at the Palais de Tokyo.(watercolors, sculptures and sculptural installations)
September 1, 2005... Barthelemy Toguo was born in Cameroon in 1967 and studied art in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He moved to Europe in 1993 and began exhibiting and doing performances while finishing his studies in Grenoble, then Dusseldorf. Political geography and...

Art services.(Directory)
September 1, 2005... ADVERTISING DESIGN PRINTING Modern Postcard 1675 Faraday Avenue, Carlsbad, CA 92008 www.modernpostcard.com Specializing in producing full color postcards, starting from $125 for 500 copies. Call today for free samples and...

The University of Wisconsin's Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison recently announced a gift of $20 million from New York-based collectors and philathropists Simona and Jerome A. Chazen to help fund a $35-million museum expansion project.(Museum News)(decorative art pieces to Museum of Art and Design, New York)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... The University of Wisconsin's Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison recently announced a gift of $20 million from New York-based collectors and philanthropists Simona and Jerome A. Chazen to help fund a $35-million museum expansion project....

Obituaries.(ART WORLD)(William Lieberman)(Al Loving)(Piero Dorazio)(Obituary)
September 1, 2005... William Lieberman, 82, chairman of the 20th-century art department at the Metropolitan and longtime curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, died in his sleep on May 31 in Manhattan. Renowned for his visual acumen and connoisseurship, he...

Al Held, 1928-2005.(Obituaries)(Biography)
September 1, 2005... Al Held, 76, prominent abstract painter and influential teacher, died July 26 at his home in Todi, Italy. His body was found in his swimming pool, but the cause of death has not yet been determined as we go to press. Best known for large-scale,...

Pinault to the Punta.(ART WORLD)(Francois Pinault)(Punta della Dogana, Venice)
September 1, 2005... After it was disclosed last spring that French businessman Francois Pinault would purchase a controlling stake in Palazzo Grassi--the exhibition space on Venice's Grand Canal that had been administered by Fiat from 1984 to 2003 [see "Front...

Bloomberg's gift to NYC.(ART WORLD)(New York City)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has again given a large sum of his own money to benefit arts institutions. Though the $20-million gift was made anonymously to the Carnegie Corporation for distribution to 406 small and midsize groups, it is...

Arkansas gets art center, and a Durand.(ART WORLD)(Crystal Bridges art museum)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... The Walton Family, whose fortune derives from the Wal-Mart chain, has announced plans to construct Crystal Bridges, an art museum and cultural complex in Bentonville, Ark., designed by the Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie. Situated on 100...

Hirshhorn Museum.(People)(Smithsonian personnel)(Olga Viso)(Rifkin, Ned)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Olga Viso has been promoted to the position of director of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. She has been deputy director since 2003 and was curator prior to that. Viso succeeds Ned Rifkin, who was named director in 2002; in 2004 Rifkin...

Seattle Art Museum.(People)(Lisa Corrin)(Linda Shearer)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Lisa Corrin, deputy director of art at the Seattle Art Museum since 2001, has been appointed director of the Williams College Museum of Art. She succeeds Linda Shearer, who is now head of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

New Museum of Contemporary Art.(People)(Richard Flood)(Philippe Vergne)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Richard Flood, chief curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis since 1994, has been named chief curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, which will open in its new downtown facility in 2007. Philippe Vergne, former...

Mark di Suvero is the visual-art winner of a Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities from the Heinz Family Foundation.(Awards)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Mark di Suvero is the visual-art winner of a Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities from the Heinz Family Foundation, headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry. He receives $250,000.

Andrea Zittel was recently presented with the 2005 Lucelia Artist Award, worth $25,000.(Awards)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Andrea Zittel was recently presented with the 2005 Lucelia Artist Award, worth $25,000. The prize is given to an American artist under age 50 by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Lucelia Foundation.

The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation has announced the winners of its annual Space Program, which provides free studio space in Tribeca for working artists.(Awards)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation has announced the winners of its annual Space Program, which provides free studio space in Tribeca for working artists. They are A.J. Bocchino, Elizabeth Brown, George Dombek, Rachel Frank, Hilary Harkness,...

Whitney Museum of American Art.(Museum News)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... The Whitney Museum of American Art recently received a green light from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission for its renovation and expansion designed by architect Renzo Piano [see "Front Page," Jan. '05]. This is the museum's...

Reporter murdered in Iraq.(ART WORLD)(Steven Vincent, investigative journalist)(Brief Article)(Biography)
September 1, 2005... Steven Vincent, 49, investigative journalist, art critic and A.i.A. contributor, was found shot dead in Basra, Iraq, on Aug. 2, just hours after he and his female interpreter, who at this writing had survived the attack, were kidnapped by...