I attended the opening of the Caffeine IV group exhibit at Murphy-Hill Gallery last night. A stellar line-up of who's who in Chicago art exhibited as many as three pieces of work each in this huge, spectacular space seemingly designed for museum work, in the old main Sears-Roebuck building in Garfield Park.
[gallery link="file" columns="4" orderby="rand"]
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Photographing Artwork in the Museum Good or Bad?
Today’s New York Times has an article entitled “When It’s Illegal to Photograph Artwork,” by Jennifer Saranow Schultz. The topical conclusion is framed as the answer to this question asked of lawyers. The lawyerly answer, of course, totally parrots copyright law, 70 years. Ms. Schultz failed to ask museums why they forbid photography.I think this is a topic worth pursuing and questioning. My operative philosophy as a working artist is that I look at the art of other artists, both my contemporaries and from history, with great intensity. I say directly in my personal artist’s statement without any hesitation that I stand on the shoulders of my artist predecessors.
The Art Institute of Chicago’s recent Matisse exhibit not only forbad photography, but sketching. When queried as to why, their answer was that they were concerned about dangers posed by messy sketching materials.
Given that museums are desperate for money, and given how blockbuster exhibits relentlessly push viewers into the gift shops, I think that the stronger reason for banning reproduction is obvious.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Ownership Isn't Everything
This is an interesting quote from an article in The Art Newspaper by Maxwell Anderson, entitled “Ownership Isn’t Everything,” concerning the utility of moving art from venue to venue in and out of circulation, so that more of us can be exposed to more art, with less static reliance on standing collections.
“If we gather art for research and display, we don’t have to own it. We can commission it, or we can borrow and return it. Stewardship is the new normal—ownership matters less and less in the increasingly restless worlds of both bits and atoms, as ebooks and timeshares have proved. Museums have to devote the largest part of their budgets to caring for the permanent collection, but the public is increasingly demanding impermanent experiences, such as loan exhibitions, and tires of seeing the same works in the same context year after year. While as museum curators and directors we shake our heads at this dismaying phenomenon, and make pilgrimages to see familiar works in familiar places, that covetousness is becoming quaint. In an era of jet travel, careful packing and shipping, high-quality digital reproductions, and licensing versus buying, the enjoyment of static collections is less important to most people than the enjoyment of works not before seen, or not before seen in combination with other works.”
“If we gather art for research and display, we don’t have to own it. We can commission it, or we can borrow and return it. Stewardship is the new normal—ownership matters less and less in the increasingly restless worlds of both bits and atoms, as ebooks and timeshares have proved. Museums have to devote the largest part of their budgets to caring for the permanent collection, but the public is increasingly demanding impermanent experiences, such as loan exhibitions, and tires of seeing the same works in the same context year after year. While as museum curators and directors we shake our heads at this dismaying phenomenon, and make pilgrimages to see familiar works in familiar places, that covetousness is becoming quaint. In an era of jet travel, careful packing and shipping, high-quality digital reproductions, and licensing versus buying, the enjoyment of static collections is less important to most people than the enjoyment of works not before seen, or not before seen in combination with other works.”
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Repetition, Bad Habit or Not?
From one of my favorite bloggers: Ancient Artist: Developing an Art Career After 50, in a post labeled Repetition How Do You Know It Isn't a Bad Habit? (Drawing, "I Found It Just Like Anything Else, I Stopped Looking," by Nancy Charak, 44"x30", oil wash, oil stick, prismacolor, graphite on 90# Stonehenge.)Key quotes:
- How do you know if what you are doing is part of your creative process or a habit you need to break?
- Do I feel passionate about this or is it just fun to play with pretty colors?
- Am I mimicking or exploring?
Mimicking is making duplicates of the same thing, "If you copy - you have two of same thing, who needs it?" Exploring is looking for depth.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Ancient Greek Sculptures NOT Monochromatic!
[caption id="attachment_556" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Elgin Marbles"]
[/caption]
Actually art-historians suspected this a long time ago from the paint flecks buried in the cracks of ancient sculptures, but orthodoxies die hard. Now the notion that Greek antiquities were polychromatic to the point of gaudiness is gaining acceptance.
[/caption]Actually art-historians suspected this a long time ago from the paint flecks buried in the cracks of ancient sculptures, but orthodoxies die hard. Now the notion that Greek antiquities were polychromatic to the point of gaudiness is gaining acceptance.
The first picture is one that I took in 2004 at the British Museum of the Elgin Marbles taken from the Acropolis, from the running frieze. The next photo is a color rendering of possible coloration.
You can bet that looking up at the Acropolis from the streets below in Athens must have been a delight to see some 2,500 years ago.
And once again a hat tip to Kottke.org, http://kottke.org/10/08/painted-greek-statues.
Imagine what Michelangelo's David or Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa would be had they been modeled on and inspired by full color antiquities. We'd all be living now in a very different post-Renaissance world.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Call for Papers on Artists' Statements?
This is an interesting thing to me; I certainly mean no disrespect to the serious intentions of the editors of this academic journal, the Special Issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies. It is a call for papers about the Artists' Statements: Origins, Intentions, Exegesis by art historians at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. As a practicing artist I am constantly called upon to produce an artist’s statement. When I am asked to provide one, what I really want to say is as follows:
My problems with artists’ statements are many. First and foremost, they slow down and impede the visual process, the important part of actually looking at the artwork. All too often I see art viewers moving along reading title cards and statements with more care than they give to the actual visuals of the art works. Reading and language are so important in our culture that they take primacy of place and thus in an visual art setting, care needs to be taken to emphasize the art over the written verbiage. Another problem is that all too often the artist’s statement doesn’t match the work, or even more confusing the statements are extraordinarily similar but the work is totally different.
Visual art is meant to be looked at, for more than a glancing second. Viewers need to slow down, take their time and stop reading. Reading does not enhance visual art.
I certainly agree with the statement in the call for papers: “For centuries artists have made statements about their work in order to explain and promote it or to construct narratives about its origins and their intentions. The artist’s statement is now an integral – and taught - component of contemporary practice, and a seemingly incontrovertible primary source for art and cultural historians, literary critics, anthropologists and philosophers. However, artists have written about themselves and their work in many contexts and formats, both public and private, including correspondence, manifestoes and interviews. In some cases, such statements may overshadow, displace, or even constitute, the artwork itself.”
This is a result of the academization of art practice, with the massive numbers of MFAs justifying their work to academic committees, so that theses can be produced, copied and then put on shelves in the libraries and the graduate offices. I know, I’ve done it myself, written a totally useless thesis to go with the slides from the thesis exhibit.
Just for grins, this is my current statement that goes out to my public:
My function as an artist is not to tell the truth—it is to captivate viewers for as long as I can hold their attention. It is not necessary for the artwork to be any more than what it is. What is necessary is for the art to flow from inside and to allow the paintings and drawings to spring from my entire set of experiences and sensibilities as an artist.
My current favorite giants, to name just the women, are Agnes Martin and Joan Mitchell for the purity of their thought and action on the canvas as well as Linda Karshan, Sandra Blow, Vija Celmins, and Katherina Grosse. Whether what they do is lyrical, expository or just plain brash, to my way of thinking they are all pure abstract expressionists who make marks, lines, shapes, colors on paper, canvas, even buildings, and say to us, "here look at this, make of it what you will."
“It is not my responsibility to tell you, the viewer, what to think when looking at my artwork. It is not my problem. This is not, however, to imply that I’m saying ‘there’s nothing to see here, move along,’ like a Star Wars droid. What I make are maps, signposts, guidance of my journeys into unknown places, into terra incognita, because I never know where my art pieces will take me, let alone you.”
My problems with artists’ statements are many. First and foremost, they slow down and impede the visual process, the important part of actually looking at the artwork. All too often I see art viewers moving along reading title cards and statements with more care than they give to the actual visuals of the art works. Reading and language are so important in our culture that they take primacy of place and thus in an visual art setting, care needs to be taken to emphasize the art over the written verbiage. Another problem is that all too often the artist’s statement doesn’t match the work, or even more confusing the statements are extraordinarily similar but the work is totally different.
Visual art is meant to be looked at, for more than a glancing second. Viewers need to slow down, take their time and stop reading. Reading does not enhance visual art.
I certainly agree with the statement in the call for papers: “For centuries artists have made statements about their work in order to explain and promote it or to construct narratives about its origins and their intentions. The artist’s statement is now an integral – and taught - component of contemporary practice, and a seemingly incontrovertible primary source for art and cultural historians, literary critics, anthropologists and philosophers. However, artists have written about themselves and their work in many contexts and formats, both public and private, including correspondence, manifestoes and interviews. In some cases, such statements may overshadow, displace, or even constitute, the artwork itself.”
This is a result of the academization of art practice, with the massive numbers of MFAs justifying their work to academic committees, so that theses can be produced, copied and then put on shelves in the libraries and the graduate offices. I know, I’ve done it myself, written a totally useless thesis to go with the slides from the thesis exhibit.
Just for grins, this is my current statement that goes out to my public:
My function as an artist is not to tell the truth—it is to captivate viewers for as long as I can hold their attention. It is not necessary for the artwork to be any more than what it is. What is necessary is for the art to flow from inside and to allow the paintings and drawings to spring from my entire set of experiences and sensibilities as an artist.
My current favorite giants, to name just the women, are Agnes Martin and Joan Mitchell for the purity of their thought and action on the canvas as well as Linda Karshan, Sandra Blow, Vija Celmins, and Katherina Grosse. Whether what they do is lyrical, expository or just plain brash, to my way of thinking they are all pure abstract expressionists who make marks, lines, shapes, colors on paper, canvas, even buildings, and say to us, "here look at this, make of it what you will."
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Just Because an Artist Says It Is Art. . .
[caption id="attachment_566" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Artist: Garvin Nolte, title: Crossroads."]
[/caption]
[/caption]"This is not art. It's a statement and a metaphor and all that good stuff, but it isn't art. Just because Duchamp pointed out that we can call anything art, it doesn't follow that he thought we should." Comment found on Gizmodo re a piece of installation art.
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