Gallery Roundup

By Charles Kessler


Chelsea:
Richard Tuttle’s show at Pace Gallery is over, but it looks like his influence has now extended from the Lower East Side to Chelsea. I suspect it’s because Chelsea galleries usually have group shows of younger artists in the summer — but whatever. The best of the shows, my favorite anyway, is a semi-retrospective of B. Wurtz at Metro Pictures (Wurtz is represented by the gallery Feature, Inc.) through August 5th. I say semi-retrospective because Metro Pictures chose to show only one aspect of B. Wurtz’s art — maybe the Whitney will do a fuller exhibition some day. This work is influenced by Tuttle at his best: inventive, subtle and joyous.

Installation view, B. Wurtz: Works 1970–2011, Metro Pictures, New York.

Other examples of Tuttle’s influence: The Andrea Rosen Gallery has a sculpture in her back room that I actually thought may have been a Tuttle but turned out to be by Elliott Hundley; most of the work in D’Amelio Terras’s group show, Affinities: Painting in Abstraction; likewise, a fun show at Casey Kaplan called Everything Must Go; and CRG’s summer sculpture show (they moved to a new space at 548 W. 22nd).

Two other shows I liked are The Women in Our Life at Cheim & Read (until September 17th), an anniversary exhibition of women they have shown over the last fifteen years — and they’ve shown some of the greats; and Im Schatten der Made (In the Shadow of the Maggot), a zany exhibition of a John Bock video that looks like an old-time movie, and the props he used in the video. It’s at Anton Kern until August 12th.

Installation view, John Bock, 2011, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, NY

Lower East Side:
Like Chelsea, there are mainly group shows on the Lower East Side -- and it’s a chance to see some new faces. A wide-ranging show of ceramics titled Paul Clay (awful pun) at Salon 94 Bowery (until July 30th) was reviewed by Roberta Smith and has received a lot of attention. This is an excellent show, but I agree with Smith: why is it that ceramic shows are so crowded? It makes everything in this show, with the major exception of Jessica Jackson Hutchins's piece, look like chachkies.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Symposion, 2011, mixed media, 47 x 115 x 78 inches (Courtesy of Salon 94 Gallery)

Installation view, Paul Clay, Salon 94 Gallery

The New Museum just opened a God-awful show, Ostalgia, (until September 25th). Ostalgia is a term used to describe a sense of longing and nostalgia for the era before the collapse of the Communist Bloc. It’s an ambitious show, I’ll give it that. It includes more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. One work made the show worthwhile for me, however: Victor Alimpiev’s video of the faces of two opera singers, one singing corrections of breathing technique into the other’s ear. They are singing about singing and it’s tender, haunting, lyrical and beautiful.

Victor Alimpiev, My Breath, 2007. (Courtesy of the artist and Regina Moscow/London)

The Stephan Stoyanov Gallery presents another well-crafted video (things are getting better in that respect), this by Cliff Evans, and it's a unique one. Unfortunately the gallery’s site doesn’t provide any images, or even any information about the work, but you can see a typical example on Evans's website. The video is a composite of animations that flow together to create a complicated moving landscape. It's dense and complicated, but not hysterical in the way Ryan Trecartin’s work at PS1 is. I especially love the odd vertical shape (about 24” x 12”) of the video. It makes it more of a thing.

UPDATE: Cliff Evens sent me a photo (below) from the video, and it's a beaut. It's still important to go to his website to see how it works.

Finally, there are good group shows at Feature and Rachel Uffner Galleries; and Mulherin + Pollard Gallery opened a space at 187 Chrystie Street, at the end of Freeman Alley off of Rivington.

More Art News

By Charles Kessler

 

GIFs

There’s been a lot of discussion about GIFs (an image with a few details animated) in the art blogs, mainly in response to a post by Tom Moody. Now, via The Browser, I learned of a Washington Post article about a collaboration between photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg that produced much more sophisticated GIFs (which they call “cinemagraphs”). Here is their site; it has many more of their cinemagraphs. And here’s a good tutorial on how to create cinemagraphs.

GIFs UPDATE:
Anil Dash has a excellent article with many good links, as does Paddy Johnson. Four good sites to see what artists are doing with the GIF format are:
http://dump.fm/
http://computersclub.org/
http://www.tommoody.us/
and especially http://rhizome.org/ which is probably the most extensive site devoted to digital art.

Finally, there's 3Frames, a pretty good free iPhone app that makes it easy to make animated GIFs with your iPhone.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s Muse

Unknown photographer, Jane Avril at the Moulin Rouge, c.1892. Musée Montmartre, Paris

A Courtauld Gallery exhibition (until 18 September 2011) chronicles the relationship of the aristocratic artist Toulouse-Lautrec and the cancan-dancing daughter of a prostitute, Jane Avril. More about the exhibition can be found here, here and here.

Summer Art Event

Culturefix, a bar, gallery and event space on the Lower East Side (9 Clinton Street,  just below Houston), has undertaken an ambitious project called Telephone: a Game of Multi- Disciplinary Communication.

From their press release: culturefix chef and owner Ari Stern will create a dish based off of the wikipedia entry about the game telephone. From this dish, composer Michael Vincent Waller will write a piece of music which will be performed for 16 artists who in turn will create pieces of art to be displayed during the length of the exhibition. Based off of the 16 visual works of art, playwrights from the Overturn Theatre Ensemble will have one week to write plays that will then be directed and performed by professional actors under professional direction.

I have no idea how good this is, but it seems worth checking out. There will be play readings every night through July 24, from 6:30 -8pm. For more information and to buy tickets for the play readings, go to: http://culturefixny.com/events/telephone-exhibition/

Newly Discovered Paintings by Leonardo and Caravaggio

Posted by Charles Kessler

Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World), c.1500, oil on a wood panel, 26 x 18 ½ inches.

The story of the discovery of this Leonardo painting was originally reported by Milton Esterow in Art News and elaborated on nicely here by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian.

Finding a Leonardo is especially significant because there are so few of them in existence — only fourteen. In fact the number of Leonardo paintings known to be lost (The Battle of Anghiari and Leda and the Swan among them) almost equals the total of his existing work. 

The Salvator Mundi will be exhibited at London's National Gallery as part of a show about Leonardo's years at the court of Ludovico Sforza that will include an extraordinary seven of the fourteen existing Leonardos. It opens November 9 and will run through February 5, 2012.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, St Augustine, c.1600, oil on canvas, 47 x 37 inches

British art dealers are on a roll. I just wrote about a London dealer discovering a Van Dyke;
now, as reported in the Guardian, the British dealer and art historian Clovis Whitfield unearthed a Caravaggio that was covered in old varnish and bad repainting.

The painting is considered an example of Caravaggio’s mature work (done when he was only 28!). It adds to our understanding of Caravaggio because, according to Renaissance scholar David Franklin,
 “Often a [lost original] composition is known from copies but not this one. ...It shows a side of Caravaggio perhaps that is not as drastic and antagonistic as usual but where he was working very closely with [Vincenzo] Giustiniani [Caravaggio’s patron in Rome] to try to create a much more quiet image of a saint."

The painting is currently at the National Gallery of Canada in an exhibition called Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome.

Some Interesting Reading

By Charles Kessler


This website has maps of Africa dating back to 1554; some, like this, are beautiful in their own right.

Map of Africa, 1554, Sebastian Munster

Here's a depressing reason why the Chinese art market is booming: "one of the most essential functions of art works is corruption."

Sadly, the Barnes is not long for this world. For those who never got a chance to see this great, eccentric collection in its natural environment, the New York Times has a virtual tour here.

Without even finishing it, Jonathan Jones gives an over-the-top glowing review of Rome, Robert Hughes’s new book.

In another post, Jonathan Jones declares "We don't own modern art – the super-rich do." But the post is more thoughtful and complicated than you'd think from the title. He writes:

...contemporary art has a dual nature. On the one hand it is – like all fine art down the ages – a plaything of the rich. But that is not the whole story. It is also a public art. Spectacular installations, accessible videos such as The Clock, and free display spaces like the Tate Turbine Hall, make the art of today a common property, capable of communicating in exciting ways across nations and generations. It has a utopian aspect.

The Los Angeles Times has an article on how public art (like the di Suvero sculpture exhibition in the photo below) is thriving in New York partly due to the support of Mayor Bloomberg. They quote Creative Time director Anne Pasternak: "With [former Mayor Rudolph W.] Giuliani you usually didn't ask for permission, you apologized later," she said. "A bunch of us who program in New York have reason to be nervous for when Bloomberg is no longer mayor."

Mark di Suvero sculptures on Governors Island, Mahatma (1978-1979), foreground, one of 11 steel sculptures. (Jerry L. Thompson / Storm King Art Center

Finally, the Carnegie Institute and the Andy Warhol Museum and Foundation have collaborated on an iPhone app that allows you to make your own Warhol print simulating the way Warhol made his silkscreen prints. It’s temporarily on sale for only $0.99, and it’s a lot of fun. Here’s a sample I made using one of Han Silvester’s photos of Surma body painting:

Adapted from Hans Silvester, Natural Fashion,  no.4, 2007, C-print, 39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches, Edition of 10

One Big, Happy Family!

Robert Rauschenberg with then-assistant Brice Marden, New York, 1968. Photo - Henri Cartier-Bresson, courtesy of Robert Rauschenberg Archive, NY

Re-posted in summary by Charles Kessler

Jerry Saltz has an interesting project going. He’s asking for help making a list of post-war artists with a “modicum of recognition” who worked for other artists. Here’s what he has so far:

Carroll Dunham worked for Dorothea Rockburne
Barnaby Furnas worked for Carroll Dunham
Christopher Wool worked for Joel Shapiro
Josh Smith worked for Christopher Wool
Annette Lemieux worked for David Salle
Jacob Kassay worked for Josh Smith
Jackie Saccoccio worked for Christopher Wool
Alexander Ross worked for Julian Lethbridge
Sarah Morris worked for Jeff Koons
Jennifer Rubell worked for Koons
Tony Matelli worked for Koons
Carl Fudge worked for David Reed
Matthew Weinstein worked for Ross Bleckner
Darren Bader worked for Urs Fischer
Robb Pruitt worked for Richard Artschwager
Daphne Fitzpatrick worked for Robert Gober
Robert Gober worked for Jennifer Bartlett
Banks Violette worked for Robert Gober
Margaret Lee worked for Cindy Sherman
Rirkrit Tiravanija worked for Gretchen Bender
Udomsak Krisanamis worked for Rirkrit Tiravanija
Brice Marden worked for Robert Rauschenberg
Dorothea Rockburne worked for Robert Rauschenberg
Matt Magee worked for Robert Rauschenberg
Elizabeth Peyton worked for Ronald Jones
Haroon Mirza worked for Jeremy Deller
Matt Keegan worked for Elizabeth Peyton
Gabriel Orozco worked for Antony Gormley
Alexis Rockman worked for Ross Bleckner
Mark Handforth worked for Martin Kippenberg
Jutta Koether worked for Martin Kippenberger
Susan Jennings worked for Cindy Sherman
Robert Melee worked for Marilyn Minter
Ronnie Cutrone worked for Andy Warhol
George Condo worked for Andy Warhol
Elyn Zimmerman worked for James Turrell.
Elyn Zimmerman worked for Robert Irwin
Rick Prol worked for Jean-Michel Basquiat
Keith Edmier worked for Matthew Barney
Massimiliano Gioni worked for Maurizio Cattelan
Lisa Ruyter worked for Marilyn Minter
Dave Muller worked for Mike Kelley
Collier Schorr worked for Richard Prince
Josephine Meckseper worked for Laurie Simmons
Laura Stein worked for John Baldessari
Jonas Wood worked for Laura Owens
Jonas Wood worked for Matt Johnson
Sally Ross worked for David Reed
Carl D'Alvia worked for Sean Scully
Huma Bhabha and worked together for Meyer Vaisman
Jason Fox worked for Vija Celmins
Jacob Kassay worked for Ann Craven and Josh Smith
Wayne Gonzales worked for Peter Halley
Ben Noam worked for Julie Mehretu
Lisa Ruyter worked for Mary Heilmann
Banks Violette worked for Robert Gober
Robert Melee worked for Marilyn Minter
Justine Kurland worked for Gregory Crewdson
Lisa Anne Auerbach worked for Paul McCarthy
Jennifer Bornstein worked for Sophie Calle
Jennifer Bornstein worked for Mike Kelley
Kenny Goldsmith worked for Allan McCollum
Ashley Bickerton worked for Jack Goldstein
Mike Ballou worked for Marilyn Minter
Matt Keegan worked for John Miller
Nicole Eisenman worked for David Humphrey?
Inka Essenhigh worked for Gary Stephan
Merlin Carpenter worked for Martin Kippenberger
Isca Greenfield-Sanders worked for Cecily Brown
Corin Hewitt worked for Matthew Barney
Jessica Jackson Hutchins worked for Lawrence Weiner.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins worked for Joan Jonas

New York Times art critic Roberta Smith and New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz. © Patrick McMullan Compan

A related article, in the ever informative ARTINFO, lists the “Power Couples of the Art World.” Here are some:

ARTIST:
John Currin and Rachel Feinstein
Rob Pruitt and Jonathan Horowitz
Bruce Nauman and Susan Rothenberg
Allora & Calzadilla
Mark Handforth and Dara Friedman
Ugo Rondinone and John Giorno
Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker
Simon Fujiwara and Ingar Dragset
Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore (aka Gilbert & George)
Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard (aka Pierre & Gilles, aka the French Gilbert & George)
Ai Weiwei and Lu Qing
Liam Gillick and Sarah Morris
Mickalene Thomas and Carmen McLeod
Tim Noble and Sue Webster
Marianne Vitale and Rudolf Stingel
Richard Phillips and Josephine Meckseper
David McDermott and Peter McGough
Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher
Elizabeth Peyton and Klara Liden
Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian
Fred Wilson and Whitfield Lovell
Architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
A.K. Burns and Katie Hubbard
Mike Kelley and Trulee Hall
RongRong and Inri
Peter Halley and Ann Craven
Farhad Moshiri and Shirin Aliabadi
Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons
Eric Fischl and April Gornik
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
Brendan Fowler and Andrea Longacre-White
Berlinde de Bruyckere and Peter Buggenhout
Allison Schulnik and Eric Yahnker
Robert Mangold and Sylvia Plimack Mangold
Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager

MIXED:
Artist Cecily Brown and New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff
Creative Time director Anne Pasternak and artist Mike Starn
Stedelijk Museum director Ann Goldstein and artist Christopher Williams
White Columns director Matthew Higgs and artist Anne Collier
Art dealer Zach Feuer and artist Alison Fox
Art Production Fund co-founder Yvonne Force Villareal and artist Leo Villareal
SculptureCenter curator Fionn Meade and artist Mary Simpson
Artist Art Spiegelman and New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly
Artist Sarah VanDerBeek and Museum 52 dealer Matthew Dipple
Independent curator Alison Gingeras and artist Piotr Uklanski
Artist Kathryn Garcia and Brooklyn Is Burning co-founder Sarvia Jasso
MoMA painting and sculpture curator Laura Hoptman and artist Verne Dawson
Artist Cory Arcangel and Art Since the Summer of '69 gallerist Hanne Mugaas
Musician and art person Björk and artist Matthew Barney
Art dealer Gavin Brown and artist Hope Atherton
Artist Nicole Eisenman and Dia Art Foundation development associate Victoria Robinson
Artist AA Bronson and architect Mark Jan Krayenhoff van de Leur
Artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins and art rocker Stephen Malkmus 
Artforum editor David Velasco and artist Ryan McNamara
Gagosian Gallery staffer Sarah Hoover and artist Tom Sachs
Gagosian Gallery staffer Rose Dergan and artist Will Cotton
Artissima artistic director Francesco Manacorda and artist Rosalind Nashashibi
Artist Anton Ginzburg and Andrea Rosen Gallery director Katie Rashid
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs commissioner Kate Levin and artist Mark di Suvero
Artist Anish Kapoor and art historian Susanne Spicale
Art dealer Lisa Cooley and artist Scott Calhoun
Curator Klauss Kertess and artist Billy Sullivan
Artist Sean Landers and former Andrea Rosen Gallery director Michelle Reyes

The Body Painting of the Surma Peoples

By Charles Kessler

I’m grateful to my California friend Ken Garber for making me aware of the photo-documentary book  Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa by Hans Silvester on the extraordinary and sophisticated body painting of the Surma Peoples. Silvester exhibited this work at the Marlborough Gallery in 2008, and the show was reviewed by Roberta Smith.

Hans Silvester, Natural Fashion,  no.10, 2007, C-print, 39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches, Edition of 10

Surma is the Ethiopian government's collective name for the Suri, the Mursi and the Me'en tribes — a total population of 186,875 people of the Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia. They’re probably most known for the strange practice of piercing and inserting lip and ear plates.

Don't be fooled into some Gauguin-like romantic notion about peace and love flower children. These are a violent people — the Surma have always been involved in tribal and guerilla warfare, and now the area is a  hotbed of the arms and ivory trades. But they, particularly the adolescents, do take joy in decorating themselves and others, sometimes two or three times a day.

Hans Silvester, Natural Fashion,  no.15, 2007, C-print, 39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches, Edition of 10

Hans Silvester, Natural Fashion,  no.113, 2007, C-print, 39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches, Edition of 10

Some of the best photos can be found here, and there are a few YouTube videos available, but I found them annoying because they move through the images too fast, and there are a lot of distractions. Here’s one of the better ones:

Emmbed:  

Brandeis, plaintiffs settle Rose Art Museum lawsuit

Interior, Rose Museum. Photo: Mike Lovett

Parties agree to focus on the future of the important cultural treasure. Read about it here.

Notes on Faith, Hope, Trust + Desire/ Sketchbook page

By Kyle Gallup

Click to enlarge

Kyle Gallup is an artist who works in collage and watercolor.

Yes We Can!

Last night in Sheridan Square, outside the Stonewall Inn. Photo credit: C.S. Muncy for The New York Times

Some Noteworthy Events and Reading Suggestions

 By Charles Kessler

Christine Goodman

There are a few Jersey City related events worth noting — unfortunately this is the only one that can still be seen (until June 23rd) — Jersey City’s own Christine Goodman, Art House Production’s energetic founder and Executive Director, is the lead in an intense play in Brooklyn. It’s a dream part for an actor and Goodman nails it, exhibiting great power and emotional range — a real tour de force. The play, What’s in a Name, is part of the BoCoCa Arts Festival (for Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, three adjoining neighborhoods in Brooklyn) and, like all the plays in the festival, it takes place in an unconventional venue — in this case a small room in the back of the Ceol Irish Pub. This adds to the tension and makes the theater experience even more extreme. DON’T MISS IT.
Click here for tickets.
They are only $15 in advance ($18 at the door) and Smith Street, where the theater/pub is located, is one of the liveliest and most interesting urban streets around.

Jersey City photographer Edward Fausty had a major exhibition of his otherworldly digital pictures of night scenes at the Hunderdon Art Museum. (For some reason I can’t make a hyperlink here -- you need to copy and paste the address: http://www.hunterdonartmuseum.org/past_exhibits/index.php#fausty.)  It closed last week, but I believe it was important enough to at least document here. The subtle, glowing color and velvety surfaces make these some of the most painterly photographs I’ve ever seen. A better place to view this work online is Fausty’s website.

Edward Fausty, House and Tree, Mt. Wilson Observatory, CA. (#3682), 2010, 25 x 34 inches

The Times and the Star Ledger reviewed Nimbus, a Jersey City dance company, so you don’t need my input. Suffice to say that for less than 20 dollars you got to sit a few feet away from first-rate professional dancers performing some of the best of Martha Graham as well several new works choreographed for this group.



SOME READING SUGGESTIONS

Long-form articles, like those found in the New Yorker or The Atlantic, haven’t been completely obliterated from the web. In fact there seems to be a small revival, possibly thanks to such free apps as Read It Later and Instapaper that let you save the text of a web page for future offline viewing, and websites like Long Reads, Long Form and my favorite, The Browser, that recommend long-form articles. These sites are not automated news aggregators but are run by actual human beings (what will they think of next?) who select the work and provide brief summaries to help you decide if you’re interested in reading them.

Here are two examples of long-form articles I found via The Browser. Neither one is strictly about art, but both are brilliant and provide insight for the larger cultural picture.

The first is a review of  The Anatomy of Influence by Harold Bloom, the prominent literary critic. Bloom said he wrote this book at the age of 80  “to say in one place most of what I have learned to think about how influence works in imaginative literature.” The review, by Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, not only summarizes Bloom's own overview of his thinking (no small achievement), but he puts Bloom in the context of twentieth-century literary criticism.

One might not need The Browser to find a New York Times book review, but what are the chances you’d come across this review in the online edition of the Israeli Haaretz Daily Newspaper?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Photographiert von Ben Richards unter Anleitung Wittgensteins, September 1947 in Swansea Quelle: Schwules Museum, Berlin © Wittgenstein Archive, Cambridge

It’s an erudite review by Avner Shapira of an exhibition in honor of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great 20th-century philosopher, who died 60 years ago. The exhibition, in the Schwules Museum (The Gay Museum), Berlin, examines Wittgenstein’s ambivalent attitude toward his Jewish origins and his homosexuality. 

And a final bit of good news on the long-form article front: a new online book-review website has been launched, The Los Angeles Review of Books. They just published a comprehensive review  by Ben Lerner of MoMA's Ab Ex show, and an extensive and insightful review by Robert Polito of Patricia Patterson: Here and There, an exhibition at the California Center for the Arts (until September 3, 2011).

Patricia Patterson, The Conversation (Manny and Steve at the Table), 1990, casein on canvas, painted wood frame, 72 x 102 inches (Collection Maggie and Terry Singleton)

There are, of course, several typical short web articles worth reading, like this from the intrepid reporters at ArtInfo on pole dancing as art:

 ...In the end, the legal implications of the decision are clear: yes, exotic dancing can count as art — but only if the dancers' "particular moves" are something they picked up in college. 

And this from The Observer, The Guardian: Van Dyck paintings unearthed by saleroom sleuth

...A London dealer has revealed the methods that have enabled him to attribute three unknown works to Charles I's court painter. ...Philip Mould, a British dealer who once bought a Gainsborough on eBay for £120, has proved his eagle eye once again with the find, which includes two paintings sold by Christie's last year as anonymous works.

Anthony Van Dyck, Self Portrait, 1640, oil on canvas, oval 23 x 19 inches

And this beautiful photo essay of caves and tunnels from the Atlantic.

Tourists visit the Kuha Karuhas pavilion located inside the Phraya Nakhon cave, in the Khao Sam Roi Yot national park, some 300 km south of Bangkok, Thailand, on December 5, 2010. The pavillon was built in 1890 on the occasion of a visit to the cave by King Chulalongkorn, the grand-father of current King Bhumibol Adulyadej. (Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images)

Charles Kessler is an artist and writer, and lives in Jersey City.