shaynamillernysemester-blog

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November 17th-Bronx Museum and Guggenheim: Defining and Shaping Art

Today, November 17th, we visited the Bronx Museum and the Guggenheim.  At the Bronx Museum, we viewed Angel Otero: Elegies and Gordon Matta Clark: Anarchitect.  The Gordon Matta Clark exhibit proved to be an interesting introduction to themes we would explore at the Guggenheim.  Matta Clark worked in unconventional art forms, largely known for creating “building cuts”.  At the Guggenheim, we viewed the exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World.  There is controversy around this show due to works showing animals; therefore, three of the works in the show, “Theater of the World” by Huang Yong Ping, “A Case Study of Transference” by Xu Bing, and “Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other” by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu were removed before the show opened due to “‘explicit and repeated threats of violence’ of unspecified origins, to its staff” (Cotter).  This recalls the conversation I discussed in my first journal entry after our class visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  In that entry, I wrote about different ideas about where art belongs in the museum.  The Guggenheim’s decision to remove the three works from the exhibit contributes a new perspective to this discussion.

The absence of the three works impacts the exhibit since traces of the works remain and there has been much media surrounding the exhibit due to protests about animal rights (Ho).  When viewing the exhibition it is evident that curators “consciously created their own installations” by leaving the empty tortoise shell and the paused video screens (Ho).  In this way, the curators have altered the work and changed its meaning, making it entirely different than how they were intended to be presented.  The curators themselves have almost taken on the role of the artist.  However, do these allow for the same conversations that would occur if the works were still there?  While a conversation is occurring, the conversation would be different if the works remained in the show fully intact. Can the viewer understand the work without it being displayed as intended?  Do we value animal bodies over human bodies?  One writer, criticizes the Guggenheim for ending an opportunity to hold a conversation about art by removing the three works from the exhibition (Cotter).  These are conversations that need to be had.  Removing or censoring work creates implications for art and what art is.  Is art’s purpose solely for us to be content and to enjoy the work’s visual aesthetics, or should art allow us to think, to be angry, or to provoke us?

When the uninformed art viewer walks by the empty shell of Theater of the World, I question what they see.  If they walk by without stepping up into the gallery it resides, do they see a minimalist sculpture?  To really understand what is happening, the viewer must interact with the empty shell, walk around it and read the exhibition statement from the curators, and then the statement from the artist.

So what is art and where does it belong?  If we censor art, can we allow other art to exist?  There are not necessarily correct answers to these questions, but it is important to have these conversations.  

Works Cited

Cotter, Holland. “From Innovation to Provocation, China’s Artists on a Global Path.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Oct. 2017.

Ho, Denise Y. “Exhibition as Theater – China Channel.” China Channel, China Channel, 18 Oct. 2017.

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November 10th-Sculpture Center and MOMA PS1: Time and the Ephemeral

Today, November 10th, we visited the Sculpture Center and MOMA PS1, both on Long Island City.  At Sculpture Center, we viewed Nicola L.: Works, 1968 to the present and Kelly Akashi: Long Exposure.  At MOMA PS1, we viewed Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting and Cathy Wilkes.  Two themes I connected during these visits were the importance of time and the ephemeral in the Akashi and Wilkes exhibits.  

At Sculpture Center, we met with the Director, Mary Ceruti.  It was interesting to learn from her about the role of Sculpture Center in its context in the New York art world.  Ceruti provided a different perspective as the institution is different from a museum that might be more accessible like the Met.  Sculpture Center does not see itself in a position to educate people about art as other institutions are already doing that.  Instead, Sculpture Center seeks to support artists, and provide spaces to create and install work.    

Both Akashi and Wilkes focus on the ephemeral in their work.  Akashi’s installation is in the basement of the Sculpture Center.  Akashi’s work takes the form of sculpture and photography as ways to “capture impressions of selected objects, revealing their internal structures” (“Current Exhibitions: Kelly Akashi”).  The space that Akashi’s work is installed in seems significant; the show would be different without the space.  The experience of  the movement through the space is surrealist and seems to relates strongly to time.  Candles become means for tracking time and memory as “glass and bronzes are also caked with variegated splatter from candles burned while the work is on display; wax runs off the sides like stalactites. It won’t be cleaned off, she says—only added to. The form hardens and you can’t go back in, but at the same time, nothing is ever really final” (Diehl).  The exhibit is ever-changing and impermanent; different candles are lit and others have melted and changed form.  

Wilkes’ exhibit also focuses on the object that become ephemeral, both found and created.  These pieces engage with life and domestic rituals speaking to birth and death; the work becomes both personal and universal (“Cathy Wilkes”).  For Wilkes, “What seems paramount...is that objects in an art gallery — whether soft sculptures or simple detritus — should register two ways at once: as exactly what they are, and as triggers for memories, fantasies, fears” (Farago).  

Both exhibits employ the viewer’s movement and direct interaction with the work and the gallery space.  Both artists working in sculpture and do not use pedestals.  Wilkes’ work is on the ground and her paintings hang low on the wall.  Objects are ephemeral like remotes and televisions or bowls with remains of food.  One must bend over in a sort of dance to view the work.  Likewise, Akashi’s work is hidden in the architecture of the basement of Sculpture Center.  Some niches are filled with objects while others are empty.  Moving through these two exhibits becomes a journey, perhaps even a pilgrimage.  In both exhibits, the distance between the viewer and the object is unclear.  The viewer may be unsure of how close to approach each object, and in the case at MOMA PS1, only a certain amount of viewers were allowed in one of the galleries at a time.  Wilkes herself said that, “‘All objects can become transcendental” (“Cathy Wilkes”).  

Works Cited

“Cathy Wilkes | MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art, www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3883?locale=en. 

“Current Exhibitions: Kelly Akashi.” Sculpture Center , Sculpture Center, 2017, www.sculpture-center.org/exhibitionsExhibition.htm?id=136640. 

 Farago, Jason. “From Forgotten Discards, a Wealth of Memories.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Nov. 2017.

“Growing Underground.” Cultured Magazine, 12 Sept. 2017, www.culturedmag.com/kelly-akashi-sculpture-center/.

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November 3rd-Visual Arts Center of New Jersey: Advertisements and Consumerism

Today, November 3rd, we visited the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.  Since I had interned here this past summer, it was interesting to see how they had transformed their gallery spaces since their last exhibitions.  Sarah Walko, the Director of Education and Community Engagement at VACNJ provided us with a tour of the galleries and insight into her career as both an artist and art administrator. The central show was Julia Jacquette: Unrequited and Acts of Play with two smaller, related shows Drawing It Out and Stair-gazing: Élan Cadiz.   While each show seems to focus on different areas; they share commonalities in interests in advertising, consumerism, and graphic or comic art.  

 Jacquette is interested in objects of desire, advertising, and consumerism.  She uses catalogs and advertising as references for her work.  Jacquette “skillfully shift[s] the view away from the featured product or celebrity.  Focusing instead on a pool of perfectly blue water, a bejeweled neckline, or the flow of a wall sconce, she calls attention to the colors, textures, and lighting that contribute to the seductive auras of the scenes” (Julia Jacquette). To an extent, Jaquette is in dialogue with Pop Art, similar to James Rosenquist's House of Fire that we viewed earlier in the semester at the Met.  In Rosenquist’s House of Fire, “prosaic objects become strangely treacherous: a grocery bag is mysteriously suspended in air, a supernaturally radiant bucket of molten steel descends through a window, and fiery lipsticks align like a battery of guns. The allusions to violence, sex, and consumerism recall earlier works... [and]a heightened sense of seduction and danger” (“James Rosenquist | House of Fire | The Met”).  A similar sense of “seduction and danger” can be detected in Jacquette’s paintings.  Pop Art challenges “the oppositions in which pure painting of the twentieth century was founded: high versus low, fine versus commercial, even abstract versus representational” (Foster 485).   These same oppositions are considered in Jacquette’s work.  Jacquette’s transformations of these advertising images to that of fragmented painted images refocuses the subject on color, form, and texture as in the paintings of scotch and swimming pools.  By selecting parts of an image to depict, Jacquette sometimes inverts the focus of an advertisement to other aspects of the image.  The work fundamentally questions where the line is between these oppositions that Pop Art also dealt with.  The second part of the Julia Jacquette show is original drawings for her book and project “Playground of My Mind” based on New York City adventure playgrounds.  Jacquette talks about how these playgrounds “‘offered the kids a vocabulary”’ (McDermon).  Similarly, it seems that Jacquette's visual language may be informed by her experiences and interests in these adventure playgrounds.

Using advertising in a different way, Élan Cadiz selects advertising that purports racism from the 1930s to 80s.  In the center of the college that hangs on wall in the staircase, a black and white image of a girl seems like a target surrounded by advertisements that promote “whiteness”.  Here, advertisements serve another function as opposed to in Jacquette’s work.  While these advertisements are also seductive; they are inherently racist.  In another related show, Drawing it Out, six graphic memoirists work are featured.  Their work shares their experiences and how they use the graphic genre to share this.  

It is of interest how the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey was able to strategically connect these shows.  The shows feature all female artists working with social challenges and issues.  

Works Cited

“James Rosenquist | House of Fire | The Met.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Julia Jacquette UNREQUITED AND ACTS OF PLAY, The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, 2017.

Mcdermon, Daniel. “The Secret Art Language of New York Playgrounds.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2017.

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October 27-Harlem: Words, Recreation (Fictions), and Repetition

Today, October 27th, we visited the Studio Museum in Harlem as well as some galleries in Harlem.  Each exhibit was different; the show at the Studio Museum in Harlem focused on up-and-coming African American artists.  At Elizabeth Dee Gallery and Gavin Brown Enterprise, words and repetition became recurring elements; yet, ideas about fictions and recreating or rearranging elements or ideas was present at both galleries and the Studio Museum in Harlem.   

At Elizabeth Dee gallery, we saw an exhibition titled Perfect Flowers, a retrospective of John Giorno’s work.  The retrospective includes paintings, graphite drawings, and watercolors.  The composition of these works are all the same with text forming a box within the square paper or canvas frame; they are “Albers-esque” compositions. Some of these compositions include “LILACS LUXURIOUSLY LICKING THE AIR”, “BAD NEWS IS ALWAYS TRUE”, and “ZINNIAS SHOUT POSITIVE PARANOIA”.  Some appear almost as motivational quotes while others are more frank or provoking.  There is a condensation with image, content, and text.  There is an interest in “applying cut up and montage techniques to found texts” (“John Giorno: Perfect Flowers”).  The words become repetitive in different compositions and contexts.   

At Gavin Brown Enterprise, we viewed Rirkrit Tiravanjia’s work.  One of the works in the installation was a remake of a film, Fassbinder’s Ali: Angst Essen Seele Auf.  The gallery was turned into a recreation of the set, and the gallery set was used to film a remake of the film.  In televisions throughout the gallery, the recreated film was played.  It turns out that in one of the rooms, that was set up to appear as a bar, one of the main actors in this film was sitting there.  Later on, I realized that the actor was actually Karl Holmqvist, another artist who uses words and poetry in his work similar to that of John Giorno (“Karl Holmqvist Bio”).

Recreations or fictions were also present at the Studio Museum in Harlem in the exhibit aptly titled Fictions.  The show features emerging African artists who “draw inspiration from diverse sources—such as everyday objects, childhood memories, current and historic events, and the body—often creating parallel or alternate narratives that complicate fact, fiction and memory” (Fictions).  Genevieve Gaignard’s installation in the show creates a two-walled room similar to the sets at Gavin Brown.  However, unlike the one at Gavin Brown, this setting can not be entered.  While the installations look inviting from afar, closer viewing reveals the specificity of each object displayed and the story that tells.  Figurines have been altered so that “instead of statuettes depicting white southern debutantes or Disney princesses, the artist’s figurines are all black women, frozen in moments of escape, activism, and even revenge” (Gotthardt).  

While each show’s content was disparate, qualities of repetition and recreation were apparent throughout.  All three of these shows were complicated.  As in Giorno’s show, words do not always make sense together.  At the Harlem Museum, memories and events are complicated; it is difficult to identify fact versus fiction.  Words become images, and repetitions become creations.  

Works Cited

Fictions. The Studio Museum Harlem, 2017, www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/fictions.

Gotthardt, Alexxa. “With Costumes and Camp, Genevieve Gaignard Is Telling New Stories about Race and Beauty.” Artsy, 6 Oct. 2017.

“John Giorno: Perfect Flowers.” Elizabeth Dee.

“Karl Holmqvist Bio.” Gavin Brown Enterprise.

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October 20-Jen Davis Studio Visit and Lower East Side Galleries: Art Through Different Lenses

Today, October 20th, we visited the studio of the photographer Jen Davis and then visited galleries on the Lower East Side.  This included Alison Hall’s show unannounced at Totah after our studio visit with her last Friday.  It was one of my favorite days of the New York Semester because I found some of the artwork on the Lower East Side galleries to be really inspiring.  The digital age impacts how artists work and the ways in which images are created and read specifically in the photography of Jen Davis as well as the pastels of Nicolas Party at Karma gallery.

Our visit to the artist Jen Davis’ studio provided me with insight into the practice of a photographer.  Davis’ photography focuses on the body and body image.  She worked on a project Eleven Years in which she documented her own transformations in her body.  In reference to this project, Davis said, “‘In this body of work, I deal with my insecurities about my body image and the direct correlation between self-perception and the way one is perceived by others”’ (“Eleven Years”).  There is a differentiation between how Davis viewed her body and how the viewer interacts with the picture.  Recently, she has begun photographing other people’s bodies, specifically bodybuilders.  Her photographs seem to deal with multiple layers of images and facades, documenting the female and male bodybuilder competition culture.  In one image, the fake tan can be seen melting off the figure; there are multiple layers of body image here.  The camera serves as another layer, the people she is photographing are used to being photographed and readily pose for the camera.  The photograph creates ones of these layers of perception and body image as taking a picture may alter the way the model interacts or poses.  The photographs of other people also help her to understand herself better.  There is an insertion of the self into the work even when she is not pictured.  Davis explained that other people can serve as surrogates of the self.    Most of the images are not candids.  Some of the images are even shot at studios rather than at the bodybuilder competitions.     

After the studio visit with Davis, we traveled to the Lower East Side to visit some galleries.  I was really drawn to the exhibit at Karma gallery titled Pastel by the artist Nicolas Party.  Party’s work is pastel on paper depicting landscapes, still lives, and portraits.  Party selects imagery that he is interested in and employs it to explore and develop his own visual language.  His imagery and forms are drawn from art history and images in the digital age. Party develops a visual language out of a clarity of forms; new shapes describe recognizable forms.  The last room of the gallery concluded with a wall size mural created in pastel of an imaginary landscape.  

I find Party’s attempt to make banal images new compelling.  After visiting the show at Karma, it was interesting to learn from an interview with him that he began his career as an artist in graphic design (Abrams).  He ascribes his clarity of forms and much of his process to his background in digital art (Abrams).  These banal images become otherworldly; they are props for a new environment.  Party describes the gallery as a theater (Abrams); this was evidenced through the painted walls and curved door frames.  He is interested in how people process images and how technology impacts this.    

It is interesting to see that these two artists who are working in different ways are both thinking about technology and how that impacts perception and image.  

Works Cited

Abrams, Loney. “Post-Internet Phenomenon Nicolas Party on the Importance of Painting Cats in the Digital Age.” Artspace, 19 Oct. 2016. 

“Eleven Years.” ClampArt, 2014, clampart.com/2014/04/eleven-years/.  

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October 13th-Studio Visits with Joe Fyfe and Alison Hall: Travel, Studio Practices, and Seeking a Visual Language

Today, Friday, October 13th, was my first day of visiting artists’ studios.  Our class visited the studios of both Joe Fyfe and Alison Hall.    Fyfe utilizes found objects such as umbrellas and fabrics from his travels.  Hall draws inspiration from traveling in Italy and her own life growing up in Virginia.   Although their work seems disparate, I identified that both artists were seeking out a visual language in the world, sometimes developed through travel.  

Another interesting note of comparison, is that both artists are cited in interviews and artist statements as being influenced by Blinky Palermo.  Palermo mainly worked in three forms: “the reliefs and wall objects, the fabric paintings, and the wall paintings” (Foster 602).  During our trip to Dia: Beacon, I viewed paintings by Palermo including his series titled Times of the Day.  It is this same series that inspired Fyfe to explore abstraction.  In an interview, Fyfe describes seeing these paintings:

...Times of Day was shown at Heiner Friedrich. I didn’t know how to look at them but I liked them. Ten years later I saw them at Dia and I was just floored because I had never seen abstract paintings that spoke so directly to the physical, but also, I understood how they have this mystical idealism of the physical that I never really identified with Abstract Expressionism—that transformed me into an abstract painter. (Blackwell)

Hall also cites Palermo as an influence in a gallery statement from a 2015 show at Steven Harvey Fine Projects (Micchelli).  

During our studio visit with Hall at Spaceworks in Williamsburg Public Library, Hall provided insight into her studio practice.  Hall talked about her development as an artist beginning with painting the landscape to her later works dealing with geometry and pattern.  Hall described her practice as seeking out a visual language of repetition.  Much of these patterns are derived from those found in Giotto’s Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel.  Due to my interest in sacred spaces, I really enjoyed Hall’s integration in her work of her experiences in such spaces.  I am interested in how Hall was able to translate her interest with this chapel and Giotto’s work in her own work.  However, “The depth of their engagement with history, however, is communicated solely through formal means” (Micchelli).  As the work she references is devotional, Hall’s own practice becomes one of devotion and repetition.  Her work is oriented in the process; she creates her own plaster ground and then applies washes of oil paint.  These paintings have largely been in blacks and blues.  However, each painting and each mark becomes very personal to her, related to her own experiences.  At her studio, we saw much of her smaller works.  These smaller paintings seem to have object qualities, almost like relics.  The paintings become about both the artist’s experience in making the piece and the viewer’s direct interaction with each painting, small or large.  As John Yau writes for Hyperallergic:

The other part of their meaning comes from the fact that the paintings are impossible to photograph, and in that theyt[sic] share something with the work of Ad Reinhardt and Robert Ryman. In the age of digital images and selfies, Hall’s paintings are an admirable anomaly for their insistence on the primacy of direct experience. (Yau)

Devotion becomes integral to Hall’s work: devotion to place, memory, experience, repetition and creation, and viewing.

Unlike Hall’s paintings, Fyfe’s work seemed to be void of the personal with his focus instead on being in conversation with painting.  The objects he gathers from travels seem to become elements to paint with.  His process seemed oriented towards the collection of objects; there were shelves of folded fabrics in his studio that he had gathered from his travels.  He explained how the different materials can come together on their own.  In some ways, it seems there is a desire to downplay the hand of the artist in his work.  This is different from Hall’s work; her hand is visible in her work.  There are voids and imperfections in the graphite patterning that sits on top of washes of oil paint on a plaster ground.

Travel and the seeking of a visual language inform both Hall and Fyfe’s studio practices.  It is exciting to see these two artists using these methods to reach different results.    

Works Cited

Blackwell, Josh. “Joe Fyfe.” BOMB Magazine, BOMB Magazine, 1 Apr. 2011.

Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. Thames & Hudson, 2011.

Micchelli, Thomas. “Earned Magic: Alison Hall's Deceptive Monochromes.” Hyperallergic, 22 Oct. 2015.

Yau, John. “When a Painter Enacts a Ritual.” Hyperallergic, 22 Nov. 2017.

Image: Alison Hall at Totah

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Chelsea Galleries

September 29, 2017

Today, we toured galleries in Chelsea with an art critic, Joseph Wolin.  It was interesting to hear Wolin’s perspective, but I would have liked to hear more about what he does daily as an art critic and how he established himself as an art critic.  

Our first stop was at the Sean Kelly gallery to see Iran do Espírito Santo’s Shift.  The exhibition included works on paper, ten stainless steel sculptures of screws, and wall paintings.  The main room included monochromatic wall paintings and the sculptures of screws that had been blown up in scale and were situated on an asymmetrical grid throughout the room.  The press release explains that the wall paintings are supposed to make the wall appear to curve (Sean Kelly Gallery).  When we discussed the show with Wolin, he stated that he did not see the wall as curving but the walls as moving in an opposite direction of the screws.  For the most part, I did not see either of these illusions occurring; instead, the monochromatic scale appeared to possibly make the wall hover when looked at from certain angles.  There is an emphasis on how human perception works, and each person may perceive the installation differently.  In this same gallery, there was an exhibition of work by Sun Xun entitled Time Spy.  Although, these two shows seem dissonant; there is a connection between their use of illusion.  The illusion of the wall paintings serve a similar function to the 3-D animation video made by Sun Xun.  Many of the woodcuts used in the production of the animation were displayed on the walls.  I really enjoyed this exhibit for its beautifully crafted woodcuts and its culmination in an animation that was made up of thousands of woodcuts.  The process as well as the way it was displayed appeared to be well thought out.  

We also made short stops at the Peter Halley exhibit at Greene Naftali and the Amanda Ross-Ho show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.  These two shows had interesting connections to the Shift show at Sean Kelly.  Peter Halley’s paintings seem like electrical transformers; there were similar ideas in Espírito Santo’s sculptures of screws that have been scaled up in size that seemed to form a mechanism due to the visual relationships between each screw.  Amanda Ross-Ho’s show also dealt with scale change like Espírito Santo’s sculptures.  

Next came Trevor Paglen’s show at Metro Pictures entitled,  A Study of Invisible Images.  We spent a large portion of our time here, and Wolin critiqued some of the aspects of the show as being too commercialized and collector ready.  I found parts of the show interesting, but I do not think it is as revolutionary in its content using AI to create art.  Rutgers University has an Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab that created AI-generated art and sought to see if it could appear human-generated (Cascone).  The lab gathered results to find out if humans could tell the difference between human made and AI-generated art (Cascone); I find this to be informative about the future of art and the implications for artists.  Paglen’s images that were AI-generated were printed and framed.  Wolin seemed to find it troubling that these images seemed so “collector ready” with no tag identifying what they were.  He described a disconnect between what the artist is talking about and what the work was doing.  I wonder if these pictures may have worked better with the concepts behind the show had they been projected onto a screen, since they come from the computer, instead of made into framed “collector ready” objects.  

The next gallery we visited was the Marianne Boesky Gallery that was showing an exhibit titled Falcon’s Fortress of Diana Al-Hadid’s work.  I appreciated that she was influenced by manuscript illumination and processes of decay.  At Marianne Boesky Gallery East, there was a show of Sanford Bigger’s work titled Selah.  I find the title to be really fitting for this series of work as the Hebrew word selah is sometimes referred to as a wait or pause.  One of my favorite pieces in this show was the sculpture titled Selah.  I thought this piece brought together various elements of the other pieces: the quilting from various cultures, the sequins seen also on the piece Overstood, and the form of an African sculpture.  For me, this piece resonated as a clear culmination of ideas about the past, present, and future for African American cultural and political narratives.  The figure holds their hands up modeling the “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan.   The content of this exhibition was similar to the Kara Walker show that dealt with the historical and contemporary narratives of African Americans.  

Kara Walker’s at Sikkema Jenkins and Co. is titled, SIKKEMA JENKINS AND CO. IS COMPELLED TO PRESENT THE MOST ASTOUNDING AND IMPORTANT PAINTING SHOW OF THE FALL ART SHOW VIEWING SEASON!.  Of all the galleries we visited today, Sikkema Jenkins by far had the most viewers inside.  Traditionally, Walker works in the form of paper cutouts, like silhouettes, that are pasted onto the gallery wall (Foster 686).  In this show, Walker takes her black paper cutouts and pastes them to canvas.  She also experiments with ink and collage; pasting multiple historical and contemporary narratives into one scene.  I really appreciate these works that invoke collage and ink drawings and the wide range of potential applications for this as an artist.

Today, I was most impressed by work that stood out to me as innovative or culturally significant.  Sun Xun’s laborious and creative process was inspirational to me.  I greatly appreciated the social and political narratives of Sanford Biggers and Kara Walker’s work; these works left viewers full of contemplation.  

Works Cited

Cascone, Sarah. "AI-Generated Art Now Looks More Human Than Work at Art Basel, Study Says." Artnet News. Artnet News, 12 July 2017. Web. 05 Oct. 2017.

Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. Thames & Hudson, 2011.

Sean Kelly Gallery. Iran Do Espírito Santo SHIFT. Sean Kelly. Sean Kelly Gallery, 2017. Web. 5 Oct. 2017.

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Curatorial Decisions at the Whitney Museum of American Art

September 22, 2017

It is September 22nd, and we head to the Whitney after a quick stop on the High Line. Today, I was very aware of some prominent curatorial decisions as well as how the museum influences the viewer’s perception and interaction with art.

I was excited to see Hélio Oiticica’s retrospective at the Whitney today, To Organize Delirium, especially after reading his article “Appearance of the Supra-Sensorial”.  Oiticica defines the word supra-sensorial as “the expansion of his usual sensory capacities, to the discovery of his internal creative centre, of his dormant expressive spontaneity, linked to the quotidian” (Harrison 914). I found my experience in the Oiticica retrospective to be one of discomfort.  Oiticica’s work positions the viewer as a participant.  Some students found the exhibit to be almost euphoric; however, I found it difficult to interact with Oiticica’s work.  It would be interesting to see this retrospective in a different setting.  Part of my unwillingness to participate in Oiticica’s work came from a sense of sterility in the museum environment.  The museum environment usually encourages sight; however, sight is not the emphasis in Oiticica’s work.  

The Whitney was straddling a fine line between historical retrospective and experience.  Oiticica never intended for his pieces to be shown in a museum, and I think this is where the retrospective may fall short.  Ben Davis explains the difficulty in exhibiting Oiticica’s work, “Organizing a show about someone like that [who disliked the concept of the museum and gallery and notion of an exhibition] without taming him is a very, very difficult challenge, even if his challenges are part of his disorienting charms” (Davis).   From my personal perspective, I found the retrospective overwhelming and a sort of sensory overload.  At times, the exhibit attempted to show Oiticica’s transformation as an artist and the significance behind his work, while other times the focus was on participation.  Participation in this experience felt forced in the museum environment.  However, I did appreciate Oiticica’s Penetrables.  The Penetrables are “loose mazes of multi-colored panels” (Davis).  These seem like a logical step from his abstractions on paper.  

Oiticica hoped the participant would participate in “creleisure” in his installations including Eden and Tropicália (Davis).  Davis addresses the fact that Oiticica’s work is not entirely successfully in allowing participants to experience “creleisure” (Davis).  In fact, it “remained a conceptual proposition only, something his works proposed as a provocation rather than fully enacting” (Davis).  Although, the environment to experience “creleisure” may be there, a person must be willing to fully relinquish oneself. Oiticica stated that “the artist has to propose things which people themselves can create” (Davis); however, this seems counterintuitive.  Are those who create things not artists?  If someone gives someone an idea are they really creating it?  Is creating the act of conceiving of an idea and perhaps enacting it?    

After viewing Oiticica’s retrospective, we went to the Alexander Calder Hypermobility show.  Although Calder’s work is outside the scope of this class, I really enjoyed this exhibit and the opportunity to see Calder’s work in motion.  Despite the throngs of people, it was really pleasent to see these works after the overstimulation from the Oiticica retrospective.  

I also saw the exhibition An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017.  This show presented work from the 1940s to the present that deals with political and social issues.  One part of the show I found compelling was a selection of materials from the Whitney Archives including letters from artists that were opposing Whitney’s curatorial choices in the 60′s; the museum’s transparency in this manner was intriguing..  In this section of the exhibit, there was also a work on paper titled Hate is a Sin Flag that was made in 2007 by Faith Ringgold.  Around the image of the flag, Rinngold details a time she was called racial slurs in front of the Whitney where she was handing out flyers about Whitney’s discrimination towards Black artists.  It is really significant that the Whitney is now displaying this work that details a prejudicial encounter from 1968 that occurred outside the museum that mirrored practices going on inside the museum as well.  Additionally, I was really drawn to an Ad Reinhardt in this show, and I was intrigued to learn that Reinhardt’s inclusion in this exhibit was due to his engagement with political and social issues.

The Whitney was also showing two exhibitions by younger artists in their mid-20s.  I find it interesting that these two artists have been able to secure solo exhibitions at a prestigious museum institution so early in their careers and development as artists.  The first show was by Willa Nasatir, a photographer who takes photos of various found objects in different lighting and composes them into one image.  Using mirrors and other tools she distorts the perception of these images.  The photographs themselves are not shown flat; they are slightly curved and bent as if sculptures, reflecting light and their surroundings.  The second show was by Bunny Rogers entitled Brig und Ladder.  This exhibit is cryptic; it begins with a video installation related to the Columbine school shooting and then continues into another room made up of objects that have been manipulated.  Ladders are painted in metallic colors but are missing rungs; there is a large Thomas the Tank engine stylized to be a female.  A metal gate is tied with air fresheners, and mops have colored mop heads.  Objects seem noncoherent and nonfunctional as if remnants of memory.  

I was interested in the curatorial choices that the Whitney made in their current exhibits, what the Whitney chose to display and how they did so.  The Oiticica retrospective was a challenging show to exhibit due to the nature of his work that was not intended for the museum environment.  The exhibition on protest art was powerful due to the Whitney’s transparency about their own history and issues with representation of minority groups in the art world.  Additionally, the Whitney made a statement by providing two young artists in their late 20s solo exhibitions.  

 Works Cited

Davis, Ben. “How to Understand Hélio Oiticica's Journey From Art Visionary to Coke Dealer and Back Again.” Artnet News, Artnet News, 12 July 2017.

Harrison, Charles, et al. “Appearance of the Supra-Sensorial.” Art in Theory 1900-2000: an Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell Publishing, 2014.

[shaynamillernysemester-blog]

The Sublime at Storm King Art Center and Dia: Beacon

September 15, 2017

Today, September 15th, the art semester class visited Storm King Art Center and Dia: Beacon.  It was interesting to experience large-scale works in both outdoor and industrial environments.  The experiences at Storm King and Dia: Beacon allow one to interact with the large-scale artwork through a juxtaposition of scale in ways that brings about the sublime.

I appreciate the art being in the surroundings of the landscape and Storm King Mountain.  When we arrived at Storm King, we passed through the exhibit David Smith: The White Sculptures.  I saw this exhibit earlier in the summer, and I am interested in the dialogue going on between sculpture, painting, and the landscape here.   The pieces formally relate to shapes in the landscape, and also frame the landscape acting as windows.  The application of white paint to the sculptures makes them painterly; their material is hidden.  It is “primarily the piece’s whiteness, in combination with its flatness, that gives it the illusionistic malleability of a painting without relinquishing the solid presence of sculpture” (Heinrich).  The white changes in the lighting, and the shadows of the landscape and trees cast onto the sculptures.  The sculptures are white like canvases, allowing nature to enact itself upon them, and ever-changing in their organic environment.  

I was excited to see two earthworks that I had not seen the last time I visited Storm King.  I am interested in how structures interact with the landscape as well as the relation in scale between the body and landscape.  Maya Lin’s Wave Field are hills or waves that have been formed through the moving of soil.  ��Lin manipulates the landscape to create waves or a series of hills that appear like ocean waves.  The Wave Field becomes a way of ordering and making sense of the landscape and natural environment.   On the lowest points, one cannot see over the top of the wave.  As an artist interested in the landscape and the way in which people move through the environment, I appreciate the relation here between the body, the landscape, and perception.  The landscape and our movement through it impact our perception.  

I also enjoyed Andy Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall, a wall made solely of stones from the grounds of Storm King.  The wall snakes around trees on one side of a lake and appears again on the other side climbing upwards toward the thruway.  I noticed that at its highest, the wall was around 5 feet.  When you walk alongside the wall, one can feel a direct connection between the wall and their body.  As we all stood around it, there appeared an apparent relation between the body, the wall, and the trees.  In retrospect, Goldsworthy tellingly stated “‘Trees, stone, people-- these are the ingredients of the place and the work”’ (“Andy Goldsworthy”).  Lin and Goldsworthy’s earthwork pieces relate strongly to the sublime; their relations to the human body and scale elevate these natural forms.

After Storm King, we made our way north to Dia:Beacon.  In many ways, Storm King and Dia: Beacon share similarities despite their drastically different environments, one in the natural world and the other inside a industrial space that once served as a Nabisco box printing plant.   I had never been to Dia:Beacon before, but I was excited to experience the minimalist and conceptual work in this environment, especially after the visit to Storm King.  I wanted to see how my experience viewing work would change in this environment.  Dia: Beacon seeks to be about the a moment of experience as one of its founders described it, “‘Art has no history-there is only a continuous present”’ (Smith 44).  I appreciated how the exterior environment around Dia:Beacon worked with the interior.  Robert Irwin’s creation of a contrived space outside of Dia:Beacon reflects the interior spaces.  The walkway through a line of squared off trees appears to end in a drop-off that is really an illusion.  The changing light through the trees echoes Irwin’s installation inside.  Inside the museum, Irwin’s Excursus: Homage to the Square3 creates a similar environment that plays with space, perception, and light.  The installation is a response to Josef Albers’ series of paintings Homage to the Square; it appropriates some of Albers’ color relations in the fluorescent lights (“Robert Irwin”).  This installation was one of my favorites inside Dia:Beacon.  The installation is made up of somewhat transparent walls that form a series of rooms with varying color fluorescent lights.  The experience of walking through this installation seemed meditative like walking through a labyrinth.  Mazes have one correct way to walk through them, and labyrinths have only one option for walking through them.  However, there is no correct way to walk through Irwin’s installation; no start or finish.  One can walk through the installation in a variety of ways; it feels very existential.

The first installation that we saw inside of Dia: Beacon was Walter De Maria’s 360˚ I Ching / 64 Sculptures.  Personally, I had difficulty with this installation; however, it very much evoked the sublime for me.  Walking alongside this installation, one can feel the monumentality of it; the red carpet seems continuous.  Upon the red material, white rods are placed by chance.

I was interested in other works at Dia: Beacon that made use of the scale of the body.  Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses change the shape of space, and one can walk through these structures and feel the changes in space.  Walking through the Torqued Ellipses is a bodily experience; Serra himself explains ‘I found very important the idea of the body passing through space, and the body’s movement not being predicated totally on image or sight or optical awareness, but on physical awareness in relation to space, place, time, movement” (“Richard Serra Long Term View, Dia: Beacon”).  The Torqued Ellipses are made up of steel plates that have been manipulated to change space and recreate the body’s perception of the environment.  I also found Anne Truitt’s work compelling.  Truitt creates wooden structures that are usually painted with multiple variations in color.  Truitt writes about her work and “draws analogies between sculptures and people, expressing metaphorical equivalencies between her creations and her children, or herself-- ‘on their own feet as I am on mine’” (Friedman 251).  Many of the sculpture are upright and formally relate to the body.  

It is this relation between the body, art, and the environment that I find compelling in the landscape at Storm King as well as in the industrial setting of Dia: Beacon.  

Works Cited

“Andy Goldsworthy.” Storm King Art Center, Storm King Art Center, stormking.org/artist/andy-goldsworthy/.

Heinrich, Will. “For David Smith, Sculptor and Painter, a Happy Equilibrium in White.” The New York Times, 29 June 2017.

“Richard Serra Long Term View, Dia: Beacon.” Dia Art Foundation, Dia Art Foundation.

Robert Irwin, Dia:Beacon, Exhibit card.  

Smith, Terry. “Sublime-on-Hudson: Dia:Beacon Now.” What Is Contemporary Art?, The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 38–48.

[shaynamillernysemester-blog]

“expanding the storyline”: Visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

September 8, 2017

Today, September 8th, was my first official day of the New York Semester on Contemporary Art, after attending an optional trip to the Newark Museum last week.  Ideas about where art belongs in the museum as well as the interaction between the museum and the artist were reoccurring themes throughout the time at the Met today.  In this entry, I will highlight some of the ideas that sprang from the viewing of art in various galleries and discussion with a Met curator.  

After arriving at the Met, we headed for the rooftop installation.   On the way to the roof, we stopped at a 2006 El Anatsui sculpture titled Between Earth and Heaven.   This was a contemporary sculpture placed in the Africa gallery, serving as a mediator between the traditional and contemporary art.  I would like to see this piece displayed in the contemporary galleries at some point.  The placement of this sculpture makes one consider where contemporary art fits in the encyclopedic museum.  In some ways, this curatorial decision reminded me of our trip to the Newark Museum last Friday; there, we viewed Jeffrey Gibson’s sculpture, Come Alive! (I Feel Love).  Gibson’s figure was situated in the main atrium of a wing of the museum.  In this way, “Gibson’s work confronts every passerby who enters the main galleries of American art to challenge the boundaries of stereotypical Native material tradition and identity” (Green).  Thayer Tolles, a curator at the Met, who we would meet with later in the day, cited the Newark Museum as being a leader in the field.  This is because curators there installed Native American art at the beginning of their American galleries.  We also viewed an installation of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings that I had seen on previous trips to the Met.   Sol Lewitt began making these types of wall drawings in the sixties where he enlisted assistants to execute the drawings based on “formulaic instructions…[that] acknowledges the incursion into handicraft of industrialized and technologized forms of drawing such as commercial rendering and computer graphics” (Foster 695).   It was interesting to see this work after the Anatsui sculpture as in both pieces, staff of the museum had been heavily involved in their installation.  Curators were able to bend the Anatsui sculpture, and assistants created Lewitt’s wall installation based on a set of instructions by the artist.

Adrián Villar Rojas’ The Theater of Disappearance is currently installed on the roof of the Met.  I appreciate the artist’s combination of art from various areas of the museum’s collection into a sort of exquisite corpse.  This exhibit highlights the idea of where art belongs in the museum.  Rojas has “remix[ed] the museum’s own collection, absorbing well-known objects from the galleries downstairs into mashed-up totems and table displays” (Farago); the almost 100 objects from the Met’s collection were scanned and 3-D printed.  These 3-D printed renditions of the Met’s collection are sitting atop thousands of years of art.  On the roof, Rojas’ sculptures are exposed to wear and gather dust; they are impermanent.  While the position of the sculptures on top of the roof seems to elevate their significance; they can become weathered unlike the museum objects inside that are carefully exhibited, stored, and conserved.  Rojas also closely worked with a wide range of the museum staff in the development of this installation.  Sheena Wagstaff, the head of the Met’s modern and contemporary art collections said about Rojas that “‘he holds up a mirror to what we do at the museum, questioning the ideological stance of the museum and, in particular, how we choose to present cultural histories over time,”’ (Voon).  It is of note that the Met has begun to install Native American art into the American art galleries.  Rojas presents the Met’s collection in a nonhierarchical manner, one in which cultures interact with each other.  Yet there is also a sense that the viewer was not invited to this dinner party and that this mixture of cultures is not completely accessible (many of Rojas’ sculptures are presented on tables with nonfunctional chairs).  Although the works can interact together, the viewer is unable to; the viewer cannot sit at the tables and for the most part, one must look down onto the tables to see the sculptures.  The installation is not immersive; the New York skyline and the railing of the Met rooftop appear to take over my vision.  

We stopped at various works in the contemporary art galleries including Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art works such as those by Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, Cy Twombly, and Roy Lichtenstein.  This followed with a conversation about paintings as windows and walls which helped me to better appreciate the Twombly.  The Twombly which can be seen as a “wall” was situated near a Rothko, a “window”.  

During this trip, I was looking forward to seeing Fairfield Porter’s work in person as I enjoy how he handles the landscape and his surroundings and how this relates to my own work.  Although I enjoy Abstract Expressionism, it was refreshing to see the Met showing other work made during this period that doesn’t necessarily follow an art movement of the time, especially putting numerous paintings by Porter in one gallery.  Although Porter paints from life, there is a certain abstraction to his forms as well as a play between light, shadow, and flatness.  It is also of note that one of the paintings on display of Porter’s was a portrait of Elaine de Kooning who was also on the advisory board of the NY art semester at one point.  

After continuing through the contemporary art galleries, we met with Thayer Tolles, curator of American paintings and sculpture.  Tolles began her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a graduate intern.  Her interests are primarily in 19th and early 20th century sculpture.  It was enlightening to learn about the functioning of the administration and staff at the Met and how the curators refer to themselves as a faculty as they all have their own specialty.  Tolles explained that one focus for the museum today is “how the Met is expanding the storyline” and being more global in their approach.  Tolles provided advice about museum careers and insight into her day-to-day responsibilities that can range from collecting, observing, researching, and caring for the collection as well as conceiving exhibitions.  I was interested in Tolles discussion on the importance of the digital experience and online presence of the museum, and I would have liked to ask her more about any involvement she has had in this due to my interest in the digital humanities and prior experiences using the online exhibition tool, Omeka.  I am wondering what her involvement in the presentation of the exhibit descriptions and images on the Met website is for exhibits she curates.  She also explained that in some ways she serves as a fundraiser.  Tolles also brought us through the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, a public storage area for works that are not currently on view in the American galleries but are accessible for research and observation.  She explained that many other museums and galleries have been inspired to create similar spaces.  I thought that this is another interesting approach to where art belongs in the museum, especially with such a small percentage of the Met’s collection on view in the galleries.  Near the end of our time with Tolles, one student in our class posed a question about confederate statues.  This raises other questions about the role of the museum and where such monuments belong.     

After our discussion with Tolles, we saw the exhibit “Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists”.  This exhibition paired artists up to have phone conversations via images or videos over a five-month period.  Many of the conversations became political as they took place during the presidential election.  I enjoyed the conversation between Cynthia Daignault and Daniel Heidkamp due to my interest in their style of painting and subject.  However, it was frustrating as their conversation was made up of photographs of their paintings, and I wanted to view their paintings in person!   The curator who developed the idea for this exhibit “was intrigued by how the camera-phone had transformed photography, giving it a diaristic, real-time intimacy and turning it, she says in a wall text, into ‘a fluid instantaneous, ephemeral medium, closer to speaking than to writing”’ (Smith).  To an extent, this exhibit seemed to be responding to whether phone pictures belong in the museum or gallery setting.

It was interesting how each part of my day at the Met connected to a bigger picture about where art belongs in the museum.  I think the visit to the Newark Museum might have partly informed my perspective at the Met; however, the Met seemed to be truly attempting to think about “expanding the narrative”.  

Works Cited

Farago, Jason. “A Mini-Met Mashup on the Museum’s Roof, With Summer Views.” The New York Times, 13 Apr. 2017.

Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. Thames & Hudson, 2011.

Green, Christopher. “A Step in the Right Direction for the Display of Native American Art.” Hyperallergic, Hyperallergic Media Inc., 22 Nov. 2016.

Smith, Roberta. “An Exhibition Worth Thousands of Words.” The New York Times, 6 July 2017.

Voon, Claire. “Treasures from the Met Ascend to Its Roof in a Scramble of Art History.” Hyperallergic, Hyperallergic Media Inc., 14 Apr. 2017.