A 28 minute documentary video of the painting installation created in 2011 at the Peoria Contemporary Art Center by Mark Staff Brandl, Gary Scoles and Th. Emil Homerin.
I plan to post in-progress images of my works for my huge painting-installation in Zurich in January which is a visual, painting, walk-in, version of my dissertation. Here is a first report on my work for the show. This is the almost finished "first wall area" work. Oil and acrylic. 4.5 metters high by 2 meters at widest; almost 15 feet high, 6 feet at widest. I greyed out the background of my studio wall so you can see the largely white work better, but did a crappy job on the photo.
As a part of Critical Art Ensemble's Winning Hearts and Minds, Brandl, artist and PhD art historian , will present a hybrid performative lecture event in the Hauptbahnhof. Artist and viewer empowerment. Come see and hear!
"A Quicky Crash Course in Art History," the entire history of art from the Prehistoric through Postmodernism in one hour with pictures -- become an expert with lightning speed!
Thursday 12th July 12:00 -1:00 pm in the Hauptbahnhof (KulturBahnhof) in Kassel.
A nice, short article on my exhibition in St. Mangen is in the St. Gallen newspaper today, by Brigitte Schmid-Gugler. Danke
Here is my most recent painting. 279 x 185 cm / 110 in x 73 in; oil, acrylic and enamel on canvas. Conceiving Metaphor(m)s.
And here I am next to it in the corner of my studio in Switzerland.
This week: Happy 2012! Bad at Sports kicks off the new year with Mark Staff Brandl reporting from Venice 2011!
A Venice Biennale 2011 extravaganza. Mark Staff Brandl is in the City of St. Mark. Brandl, the Central European Bureau and VaporettoShark, traverses and discusses his way through this huge international festival with sporadic assistance from Peter Stobbe, Claudia Tolusso, Manuela Gritsch, Elisabeth Payer, Tamara Remus, Lucas Malsch, Adam Vogt, Sarah Rohner, Johanna Gschwend, Marc Bless, Manuel Ackermann, Chandra Marquart and others from the Art Academy of Liechtenstein. He covers many of the national pavilions at the Giardini park, discusses much of the Centrale and even works his way through all of the massive Arsenale. Furthermore, at the end Dr. Mark and Dr. Peter visit and discuss some thrilling old paintings at the Accademia, the wonderful Venetian Museum and go to a retrospective of Julian Schnabel in the Museo Correr, located in the Piazza San Marco. Whew. Viva la Serenissima!
An exhibition of paintings by Julia Kubik in the Collapsible Kunsthalle, which at this time has been in the Art Academy of Liechtenstein for a residence.
Link.
This week: Mark Staff Brandl reports from Art Basel 2011! Link here: http://badatsports.com/2011/episode-308-basel-2011/
Contemporary Art Center Press Release:
"Meanwhile...." July 11-August 27 Gallery 3R Mark Staff Brandl with Gary Scoles and Thomas Emil Homerin
The trio creates a comic book installation on site from scratch, eventually enveloping the entire room. Visitors are invited to watch the process and interact with the creators. Their activities are documented in video and photos, also becoming part of the completed exhibition.
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 6:30-8:30 pm
When Mark Staff Brandl of Switzerland was invited to exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center, he realized this would be an opportunity to fulfill a long-held desire to reunite his friends Gary Scoles of Pekin and Emil Homerin of Rochester, New York into an active creative team in order to realize one of his Panels Painting-Installations, utilizing as a springboard the steady stream of comic-related ephemeral sketches and doodles he and Scoles consistently produce. Starting on July 11, the team will convene in Gallery 3R to create the work on site.
May 2011, Awarded PhD in Art History
Artist and Art Historian Mark Staff Brandl earns PhD with creative dissertation on visual art and metaphor theory
Mark Staff Brandl was awarded his PhD in Art History, magna cum laude, from the University of Zurich Switzerland on 20 May 2011.
He wrote his PhD dissertation on an original theory of metaphor in visual art.
Dr Brandl's book, titled Metaphor(m): Engaging a Theory of Central Trope in Art, presents and embodies his thesis that the formal, technical and stylistic aspects of artists' approaches concretely manifest content in culturally and historically antithetical ways through a uniquely discovered trope. His philosophy, termed metaphor(m) or the theory of central trope, is grounded in conceptual metaphor and cognitive science, particularly that of George Lakoff, as well as Harold Bloom's idea of poetic misprision. Brandl's concept is applied to painting, installation at, electronic media, the expanded text concept, art history timeline models, comics, and artistic cultural inheritance. This dissertation is in the traditional form of a book, but with the addition of paintings and sections in sequential comic form as well as an actual installation comprised largely of paintings.
(click on image to enlarge)
A horizontal-scrolling doc of images of a few of my more recent works. Made for the profile on me at the Höhere Fachschule Bildende Kunst St Gallen Switzerland.
There were two openings last night at Giti Nourbakhsch: a group show, Chairs, and a solo exhibition of work by Berta Fischer.
OK, once again I've had to discuss why I teach real art history to empower artists, when I could just propagandize them in the latest consensus correct attitudes of a history no longer than a decade ago, or alternatively why I have expanded the coverage to areas beyond central Euros. So read my darn dissertation chapter about it and get over it --- or hopefully enjoy it.
Young artists love my approach and are demanding it and are empowering themselves.
Link: http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/dissertation/Mark_Staff_Brandl_CHAPTER_NINE_timelines.pdf
Marianne
2010, 230 x 75 x 60 cm
Wood, metal, plastic, PE, gloss paint, cables, mixed media
The word "Laboratory" is painted in large letters on Willi Tomes' studio door, and it's no mistake. Tomes, based in Berlin, is an alchemist, turning the debris of everyday life into gold, and a modern day Dr. Frankenstein who breathes new life into that which was once dead.
Looking at a Tomes sculpture, one can't help but notice that it is comprised of familiar objects: A Mickey Mouse head, part of a toy boat, broken records, a Christmas decoration, a kitchen utensil. Cast off from some previous life, they are all there in parts and pieces, reassembled to create something new.
"Finding new materials and techniques is something I'm interested in," he says of his work. "I find things without searching for them. I feel that's part of an artist's job - to find - not only to do. It feels good to not think about it too much, to just do it and surprise myself."
The Animal (biped or quadruped?)
2008/2009, 130 x 110 x 54 cm
metal, textiles, plastic, leather, vinyl, plaster, acrylic paint, gloss paint, mixed media
While his process of creation may be fluid and intuitive, the narratives he weaves are deeply thoughtful. He retells the ancient tale of Good vs. Evil through his art, and calls his particular version of the story the Blimperium Zyklus.
"There are always three main parts: The invasion of the evil, the triumph of the evil, and the destruction of the evil - because it has to be destroyed. It destroys itself." He has also assigned colors to these three epochs, and uses them throughout his work: Silver represents the invasion, gold is the triumph, and black is the defeat.
"They are monsters," he says of the misshapen creatures that wreck havoc in his work. "They are like gods, but they are also the heroes that people have created. And so they are made of 'hero stuff': Mickey Mouse, Masters of the Universe figures, toy turtle heads...it's all man made. I wanted to show that this isn't an 'outer space' story like in War of the Worlds - these monsters come from us, and they're doing the things that we want them to do."
The battle plays out in a series of wall-mounted dioramas he has created to showcase the rise and subsequent fall of his monster-god-heroes:
Triumph 2007 - 2009, series of 10 dioramas, wall installation, size variable
(Installation view)
Detail of one of the dioramas, showing the battle between the
giant golden monster (only the feet are visible here) and the tiny people below.
While not all of his work is as literal in depicting the Blimperium Zyklus as his dioramas, it is a theme that is nevertheless ever-present. His demented busts and statues - constructed from the objects we work so hard to purchase and then discard - represent our true idols and dictators. They are monuments to a world gone wrong, led by greed and consumption, and even the pedestals that hold them up have been crafted from neatly stacked trash, spray painted in stately grays and blacks.
| Helios 2009, sunglasses, acrylic plaster, metal, PE, wood, gloss paint, synthetic plaster, 39 x 27 x 26 cm |  | Bäh, Bäh, Bäh 2008, plastic, acrylic plaster, PE, glass, metal, textiles, 22 x 13 x 17 cm |
It's no surprise that the plastic bag - the most ubiquitous of all trash - has become a key material in Tomes' work. "Plastic bags are interesting things," he says of them. "You buy things in them and then you throw things away in them - it's a transporter - and aside from that it's useless. I was looking for something that I always have around that I could use to make art out of, and it was perfect. It's a material that everyone knows - even in Africa, where they have nothing, they have plastic bags."
Stretching plastic bags onto stretcher bars like canvas, he forms new compositions from the juxtapositions of the printed images on the plastic, and applying heat, he manipulates and distorts the surfaces.
Two Mountains2010, PE, mixed media on wooden frame,
51 x 49 x 3cm
But Tomes doesn't limit his use of discarded materials to the man-made. The remains of animals are often featured in his work as well: the corpse of a frog, a mummified rabbit, a stuffed pigeon or pheasant, and even - occasionally - a little bit of mammoth ivory. "In nature a thing can only grow if another thing dies. It happens slowly, but it's a necessary cycle. That's why I like to use these animals - because they have actually been something. They're not just packaging or toys, they're real things that were once alive and have a history."
Through his art, Tomes crafts a poignant yet poetic statement about the fate of humanity: if we continue to worship our plastic idols and create massive amounts of trash, we will destroy ourselves and end up going the way of the mummies and mammoths. It's a clear message, yet the work never comes across as preachy, condemning or self-righteous. It merely points to one of many possible futures and leaves us to ponder our destiny.
"This is only one version of the story," Tomes says of his work. "It is open and evolving, forever continuing."
Willi Tomes is represented by Galerie Gerken in Berlin, Germany.
In the front room an impressive chandelier-like mobile hung from the ceiling, filling the space, and mirrored glass figures hung from it, reflecting light as well as casting colored shadows on the walls like a giant, chaotic shadow theater. The glass figures were all very whimsical shapes and creatures, and evoked childhood dreams and memories.
CLICK HERE to explore "Phantasmagorical"
(please be sure your sound is turned on)
Interactive art piece by Sarah Kretchmer
Genuine artists are not looking for images that convey their preconceived ideas, they create images that speak for themselves --- even though they are rooted in paideia and the desire for communication.
This week on Bad at Sports I interview Martina AltSchaefer.This is the first of two interviews with German artists I conducted on the island of Elba, Italy. Martina AltSchaefer is an artist living in Rüssellsheim, Germany. She studied with the famed Konrad Kapheck and her creative work centers on very large, labor-intensive drawing in colored pencil on translucent paper. AltSchaefer has exhibited in many prestigious galleries and museums. She also does printmaking and is an expert on mezzotint, about which she has curated shows and written essays. She was in an invitational retreat in July as a working guest of a foundation on the island of Elba along with Viennese jazz pianist and composer Martin Reiter, New York playwright Sony Sobieski, Berlin artist Alexander Johannes Kraut (the interviewee in part two) and me, Mark Staff Brandl, the EuroShark, Bad at Sports Continental and now also islandal European Bureau. And for all the Napoleon fans, especially those commenting on Facebook, they were not in exile and even Mark was allowed back on the mainland without having to invade it.
Link: http://badatsports.com/
Direct page link: http://badatsports.com/2010/episode-272-martina-altschaefer/
The absolute lack of desire for a mature style, for growth in depth, in an artistic oeuvre is possibly one of the greatest mistakes of our time. That is a lot of what makes recent art more akin to American Idol than to times such as the late Baroque or even High Modernism.
The final central chapters to my PhD dissertation, Metaphor(m): Engaging a Theory of Central Trope in Art, in almost finished form, are now up on my website. That is, Chapters Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine. Please check them out including the accompanying Covers paintings at the beginning and sequential comic art sequences at the end of each. They are titled:
CHAPTER FOUR: Conceiving Metaphor(m)s
CHAPTER FIVE: My Metaphor(m)
CHAPTER SIX: Central Trope in Two Contemporary Painters' Works
CHAPTER SEVEN: Artistic Ground: Cultural Inheritance, Struggle, Respect,
Material and Identity
CHAPTER EIGHT: Metaphor(m) and the Expanded Text Concept
CHAPTER NINE: Timelines, Comics and a Plurogenic View of Art History
Link to the dissertation on-line here.
Please comment on them either here or on my Facebook page, if you desire.
Above: LAN Party, in the exhibition,
Bad Boys
April 9 - June 5, 2010
Thomas Robertello Gallery
939 West Randolph Street
Chicago, IL 60607
www.thomasrobertello.com
Previously:
What makes a man start fires?
Noelle Mason @ Antena Gallery, 2008
www.antenapilsen.com/exhibit01.html
And:
X-ray image of ivory buddha in transit from Hong Kong to Chicago
Noelle Mason @ Alogon Gallery, 2008
alogongallery.com/artwork/313912_Noelle_Mason.html
www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/7537.html
Tony Fitzpatrick (candid) @ Studio 1020:
Roger Hiorns @ Art Institute of Chicago:
Above: Untitled (Alliance)
Two Pratt and Whitney TF33 P9 engines from Boeing EC135 Looking Glass long-range surveillance planes.
May 1-September 19, 2010
Monroe Street entrance of the Modern Wing; Third Floor; Bluhm Family Terrace. Major funding by Boeing. Curated by the Art Institute of Chicago's Frances and Thomas Dittmer Chair and Curator of Contemporary Art: James Rondeau.
http://art.newcity.com/2010/05/10/review-roger-hiornsart-institute-of-chicago
http://blog.artic.edu/blog/2010/06/16/roger-hiorns-in-conversation
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/rogerhiorns/default.shtm
A 37-second video of the entire history of art from Prehistoric through now (English and German captions, no speaking). From a speech/performance I give where I teach the entire history of art in an hour and a half.
Over the past two months everyone at Bad at Sports has been in a frenzy preparing for the exhibition, "Don't Piss On Me And Tell Me It's Raining" at apexart in New York. The show was a bit of a last-minute golden opportunity, so details have been scarce, but we now have the full scoop on what's in store, and it's pretty awesome. (You can keep up with Meg, Duncan, Amanda, Tom and Richard throughout the show's installation and opening events by following Bad at Sports on Twitter and the hashtag #basapex.) The exhibition features over 100 objects, images and ephemera that will serve as a visual complement to Bad at Sports' considerable audio archives, submitted by Bad at Sports contributors and guests of the show, including:
Carol Becker, Britton Bertran, Temporary Services, Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson, Ivan Brunetti, Tom Burtonwood, David Coyle, Death by Design, Elizabeth Chodos, Miguel Cortez, Tony Fitzpatrick, Rob Davis and Michael Langlois, Jeremy Deller, Lisa Dorin, Jim Duignan, Dan Devening, Cody Hudson, Jason Dunda, Fendry Ekel, James Elkins, Anthony Elms, Pete Fagundo, Mary Rachel Fanning,Tony Feher, Rochelle Feinstein, Pamela Fraser, Liam Gillick, Helidon Gjergji, Michelle Grabner, Dylan Graham, Madeleine Grynsztejn, Sarah Guernsey, Terence Hannum, Anni Holm, Brian Holmes, Astrid Honold, Christopher Hudgens, Meg Onli, Amanda Browder, Tom Sanford, Duncan MacKenzie, Christian Kuras, Ben Tanner, Scott Hug, Richard Holland, Carol Jackson, Paddy Johnson, David Jones, Alex Jovanovic, Atsushi Kaga, Mark Staff Brandl, Vera Klement, Peter Saul, Gregory Knight, Monique Meloche, Leo Koenig, Chad Kouri, Steve Lacy, Caroline Picard, Jose Lerma, Laura Letinsky, Kerry James Marshall, Ed Marszewski, Eric May, Dominic Molon, Anne Elizabeth Moore, David Morgan, Julian Myers, Gavin Turk, Liz Nofziger, Jamisen Ogg, Neysa Page-Lieberman, Trevor Paglan, Raymond Pettibon, John Phillips, Allison Peters Quinn, Lane Relyea, Lawrence Rinder, David Robbins, Thomas Robertello, Julie Rodriguez Widholm, Elvia Rodriguez, Nathan Rogers-Madsen, James Rondeau, Marlene Russum Scott, Alison Ruttan, Dan S. Wang, Stephanie Smith, Deb Sokolow, Scott Speh, Chris Sperandio, Lisa Stone, Shannon Stratton, Randall Szott, Christine Tarkowski, Tony Tasset, Tracy Marie Taylor, Ron Terada, Philip von Zweck, Hamza Walker, Chris Walla, John Wanzel, Chris Ware, Oli Watt, Tony Wight, Anne Wilson, Jay Wolke, InCubate, Curtis Mann, Michael Velliquette, Clare Britt, Shannon Stratton, Damian Duffy, William Conger, M N Hutchinson, Mark Francis, Annika Marie, the artists of Blunt Art Text, and more.
The exhibition also features three related exhibition talks, all of which are free and open to the public. They'll all be rebroadcast on upcoming episodes of Bad at Sports' podcast, for those of you not able to catch the events in NYC.
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This is Chapter Three of my PhD dissertation (thus the fourth on-line following the Prelude and Chapters One and Two which I already posted). This chapter is in comic form and in it I begin to apply my theory to my own work as well as that of others.
The Chapters are permanently archived on my website here, but I am posting a notification on Sharkforum as I finish them and they are critiqued and approved. (I am writing under the direction of Prof. Philip Urspung at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My second reader is Prof. Andreas Langlotz at the University of Basel, Switzerland.) This is also to offer a location where any reader who wants to can post comments, most of which will go into my final dissertation project in some fashion. I would love your comments, criticism, tangential thoughts and more!
Link to chapter here (in pdf).
This is Chapter Two of my PhD dissertation (thus the third on-line following the Prelude and Chapter One which I already posted). This is the key chapter, as it fully elucidates my theory.
The Chapters are permanently archived on my website here, but I am a post of notification up on Sharkforum as I finish them and they are critiqued and approved. (I am writing under the direction of Prof. Philip Urspung at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My second reader is Prof. Andreas Langlotz at the University of Basel, Switzerland.). This is also to offer a location where any reader who w ants to can post comments, most of which will go into my final dissertation project in some fashion. I would love your comments, criticism, tangential thoughts and more!
Link to chapter here (in pdf).
Eyeporium Gallery Exhibition Opening
"Paper+Paint" by Sarah Kretchmer and Marianna Levant
Opening Night is Friday, April 2, 2010
For more infomation, click here.
Above: Hand of History (Ode to John Heartfield)
oil on canvas, 21.5 x 43 inches
Below: Artist Peter Otto
Exhibition: The Lodger
March 7 - April 9, 2010
3039 West Carroll Avenue
Chicago, IL 60612
(312) 420-4720
www.deveningprojects.com
Exhibition facilitated by Cultural Services in the USA / Consulate General of the Netherlands and Materiaalfonds, Amsterdam
Proximity continues its Arts Theory Column, edited by Mark Staff Brandl, with an essay by Noah Berlatsky: "The Last Shall Be First."
Most traditional economic theory is built around the concept of scarcity -- the idea that there's not enough stuff to go around. In The Accursed Share (1946), famed theorist Georges Bataille inverts this; life, he says, is characterized, not by too little, but by too much. Life is excess -- it pushes onto every bleak rock, every cranny; it spends itself in profligate sexual activity and in the ultimate profligacy of death. And it throws out unneeded economic activity; too much fat, too many children, too much grain in the stores, too many bodies in the street, too much creative energy shaking its collective tuchas on the YouTube videos.
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The Collapsible Kunsthalle (of which I am curator): documentation of the latest exhibition, paintings by Lamis El Farra.
Link here.
Belcher plunges into the world of the semi-professional art guru - or the 'curatoriat', as he has termed the ever growing army of art school graduates working not as artists, but as facilitators to art activity in their cities. With his ever critical eye he asks what the growth of the 'curatoriat' means to the individual artist...
When did it happen? When did the power structure in the arts shift so fundamentally away from the practicing artist and into the hands of a new breed of art school trained curators or as I have re-designated them 'curatoriat'? The growth industry in 'curatorial' courses like the MA at the Royal College of Art reflects a far wider shift and a worrying one for us poor artists at the bottom of the arts funding pecking order.
Read the rest here on axisweb.org
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Dawoud Bey writes: Published here are the remarks I gave during my opening Keynote Address at the College Art Association Conference Convocation here in Chicago on Wednesday evening. My remarks were preceded by an awards ceremony in which a number of individuals were given awards of recognition and distinction for their work. Most notable for me were the awards given to Emory Douglas, Barkley Hendricks and Suzanne Lacy, since each has figured in the formation of my own history as an artist in some way. Gratifying too was the award given to Holland Cotter, often the only art critic at the New York Times to consistently note the presence of artists of color in his ongoing criticism and reviews. You can see the full list of awardees here:
http://www.collegeart.org/awards/2010awards
My remarks, "The Art World and the Real World: Bridging the Great Divide" follow:
Barbara Trinh says, "While I'm sitting waiting for a session to begin, my curiosity was sparked when a man in front of me was enthusiastically speaking about comics and his art on the T-shirt he was currently wearing. Instead of handing someone an ordinary business card, he hands them a button with his contact info on the back. That is because Mark Staff Brandl (http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/) is no ordinary artist. He is interested in comic/ sequential art, painting, and art history. His installations are described as 'walk in comic books', a mixture of installation and comic books that are 12 ft tall. In the video, Mark tells us about himself and his experience at CAA."
Barbara Trinh, BA Candidate from the Film & Video Dept
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A 55 minute speech, with images, by artist and art historian Mark Staff Brandl. Originally presented at the CAA (College Art Association, art historians organization) annual conference, as well as at the Kunstschule Lichtenstein, in 2010. It concerns description and criticism of the standard conceptions and models of fine art history and the history of comics, while offering a new one model for conceiving of and teaching these histories.
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In my opinion, 'Altermodernism', like Nicolas Bourriaud's other word coinage, 'Relational Aesthetics,' sounds great, but is, when elucidated, too much of a collage of ideas others have been presenting for some time. --- And I see none of it in the art he chooses. The art in the shows he curates is always the same-old-same-old: Consensus Correct 'trendies.' So it comes down to an attempted, forced, reactionary return to Modernism at best and a fashionable neo-PoMo at worst. Neither possibility is promising.
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"The heyday of postmodernism in art was the 1980s and 90s. Modernism had become stale by the 1970s, and I suggest that postmodernism has reached a similar dead-end, a What next? stage. Postmodern art was a game that played out within a narrow range of assumptions, and we are weary of the same old, same old, with only minor variations. The gross-outs have become mechanical and repetitive, and they no longer gross us out.
So, what next?"
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Wesley Kimler: Open Studio
2046 W. Carroll, Chicago IL
December 19, 2009
artnet.com/artist/21755/wesley-kimler.html
wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Kimler
wesleykimlerstudio.com
Adam Ekberg @ Thomas Robertello
In the between
December 11, 2009 - February 6, 2010
939 W. Randolph, Chicago
"Born in 1975, Adam Ekberg resides in Chicago and graduated the School of the Art Institute's MFA Photography program in 2006."
thomasrobertello.com
adamekberg.com/home.html
Artists Write: Thinking While Making Things is the column of art theoretical writings by practicing artists, edited by Mark Staff Brandl, in Proximity magazine. This issue, Number 5, features "Ideas Don't Matter: How Literary Ideas Subvert and Vitiate Art" by John Link.
IDEAS DON'T MATTER: How Literary Ideas Subvert and Vitiate Art by John Link
The dirty little mandate of our "anything goes" art scene is that "everything" must revolve around ideas, must ultimately emulate some sort of literature. The connection between visual art and the literal can be obvious or it can be contrived or it can be plain silly, just as long as it is "there."
...
Whistler enjoyed baiting the critics. He began his Ten O'Clock Lecture, a public manifesto of his artistic ideas, in London in February 1885, with a sarcastic dig at John Ruskin, the most powerful art "authority"of his time. Whistler counted on many artists to take his side but they refused fearing damage to their reputations. Besides his long libel suit against Ruskin, Whistler frequently wrote letters to daily newspapers ridiculing art critics. He believed that only artists had a right to criticize other artists' work. In 1890 he published The Gentle Art of Making Enemies a collection of writings.
This self-portrait also bears his famous signature logo, a butterfly with a scorpion's stinger for a tail.
Hung is a collage artist; his collage is animated; colorful shapes pass across a singular wall-mounted video screen. And in that psychedelic motion, the most readily identifiable figure appears to be Hung's protagonist: President Barack Obama. It's through a series of graphic vignettes that Hung causes Obama to incarnate again-and-again as a prominent religious figure: Jesus, Buddha, Eshu [Nigerian], the Virgin Mary, Krishna, Mohammad, and finally Abraham. Sorry Moses!
One wonders how many consumers of Hung's work fixate upon the foreground, noticing only Obama. In fairness, the video's vivid hues and queer pace--if not also the smiling face of the President--are hypnotic. So that it's good to stop the action, examine a still frame, and ask: What is this fellow doing?
DEBORAH SONTAG and ROBIN POGREBIN in the New York Times, William Powhida's Brooklyn Rail Cover and more.
as Paddy Johnson writes at Art Fag City:
A few more quick responses to NYMagazine's head critic Jerry Saltz, who generally holds more sympathy than most towards the New Museum's rather complex web of insider relationships. He breaks those down as follows:
[Dakis] Joannou, a New Museum trustee, is friendly with Lisa Phillips, the museum's director. Her curator, Massimiliano Gioni, has worked previously with Joannou, and he oversaw the current three-floor Urs Fischer show. [Editor's note: Gioni is also apparently close with Joannou and they speak weekly]. Urs Fischer has curated shows for Joannou; Joannou also owns a good deal of Fischer's work. Fischer's art dealer is Gavin Brown, who also represents Elizabeth Peyton, Jeremy Deller, and Steven Shearer, all four of whom have had solo shows at the New Museum since it re-opened less than two years ago.
Let's face it, that doesn't look great for the museum. It's not a great idea to be so closely associated with one commercial gallery.
Continue reading here.
Link.
Link.
INDEX Press is pleased to announce the publication of BALLARY MARVELS, featuring pen-and-ink drawings by Ellen Lanyon and eleven "nonsense" poems by Lynne Warren. Twenty-four pages plus cover, perfect bound, trim size 10 x 8 ½.
The book is available at MCA Store, 220 E. Chicago Avenue, and Printworks, 311 W Superior Street.
It can also be purchased online at the MCA website.
Robert Storr: Most theory has little bearing on art:The critic and curator speaks to The Art Newspaper, and article by Helen Stoilas.
Robert Storr, US critic, curator and dean of the Yale School of Art, is visiting Frieze Art Fair for the first time, to take part in "Scenes from a Marriage: Have Art and Theory Drifted Apart?", a panel discussion today at 12pm with artist Barbara Bloom and philosophy professor Simon Critchley. He spoke to The Art Newspaper about the role of art theory, and what advice he is giving to his students in today's artistic climate.
In the "I told you so" department, an article by Andy McSmith in The Independant, including the list of the top 100 most powerful people in the artworld.
"If you want clout in the art world in these recessionary times, you are better off putting pen to paper as a curator than paintbrush to canvas as a jobbing artist."
Continue reading here.
Head on Horizon: Redux 2000-2009, light, (digital projection, 2009 in collaboration with L.J. Douglas), mixed media, dimensions variable
____________________________________________________________________
Writing about one's own artwork is often difficult. The main task is finding palpable meaning to share with others when the work is familiar to the maker. Information can be left out, or omitted entirely, depending on the artist's literary inclination at the time of critique or observational writing.
Lead (pronounced /ˈlɛd/) is a main-group element with symbol Pb (Latin: plumbum) and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal, also considered to be one of the heavy metals.
It is a particular thrill for me to announce that the Art Museum of Thurgau in Switzerland has just acquired 20 paintings of mine! They comprise a representative cross-section of several years of my series titled "Covers." I am very pleased that they will be in such a great institution and under the care of its eminent director Markus Landert and curator Dorothee Messmer!
Silent Pictures, running from September 1 through October 11 in the James Gallery in NYC focuses on aspects of comic book structure that do not depend on words to advance an image sequence. The exhibition is inspired by artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman's personal collection of wordless comics and graphic novels -- mostly black and white rare artist books from the 1930s. The show will feature a selection of these books, as well as more recent "abstract comics," and a related film program -- all of which investigate essential qualities and aesthetics of this hugely popular medium.
The abstract comics, compiled by art historian and artist Andrei Molotiu for a just released anthology, Abstract Comics Fantagraphics Books, 2009), call attention to the formal mechanisms that underlie all comics. The art gathered by Molotiu emphasizes the dynamic graphics that lead the eye and mind from panel to panel, suggesting that these structural elements are fundamental to the emotional register of the medium. This section of the exhibition features an old-fashioned wire magazine stand ("spinner rack"), which hosts a collection of paintings by Mark Staff Brandl called A History of Composition in Abstract Comic Covers. Done in oil, acrylic and collage on canvas panels, the 30 pieces in this series unite comics, pop art and Pollock-related abstraction with his actual interpretation of the history of composition in painting from Prehistoric times until now.
The James Gallery is located off the lobby of the Graduate Center at 365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th & 35th Streets). Hours are Tuesdays through Fridays, 12-8 pm, and 12-6 pm on Saturdays & Sundays. Admission is free; for more information call 212-817-7138 or visit http://www.gc.cuny.edu/events/art_gallery.htm An opening reception for Silent Pictures will be held on Thursday, September 10, 6-8 pm.
"Philosophy Bites" is a website which features "podcasts of top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics." Dave Edmunds and Nigel Warburton seek out expert philosophers and interview them on significant topics in very short, understandable, even entertaining, --- yet scholarly --- , podcasts. Well worth listening to is this one, Derek Matravers on the background to abd problems with the current definition of art.
Go to the website here.
Or listen directly here.
(click on image to enlarge)
You are invited to the "und09" exhibition and opening
Opening: Friday 4. September 2009, 7 pm Fabrikhallen Heer & Co., Wiesentalstrasse 39, 9240 Oberuzwil (Weg ist signalisiert; direkt bei Bahnviadukt Bahnhof Uzwil)
The "und09 - aktuelle Kunst" exhibits in an area of about 1000 m2 recent art by Ghislaine Ayer, Mark Staff Brandl, André Büchi, Karin Bühler, Peter Dew, Liliane Eberle, Reto Jung, Jérôme Keller, Herbert Kopainig, Alex Meszmer/Reto Müller, Jürg Rohr and Harlis Schweizer.
I, MSB, have a 15 meter long, 4 meter high "Panels" Painting-Installation in the exhibition.
www.und-art.ch
I have yet another idea for a new term I would like to add to the artworld discourse. After CC (Consensus Correct), PoPoMo, Pintophobia, Feeble Painting and the others, I now suggest "Art Circus Fleas." This is a term for all those perennial members of every huge artworld spectaclist event: Maurizio Cattelan, Ugo Rondinone, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Wolfgang Tillmanns, etc. etc. etc. The top o' the pops "every show's gotta have em," well-trained purveyors of cute ideas for trendy consumption. The artworld's equivalent of a minor sideshow attraction asking for great attention. Feel free to add names of your choosing to the list of Art Circus Fleas!
A 16 minute video wherein I, (the artist Mark Staff Brandl), as an action figure, deliver a TV evangelistic "sermon" calling the artworld back to inspiration, away from hypocrisy and sophistry.
China's contemporary art-market bubble has burst. After becoming one of the hottest things in the art world over the last decade, galleries are now struggling to sell pieces, works are failing to reach minimums at auction, and artists are having to rethink their choice of career.
Love to read the irrascible Matthew Collings on art, but don't get an English newspaper, hate Modern Painters magazine (as you well should) and don't get English TV? Well, now you can read his "PUT DOWNS & SUCK UPS: MATTHEW COLLINGS' WEEKLY VENTINGS ABOUT THE ARTWORLD" articles on Saatchi online. Don't know who he is? Get to know him. Matthew Collings is an artist and writer who lives in London. He studied painting at the Byam Shaw School in the 1970s and at Goldsmith's in the early 1990s. He has written several books including 'Blimey!' and 'This Is Modern Art'. He has written and presented many TV programs, including the series, 'This Is Modern Art,' which received several awards including a BAFTA. His most recent series, 'This Is Civilisation,' was on Channel 4 in November 2007. A book to accompany the series has been published by 21. Collaborative paintings by Matthew Collings and Emma Biggs can be seen at the Fine Art Society, London
To read his posts go here.
www.carrieschneider.net
www.moniquemeloche.com
Lora Fosberg:
www.lorafosberg.com
Cody Hudson:
www.struggleinc.com
www.andrewrafacz.com
Renee Shaw @ Logsdon Gallery
Polymorphic Polymers
July 10 - August 1, 2009
1909 S. Halsted St.
Chicago, Il
www.logsdon1909.com
Summer Residents: Women in Performance
CamLab, Gitte Bog, Susan Lee-Chun, Kang-hyun Ahn
June 15th - August 30th, 2009
119 N. Peoria #2d
Chicago, IL 60607
"threewalls will host a group of talented emerging women working in performance this summer for our first thematic residency. Artists will be live and work thoughout Chicago, co-hosted by other organizations. Look for performances, site specific projects and other events through-out Chicago during their stay, including our yearly symposium which will extend the conversation about performance art to our yearly panel and publication."
www.three-walls.org/blog/
www.susanleechun.com
This is a film in which the world-famous lion statue of the Art Institute of Chicago comes to life to take a tour of the museum for himself.
It is fun, but tell the truth, wouldn't you REALLY like to see a SHARK swim through, devouring the artworld as well?!
Discussing widespread ahistoricism in internationalist, or what I would term "academicist," Postmodernism, Elkins writes:
"(The list of periods might look like this):
Art History
(No subdivisions)
The Present
Psychologically, such a radically collapsed sense of history is a great relief for people burdened by a nagging sense of the importance of history. Suddenly, all art is possible, and nothing needs to be studied. ... Some art historians who work exclusively on contemporary art feel the same exhilaration: they can apply any theories they want, interpret in any fashion they choose, and cite or ignore precedents at will. But as Milan Kundera might say, sooner or later the apparent lightness of art history reveals itself as an "unbearable lightness," and finally as an unbearable burden."
In August each year, the small Spanish village of Bunol hosts the world's largest tomato fight, the Tomatina.
I hate to admit it, cranky as I am, as much as I did not want to like it, I have experienced a marvelous new contemporary space here in Chicago. A space that with an economy of means, employing the most modest of building materials, with a sense of purpose and an adherence to that purpose conflated in its vision, is simply dazzling. As you wander through the spacious produce section, or stop for a nosh at any one of the fabulous food islands,
Sotheby's stocks have fallen almost 90 percent! Their profit fell to "only" $28.3 million, the worst result since 2003. You could get them for a song!
Sherwin on myartspaceblog:
I've read some buzz about the ArtPrize competition. A few art critics and NYC art dealers have called it a sign of desperation rather than an opportunity for artists-- implying that anyone who enters it is 'just desperate'. In fact, one critic of the competition-- András Szántó -- suggested that anyone who wins the competition will never be accepted in the mainstream art world.
András Szántó also suggested that the $400,000+ cash prize should have been donated to existing art programs or as grants to artists who are represented by notable galleries. He actually made the case that only a select few should dictate what is 'good' art or 'bad' art instead of the general public-- backing the idea that only certain individuals are capable of understanding or appreciating art.
Elie Wiesel called him a "God." His investors called him a "genius." But, proving correct that old adage from the country and western song, you never really know what goes on behind closed doors.
Bernie Madoff, for at least 20 years, ran a Ponzi scheme on thousands of clients, among them the people you and I would consider the best and brightest. Business leaders, celebrities, charities, even some of his own relatives and his defense attorney were taken for a ride (this has to be the first time a lawyer was hosed by the client).
We're clearly in one of those historic, game changing years: up is down, red is blue and black is President. Aside from Obama himself, no person will provide a more iconic face of this end-of-capitalism-as-we-know-it year than Bernard Lawrence Madoff.
Which is too bad.
The Slave Market..... Jean-Leon Gerome
What!? You think bloody body parts floating in pools of blood, bobbing about, detritus, stirred by my five foot dorsal fin is a spooky sight? .........wooooOOOooooOOOOOOO!!......... Hah!..... You ain't seen nuthin' yet...!......just wait until this weekend at The Merchandise Mart. You want a horror show! -just keep telling yourself as you stroll from one b gallery nightmare to another, to remember what your therapist told you: 'this isn't really happening to me,' 'stay calm!,'' I'm going to my happy place now...'
I hate it when I'm wrong! Barreling up from the deep, ready to chomp the head off some innocent little baby seal -only to find out I've just latched on to the leg of some mangy surfer dude (quit crying for mommy! I didn't mean to take your leg off!...oops I just chipped a tooth!) or worse yet some pelagic researcher's towed rubber seal dummy (-who wants to have tire mouth?!) and to what end? so I can end up on some low-rent, 'man is the real predator, now that we said it don't we feel good?' piece of pulp on Shark Week?......So, imagine the extent of my mortification when Tony Fitz (the whale shark) patrick proves me wrong about...anything! (an exceedingly rare occurrence) But, in this one isolated incident, he has. Three years ago, after a meeting with the Mart/Art Fair people that included Tony, Paul Klein and myself, Tony walked away saying 'I'm done'.....and he was, and he was right. 'These people weren't going to really treat or think of artists in any way other than commodities, indentured servants, serfs' - and they, haven't. Tony went on to say, this isn't about art or an art fair, this is about political ambition and low and behold......read the political pages of The Chicago Sun-Times in the last few days? Read the list of people on the host committee, or the middlemen/ panelists for ancillary events for this years fair? Lots of players, very few artists. Lots of art world bureaucracy, played out and washed up, manning a decaying, and decadent, outmoded system and a failed scene -and by this I mean the infrastructural end of the Chicago Art World.....
With all the money under one roof, whats is there to complain about you ask? Well for one thing, if we are discussing Chicago money -lets face it, its never been supportive of the Chicago art world. Institutions have been built here true, and mostly to house imported fare -whether we are discussing a French Impressionist Painting or a trendy piece of garbage 'painted' by Karen Kilimnick, the conceit persists and insists that what comes from elsewhere is by the very nature of its geographical origins, superior.
Andrei Molotiu, art historian, gallery comics artist and editor of the forthcoming anthology Abstract Comics, the first book to trace the history and survey the contemporary landscape of abstract sequential art, has started a blog to showcase the book and other work by some of the book's contributors including himself and Mark Staff Brandl. The link: abstractcomics.blogspot.com.
Elizabeth Chodos curates: Ryan Fenchel, Rebecca Gordon, Mathew Paul Jinks, Stacie Johnson, and Michael Ruglio-Misurell
Myth in Material
April 18-30, 2009
Alogon Gallery
1049 N. Paulina 3R [entry on Cortez], Chicago, IL
alogongallery.com
After a rather silly introduction by Richard and Duncan, which as they describe it is a "horribly off-track intro which consists largely of talk of herpes and sleeping around. Eventually they get around to discussing what is really important, this week's show!", then comes Steve Litsios, an artist from La Chaux-de-Fonds in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, who also contributes to the Swiss offshoot of Sharkforum. Litsios is interviewed this week by me, Mark Staff Brandl. Litsios is known for his vast paper installations, wall objects, smaller sculpture, and web-work, all of which are elegant, restrained, and yet puckish in their surprising flirtation with elements of garishness. His work has recently begun to incorporate political content into his formerly abstract approach. The artist also plays in several roots blues and skiffle bands.
Link here.
The "In the Factory" series brings you an interview with Chicago's great photographer Dawoud Bey as he discusses his career as an artist, working with high school students and his exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey.
What do Designer Trevor O'Neil, Architect Mark Verwoerdt, Illustrator Aaron Miller and Painter Michael O'Briant have in common? TOJO Gallery.
During the group show opening night reception on the evening of June 5, O'Neil will unveil his most recent furniture piece; Verwoerdt - one of Chicago's hottest architects, will share his eye for truly raw material with his drawings and portraits; and Illustrator Aaron Miller will exhibit his illustrations for the first time in more than ten years. Round out the four-strong artistic Chicago force with the paintings of Michael O'Briant, and collectors and dealers should expect to experience some serious aesthetic "Va-Va" in front of the VOOM.
26 years ago. "Art and Artists," Harry Bouras on WFMT in 1982 about a Brandl exhibition.
Review of Mark Staff Brandl in Raw Space, Marilyn Sward at ARC, Joanne Carson and Janet Pines Bender at N.A.M.E. October 24, 1982.
One of the most unique, yet most insightful reviews I have ever had of a show of mine. This installation was described by the New Art Examiner in their Guide to the Galleries as a "fine requiem for "personal" art ... poignant yet powerfully uncompromising " and as the only non-trite use of Raw Space in 1982. It was the basis of change from Late Conceptualist to the expanded painting installation combinations I do today.
Click on Arrow to stream.
Or download here.
This is the second chapter of my PhD dissertion following the Prelude, which I already posted. (I am writing under the direction of Prof. Philip Urspung at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My second reader is Prof. Andreas Langlotz at the University of Basel, Switzerland.)
The Chapters are permanently archived on my website here as well, but I am putting each chapter up on Sharkforum as I finish them. I would love your comments, criticism, tangential thoughts and more! Please be aware that by commenting here, you are giving me permission to use your words, with proper citation including your name, in some fashion in my final dissertation book and exhibition.
I originally intended to do the chapters in html, but have decided for pdf.
Link to dissertation here.
The David Weinberg Gallery is proud to present a solo show for Richard Hunt opening April 17, 2009. The artist will be present at the opening reception from 5-8pm on Friday, April 17, 2009. Richard Huntʼs works will be on view and available at our Art Chicago booth (#12-146) May 1 - 4. The gallery show will run through May 30, 2009. Hunt is this years recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center. A black-tie gala celebrating the achievement will be held on April 29, 2009 at the Chicago CulturalCenter.
Richard Hunt (b. 1935) has had a long, prosperous career with deep ties to Chicago.
Born in 1959 near Boston, raised in Washington DC, Steve Litsios moved to Switzerland with his family in 1967. He studied art for a couple of years at Geneva's ecole d'arts appliqués before attending the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 70's, then moved back to Switzerland where he has been active internationally as an artist since 1983. He lives in the city of La Chaux-de-Fonds and can be found playing the washboard with The Crawfish Blues Band.
Sullivan Galleries
33 S. State, 7th Floor
March 20 - April 3, 2009
Tues-Sat, 11-6
www.saic.edu/
Above: Erin Elizabeth
"Stack expands the conceptual reaches of his investigation of night vision surveillance..."
March 20 - April 25, 2009
118 North Peoria
Chicago, IL 60607
www.moniquemeloche.com
I was told that some students at Chicago's School of the Art Institute believe there is not art on the South Side of Chicago. My immediate response was, "HUH????"
It reminded me of people who say, "He's has NO personality". I wonder if they have looked!
Anyway, this should be an interesting chat. Hope you will come, and if you have advice in advance, please add to comments or come out and voice your thoughts!
Suffering from a long history of negative stereotypes and the harsh realities of urban living, Chicago's Southside community...
The Martin Kippenberger Caper
How German Is It?
I have a problem with Martin Kippenberger. Not personally; after all, I never met him, but I have a problem with his work. It is not anything fancy as might be suggested by the awkward subtitle of the current festival at MoMA: "Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective" (to May 11). If an art history graduate student were to use this phrase and I were the professor (which I have been), I would make the criminal leave the class, the university, the universe.
So, where to begin?
The best thing and simultaneously the worst thing one can say about the huge amount of "art" Kippenberger (1953-1997) left behind is that it is all so '80s. In order to really "get it," you had to be there, which does not bode well for immortality, does it? We like art that is anchored to its time and its culture, but if that is all it is, then we do not really cherish it. It has no -- perish the unfashionable thought --transcendence. In Artopia, the transcendent and the quotidian are not in opposition. In fact, they can be exactly the same.
This particular drawing (Tiger Burning In The Sun) is the opening salvo so to speak -of a new series of drawings I have just put up at wesleykimlerstudio.com
(click on drawing to enlarge)
In the New York Times.
"Anyone with memories of recessions in the early 1970s and late '80s knows that we've been here before, though not exactly here."
"I'm not talking about creating '60s-style utopias; all those notions are dead and gone and weren't so great to begin with. I'm talking about carving out a place in the larger culture where a condition of abnormality can be sustained, where imagining the unknown and the unknowable -- impossible to buy or sell -- is the primary enterprise. Crazy! says anyone with an ounce of business sense.
Right. Exactly. Crazy. "
_____
LAST year Artforum magazine, one of the country's leading contemporary art monthlies, felt as fat as a phone book, with issues running to 500 pages, most of them gallery advertisements. The current issue has just over 200 pages. Many ads have disappeared.
The contemporary art market, with its abiding reputation for foggy deals and puffy values, ...
In the New York Times.
"Anyone with memories of recessions in the early 1970s and late '80s knows that we've been here before, though not exactly here."
"I'm not talking about creating '60s-style utopias; all those notions are dead and gone and weren't so great to begin with. I'm talking about carving out a place in the larger culture where a condition of abnormality can be sustained, where imagining the unknown and the unknowable -- impossible to buy or sell -- is the primary enterprise. Crazy! says anyone with an ounce of business sense.
Right. Exactly. Crazy. "
_____
LAST year Artforum magazine, one of the country's leading contemporary art monthlies, felt as fat as a phone book, with issues running to 500 pages, most of them gallery advertisements. The current issue has just over 200 pages. Many ads have disappeared.
The contemporary art market, with its abiding reputation for foggy deals and puffy values, ...
Recently, there has been much 'spin', noise and chatter, -emanating from that particular bastion of the specious and the trite (think 'Ren', think 'theory's bitch' Claudine Ise', think gatekeepers losing their grip) about abstraction, representation, the decline of abstract expressionism, the misused term 'Imagism', who is who, what is what, and who has done what in terms of Chicago painting -where these specific conceits come in to play-
My only question then, would be my favorite one: what is the nature of legitimate authority? what makes something true?
The url to my new website: wesleykimlerstudio.com
The whole evening in a playlist of videos. Check it out, it is worth a watch. This roundtable featured Elizabeth Chodos, Director of Three Walls; Paul Klein, critic; Chuck Thurow, Director of The Hyde Park Art Center; Philip Von Zweck, artist; and Lynne Warren, Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art. Hosted by Hamza Walker at Kent Hall on the University of Chicago campus.
We'd like a Sharkforum discussion on the issue!
(click on image to enlarge)
A short review of the exhibition "Knocking on Heaven's Door" at the Art Museum of Liechtenstein by the Introductory Art History class of the Art Academy of Liechtenstein, Students of Mark Staff Brandl. Only 14 Minutes!
Click on arrow to listen streaming:
Or download here.
Other download formats here.
No Shit. A painting installation disappears in an opening in Colorado Museum. 26 of 31 paintings taken by visitors.
The cat is out of the bag, they have gone to the press, so now I can discuss and indeed complain about the events.
Press release from the gallery:
The gallery "Am Landsgemeindeplatz" in Trogen, Switzerland is exhibiting the art of renowned artist Mark Staff Brandl. In the show, titled "Prelude," the paintings and sequential drawings displayed are a part of his PhD dissertation, currently in progress.
Controversial British Industrial noise pioneers return to decimate the most ironic of venues in Chicago. The Epiphany Episcopal Church of Chicago at 201 South Ashland Avenue will set the stage for two shows by Genesis, Chris, Cosey, and Peter reunion.
Click on image to see full, enlarged version, and click on that enlargement to enlarge it even more.
A comic --- oops, a piece of sequential art --- in which the artist Steve Hamann braves the Sharkpit to finally meet Mark Staff Brandl, discuss with Wesley Kimler, see art by both, and comment on it all!
This is the first podcast by Sharkforum! Wesley Kimler, "The Shark," and Mark Staff Brandl, "The EuroShark," introduce their intentions in a short 33 minute discussion. Skype discussions, rants, Shark attacks, reviews and more will follow.
Listen here:
Or download here.
James Kalm rolls down to Soho to catch the tail end of the exhibition of one of Americas great post war figurative artists. Leon Golub, (1922-2004) presents us, in these late paintings, with a mingling of his mastery of representation and a heightened use of abstracted space. These massive unstretched canvases focus on scenes recalling the brutality of political and social strife, but Golub nevertheless maintains the legacy of classical painting and brings the influences of Titian and Goya into a contemporary context.
I was invited by ReneeMcGrath-Abazovic to make a contribution to a project by the Visual Communication Department at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern. At the moment, they are working on a project for the "science et cité" festival that takes place in 5 towns in Switzerland in order to bring science and society closer to each other.
They asked for my answer to the question, "what would you invent to save the world" or "what should science invent to save the world".
This is my answer.
What would I invent? A new self-reliant attitude in human thought.
Science and research in general can do many things to help the world. Some of society's greatest successes in this direction have been in medicine, health care and especially surgery. Logical analysis alone is important ...
The terrific sculptor Scott Fife, creates absolutely marvelous (masterful) large scale heads in cardboard -often grayed out -but this go around with big splashes of color, with all the workings -screws, glue, staples adding both detritus and, detail -in some ways reminiscent of Conrad Marca Relli's best work- made 3d. Scott will be showing with the interesting psychedelic abstractions of Todd Chilton -a painter The Shark knows nothing of, but looks forward to seeing-
Scott will not be at the opening -BUT! will be coming to Chicago in the next month to give a gallery talk -date TBA-
My first and last sighting of Solve in the flesh was slam dunking his patented sticker on a CTA bus sign at what has been referred to as "Solve height." A lanky, beanpole of a man, Solve's inconspicuous infiltration of the city landscape seemed almost impossible by nature. But even after his tragic and untimely death, his imprint still ghosts the bike and bus paths for us urban denizens to appreciate and intake on a daily basis. Brendon Scanlon has become the patron saint of not only street art in Chicago but of any street level dweller willing to navigate the grime and grit.
You laugh! But you shouldn't! or, wouldn't, if, that dorsal fin was attached to, say me for instance, and you were climbing the stairway to the business end of carcharodon carcharias (the ultimate in evolutionary epicurean elegance ) rather than this embodiment of all that is ultimately dysfunctional when it comes to the Chicago art world.
Bloom attacks literature studies in universities and Chuck Jones discusses his art but also draws live!
Jerry Saltz in a quick note on his Facebook page:
"MoMA's dreary Marlene Dumas show establishes that she is a sensationalist with no original ideas about painting, color, or photography; she hasn't developed as an artist; is merely a later day Neo-Expressionist; is more connected to Andreas Serrano than to any painter."
Brian Sherwin, Senior Editor of the site www.myartspace.com, who is well-known for his fine interviews, discusses the Miami Basel Art Fair, taking a long term view of his impressions.
Gallerists, collectors, and art appreciators were fully aware of the dark cloud-- psychologically speaking-- looming over Miami during the recent art fairs. The 'rain' fell on Scope, Pulse, Bridge and other art fairs-- they fell on Art Basel Miami Beach as well. It was a psychological rain and with it came great concern and fear surrounding the stability of the current art market. The streets and busses were filled with rumors and dark predictions-- this collective voice of dissatisfaction blared throughout the length of the Miami fairs. ...
Proximity magazine number 3 has just been released. One of the features, as mentioned before here, is edited by your friendly EuroShark. I am organizing short theoretical essays from other active artists. The Proximity editors are also gracious enough to allow us to publish the essays on Sharkforum as well as in their magazine. They would love subscribers, though!
This issue and next issue feature a wonderful two part essay I solicited from renowned NYC painter, David Reed, titled Jackson Pollock and Piero della Francesca Ride Lonesome. Here is the first part ...
A super short (2 min. 35 sec.) TV video clip of the exhibition "Out of Sequence: Under Represented Voices in American Comics," which is on exhibition at the University of Illinois' Krannert Art Museum. This video tours the exhibition with its co-curators, Professor John Jennings and PhD candidate Damian Duffy. Mark Staff Brandl's corner Panels painting-installation and Covers paintings in the spinner rack are prominently featured.
So much to say, so little time, coming in the next weeks from the Supreme Dictator For Life- that would be me, The Shark himself,...several things that I will be circling around here in some brand spanking new, pools of blood!....
After the Shark, now the EuroShark is interviewed on the award-winning podcast website Bad at Sports! Episode 170: Mark Staff Brandl. As they write on their blog, "Duncan "the fieldmouse" MacKenzie interviews Mark "The EuroShark" Staff Brandl, theorist, writer, professor, artist, and contributor to Art in America, Sharkforum and Bad at Sports. Richard expresses concern that Duncan is off his meds."
Go on over, listen streaming or download the mp3 and listen to it on your iPod. Then join in the discussion! Link: click here!
James Kalm motates to the Upper East Side for an intimate viewing of three decades of painting, by Mary Heilman. Some Pretty Colors is a selection of works that display the qualities which have attracted and increasing amount of critical and curatorial attention. With a seeming ease boardering on the nonchalant, Heilman constructs compositions with sophisticated structure and vibrant color. Recognized as a major influence on young abstract painters, shes also inspired artists of all stripes with her long-term commitment. Featuring an interview with Bobby G.
Mary Heilmann's paintings turn the idea of the "tortured artist" inside out. Her joyful paintings seem effortless and spontaneous. Her grids and stripes are unmeasured. She makes big, blowsy shapes with thinned paint and loose brushwork, with seemingly no attempt to do anything about the resulting drips except to let them have a life of their own. Sometimes she paints over vast tracts of the canvas; other times there's a pentimento or perhaps an image intended to be visible beneath the surface. Lines meander ...
This is the beginning post of the on-line, in process, version of my PhD dissertion, which I am writing under the direction of Prof. Philip Urspung at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My second reader is Prof. Andreas Langlotz at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
It will be permanently archived on my website here as well, but I will put each chapter up on Sharkforum as I finish them. I would love your comments, criticism, tangential thoughts and more! Please be aware that by commenting here, you are giving me permission to use your words, with proper citation including your name, in some fashion in my final dissertation book and exhibition, which I am planning to do. It's your chance to become a part of and liven up an often unduly stodgy process.
I have separated it into sections which repeat the page divisions in my hard-copy manuscript version. This is both for easier reading and for easy reference between the versions.
Each chapter includes an introductory Cover painting, perhaps other painting(s), sequential comic art page or pages and studies as well as the text.
Excerpt of a radio show interview with John Jennings and Damian Duffy touring the Out of Sequence exhibition at Krannert Art Museum in Illinois.
For 13 minutes of streaming radio click on the arrow. To download as mp3 click here.
From Crackle:
Penn on his Tony Fitzpatrick and Kara Walker collection.
Artist Wesley Kimler, aka "The Shark," in conjunction with the other members of the Sharkpack, will begin presenting art exhibitions and events on a semi-regular basis within his vast studio space. Thus it is now officially designated THE SHARKPIT.The first event is an "apero and Vernissage" (to use European words), that is an opening and display of smaller works by the EuroShark Mark Staff Brandl on THURSDAY OCTOBER 16 from 7:30 pm on (see below or here), presented as an addendum to his Krannert Art Museum installation. A preview of Kimler's huge recent paintings will also be visible. In following months a complete exhibition of these works will occur. Stay tuned!
Two invitations: SHARKPIT and KRANNERT ART MUSEUM.
I, Mark Staff Brandl, will be in the US in October and would love to see you -- and show you work. The dates and contact info ---
OPENING (vernissage, apero)
SHARKPIT (Wesley Kimler's Studio)
THURSDAY OCTOBER 16 from 7:30 - 11:00 pm (or so)
a small SHOW of littler works
After that a very large painting-installation in
KRANNERT ART MUSEUM
Champaign, Illinois
THURSDAY OCTOBER 23 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm
(Wherein I will also give a "gallery conversation")
YOU ARE INVITED! Please come to one or both.
More info ---
Proximity magazine number 2 has just been released. A party for its appearance was held at The Co-Prosperity Sphere. Issue 2 is 208 pages. One of the new features is by your friendly EuroShark. The editors, Rachael, Edmar and Mairead have taken me on as a Corresponding Editor for Theory. I will be contributing short theoretical essays, but perhaps more importantly, I will be soliciting, organizing and editing the same from other active artists. The Proximity editors are also gracious enough to allow me to publish the essays on Sharkforum as well as in the magazine. This is an important new magazine about art and should be supported. Below you will find my introductory article --which is also a call to arms, a request for contributors. Please read it, buy Proximity, and contact me with your theory essay ideas. The next two entries I have scheduled will be the halves of a theoretical essay by New York painter David Reed. After that -- how about you?
Peter Schjeldahl the sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued senior art critic for the New Yorker is much beloved by the Sharkpack. You can see why in this video of excerpts from a speech he gave at Boston University's College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts 2007--2008 Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series. He took his hosts -- and the entire university system -- to task for their dysfunctional relationship to the creation of art.
Chicago's own Tony Fitzpatrick has been keeping a New Orleans diary for more than a year. Along with his paintings he sends them to his close circle of friends. They are presented at the website of Prospectus, along with this video interview.
Prospectus is the web publication/blog for the Prospect.1 New Orleans Biennial, directed by Dan Cameron.
Check out Tony's diary here.
Peter Greenaway's projection onto Leonardo's Last Supper in Milan. An excerpt.
From The Guardian, Saturday September 13 2008:
"Amid the controversy surrounding the Sotheby's auction, Robert Hughes explains why he has taken a stand against Damien Hirst's 'simple-minded' works, and an art world where prices bear no relation to talent..."
"After more than three decades as the editor of Art in America magazine, Elizabeth C. Baker, a powerful voice in the contemporary-art world," as Randy Kennedy describes her, has resigned.
Excerpted from the LA Times --- more on Chicago's financial expert with his theory of the two major creative-types, inspiration, development and maturation.
It's Never Too Late to Create
AT 76, CLINT EASTWOOD is making the best films of his career. "Letters from Iwo Jima" has been nominated for four Academy Awards -- including best picture and best director. ("Flags of Our Fathers," which Eastwood also directed last year, received two nominations.) New York Times' film critic A.O. Scott recently named him "the greatest living American filmmaker." Such accolades are the latest development in Eastwood's creative ascension. Two years ago, his "Million Dollar Baby" won best picture and best director, a repeat of his success with "Unforgiven" at age 62 -- his first Oscar after making movies for more than 20 years.
Sculptor Louise Bourgeois is 95. ...
La Tomatina, Buñol (Valencia)
The sunny Mediterranean city of Valencia in Spain is world-renowned for its tasty and succulent oranges. And just thirty miles away is Buñol, another town just as famous for its produce. But its notoriety comes from the locals' habit of wearing the produce as well as tasting it: every year, Buñol hosts La Tomatina, the world's largest tomato fight. Situated only 30 kilometers inland from the Mediterranean Sea, and well-connected by motorway and rail to Madrid and Valencia, this charming town erupts into a fiery blaze of tomato-hurling on the last Wednesday of every August.
Does it make sense to speak of free markets at all, when so many public and private institutions have a role in shaping what art, careers, and exhibitions? Does it matter that artists mostly never share the benefits?
The 2009 winner of Europe's most valuable art award, the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, is the American artist Vija Celmins.
One of those morph things, but it works beautifully with the art. I am feeling pensive and somber due to the nearness of too much death. This fits.
Brian Sherwin, artist and art blogger has interviewed me, the EuroShark for his website, myartspace>blog. Sherwin, originally from Illinois and now living in California, has conducted and published a series of interviews with visual artists including William T. Wiley and others. You can read his piece with me here.
Also new --- a short video interview with me in German on youtube here.
"All modern art begins to appear comprehensible. . . when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world," José Ortega y Gasset wrote in The Dehumanization of Art, adding that "Europe is entering upon an era of youthfulness."(1)
This was written over three-quarters of a century ago. A century before that, in the "Squibs" section of his Intimate Journals, Baudelaire wrote that "nowadays. . . youth itself is a priesthood -- at least according to the young."(2) The cult of youth, even of childhood -- what might be called the regressive search for the original freshness of being, for the innocent spontaneity and playfulness of the child -- is a constant of the avant-garde outlook.
A Bad at Sports Basel Art Fair Overdose!
The intro and outro are extra creepy this week. Highlights(?) include Duncan talking about some fantasy involving wearing tight short shorts and Teena McClelland!!! Tom Burtonwood interrupts the recording by shooting rubber bands. Chaos!
After Richard and Duncan are done making a mess of things, the real pros come in and present a fantastic report from Basel.
Lamis El Farra, emerging artist, and the EuroShark Mark Staff Brandl, seemingly perennially emerging black sheep artist, traverse and discuss the entirety of the King of Art Fairs, Art Basel. Yes: the Fair Itself, Art Statements, Art Unlimited, Scope, and the Solo Project. They only missed Liste and Print Basel. Sorry, but all the rest was already enough. Of course they were at the VIP opening (ahem) and managed to talk to more people than you can shake a stick at: artists, gallerists, museum directors, curators, critics, art magazine editors, fair organizers, all the hangers-on, ...er..., important elements of the international artworld.
Link to the podcast on BaS.
A show of 40+ photographs opens Friday, June 13 at Medicine Park (Chicago Avenue at Washtenaw) and runs through July 9. Friday's opening reception begins at 8 with dj Lauri Apple spinning. Details and a sample below...
This Week on Bad at Sports Duncan and Amanda talk to Rachel and Ed "Edmar" Marszewski about Proximity Magazine. A wonderful interview about a great project. With Sharkforum, Bad at Sports, The Art Letter and now Proximity (and some other blogs too), we just might get some appreciation for the depth of the real Chicago artscene going.
The show also features a short segment on the interesting Spudnik printmaking location.
Listen here.
In a great post on his blog, photographer Dawoud Bey raises some very Sharkpack-like questions about how to circumvent the decided lack of appropriate institutional support:
"Within the past week here in Chicago there have been no less than two panel discussions on race and art production. More specifically these panel discussions (with vocal audience exchanges) looked at black art and black art production, or as yesterday's panel at the University of Chicago (in conjunction with the exhibition Black Is/Black Ain't) was entitled, "Post Black: There and Back Again." Thursday night's program at the Experimental Station, which was organized by Theaster Gates as part of the "Representations" series on culture, politics, and aesthetics, was entitled "Black Enough?"
Both of these gatherings were lively, engaging, and variously informative, and provided a much needed forum for the airing of ideas that usually take place away from the light of public discourse."
I want to post ---as a blog --- a comment I put up over on Bad at Sports. I know most, yet not ALL of our two publics overlap. I was very enthused by the roundtable discussion Duncan MacKenzie and Lori Waxman had with Kathryn Hixson and James Yood.
They brought up some very important points, as did several commenters including Pedro Velez and our own Shark. ...
The widow of the late US artist Eugene J. Martin, Suzanne Fredericq, has put up a beautiful series of videos dedicated to the paintings and drawings of her husband.
This is Part I of a 2-part series showing abstract paintings (acrylics on canvas) created by visual artist Eugene James Martin in 1995 in Washington D.C. Video clip montage by S. Fredericq, filmed in Lafayette, Louisiana (LA).
Finally, an important critic takes a clear stance on "Event Art." Will the Consensus Curatorial World that feeds on such events be analyzed soon too?
Christopher Knight of the LA Times dissected Matthew Barney's 'REN' in a recent article.
"The first mistake Matthew Barney made in his corny two-hour performance, "REN," at a Santa Fe Springs car lot Sunday night, was in the choice of starring automobile. The 1967 Chrysler Imperial had obvious meanings."
Read the rest here.
A series of four abstract cartoons.
Dawoud Bey has an excellent blog here. I particularly recopmmend a recent article addressing a great unspoken sin of the Chicago artworld --- racism. As the feminist theorist from the Netherlands, Anna Meulenbelt, expressed it so well, the destructive agents in our cultures at present are like the skin of an onion: racism, sexism and classism. We will not be able to detroy any of these without also attacking the others. Let's start, as best as always, at home in our "little artworld."
Continue reading this post here.
Image: Carl Pope, "The Bad Air Smelled of Roses" (detail)
Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times Reports that "Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died on Monday night at his home on Captiva Island, Fla. He was 82."
More...
(UPDATE from MSB: see comment below. These Bills are INDEED VERY REAL and VERY DANGEROUS for visual artists.)
Modern Art Obsession, a blog well worth visiting and reading, is written by a dedicated collector of photography (Mike, a "youngish NYC Art Collector, working on Wall Street by day, and a total art fanatic by night and weekend" as he describes himself). It does, however, occasionally feature other media as well. He recently wrote about visiting Art Chicago
"Possibly the best thing about going to Art Chicago this year for MAO, was the VIP program, and getting to see the Richard and Ellen Sandor Art Collection. These events were mostly very well organized
Joe Fyfe painting
Felix Lehner and Hans Josephsohn
I've been meaning to write about this for some time, but kept getting sidetracked by other events. Last summer, I met the very interesting painter and "writer on art" Joe Fyfe.
A dupe, a puppet, this is the real role of this earnest yet utterly insipid and awful painter. A way of having painting while denigrating it by definition- by de-skilling it, thus raising the importance of its 'conceptual' underpinings/'context'- as in text- written in reams of sameness by academics/curators in order to further their various ambitions within the climes of todays art world. All, while marginalizing the role of art, the artist in the whole rancid equation.
James Kalm: Karen Kilimnik (No Photos Allowed) at 303 GALLERY
Kalm maps the process as he tries to comply with proper protocol for access to Kilimnik's current show. In the end, to file this "Report", Kalm again goes on the "low-down" for exclusive unauthorized footage.
"I went into the New York fairs knowing that I couldn't do the same kind of reporting I'd done in Miami. In fact, I really wanted to view rather than report. But as I started to see work that interested me, the camera came out. Perhaps not surprisingly, ..."
Read more at her blog.
Edward Winkleman has a post about it, which will probably generate a very interesting discussion in the comments, as his posts usually do. Link here.
Edward Winkleman has a post about it, which will probably generate a very interesting discussion in the comments, as his posts usually do. Link here.
Yes, we can also point out and extol the virtues of artists we admire.
One of the greatest treasures Chicago has is the photographer Dawoud Bey.
Bey was one of my surprise discoveries last year when I was in the Chicago Art Fair. He came to my booth, we talked, I found him very interesting. Back at Wesley's where I was staying, I googled him, my favorite spy tactic. I was amazed at how outstanding his photos were! I had suspected that he would be a good artist, but here I was presented with a great one. His works unite a strong humanism (that disgraced word) with striking formal qualities in service of an art at once aesthetically challenging, sociological (in the best sense) and personal. And all that depth is carried lightly, under a mantel of (seemingly) direct image making.
His most recent works feature pictures ...
Sharkforum contributor Norbert Marszalek and frequent Sharkforum commenter William Dolan have delightfully announced the launch of a new blog e-zine about art: www.neotericart.com. Titled "Neoteric Art," the two painters say it has been created to encourage open dialogue between painters concerning work, issues and the art world.
Neoteric is a pleasing adjective meaning "modern; new; recent." It would be a wonderful term to replace the currently overused "contemporary" and the now-historically placed "modern," as well as to get around the politically loaded "postmodern." Sharkforum wishes them well, and wishes Bill in his Artists' Project booth good luck too. Visit the site here.
Time Magazine, and website, writer Richard Lacayo has had it with curatorial dialectic syntax, as exemplified in the Whitney Biennial. Link.
Come step right up! And take a long hard look at the crap you can own for about $200,000.00 of that hedge fund account- its truly mind boggling!
One of the continuing problems creating such academic idiocy as the promotion of Feeble Painting and the likes of Kilimnik lies in the usurpation of the role of the artist by curators, especially of the "independent" and "international" variety. I wrote about this on Sharkforum long ago in the post "Artworld Pyramid Shift."
J. J. Charlesworth has written a scholarly article about this problem, one bearing very much on our Kilimnik and Feeble Painting, Neo-Conceptual Art debates. Charlesworth is the exhibitions curator at the Herbert Read Gallery, University College for the Creative Arts in Canterbury, thus he has a very direct experience of the ills now besetting his profession. Additionally, he has a very uncommon analytic and ethical clarity about them.
Some excerpts:
"If the term 'curator' has been around for as long as there were bodies of objects and bodies of knowledge to preserve and perpetuate, its more active derivative 'curating' is a neologism so recent that dictionaries have not yet caught up."
Noel Sheridan: Shopping, Inability, Banality and Steely Ambition; Karen Kilimnik reviewed in Ireland
Karen Kilimnik: Fairy Battle, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, September 27, 2002, to February 2, 2003
One of the things Karen Kilmnik's ... installation ... does, because of her extreme take on form and content, is separate the...
The what? Getting a handle on an answer to that...
Or, if, I can explain away/make a case for this trendy crap, Perhaps I can salvage my reputation in tatters after that rock show/Sympathy For The Devil debacle- (universally loathed in rock music and most quarters of the art world,) and then maybe, just maybe, someone IMPORTANT! will Notice Me! I Might Even Get To Be A Real 'Somebody' Within The International Curatorial Consensus Conglomerate!
(click image to view enlarged)
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A Sharkforum Feeding Frenzy Funnies special by Steve Hamann and Mark Staff Brandl.
James Kalm slips into Soho for a Thursday night debut opening of Carriage Trade. Located right above Finneli's bar at Prince and Mercer Streets, this location has been an artist's haven since the 1960s.
Cartoon by Moogee the Art Dog, Nottingham UK
Art is booming and the auction houses are rubbing their hands with glee. After the short dry spell, one is allowed to hype again. And the transition within the art academies from the European system to a modified Anglo Bachelor and Masters system will certainly contribute to the cause of manifesting and solidifying the new Academicism.
The development, or progression, of art no longer(?) lies in the hands of artists, who would now much rather insert themselves comfortably into the system, having little desire to concentrate on the development of personal ideas, much preferring to ask for simple survival strategies. Thus exhibitions are filled with a new form of fickle superficiality, the obligation for which is equally borne by artists as well when we play along on every level as Class Clowns.
Fritz Haeg: Animal Estates (detail)
Quantifications
Don't believe everything you read; the Whitney Biennial isn't all bad. In fact, as a crystal ball, it is cause for hope. But before we start reading tea leaves, we can indulge in quantifications.
Good friends of mine, Greg and Jim Zimmer from Grid Gallery, are doing a collaboration project with Mike Genovese and will be unveiling it Friday March 14th at their gallery space. Beverages will be flowing. Limited edition prints and merchandise will be available.
(Click to view enlarged)
Continue to following extension page for video.
Steve Lisios: Demonstrating Water With Stones
A documentation of Demonstrating Water With Stones: a 35 feet long, 6 feet wide and 10 feet high installation by artist Steve Litsios. First presented in Geneva Switzerland it is composed of 500 sheets of 30 x 20 inch paper each containing a multitude of images and words that like a watermark, can only be seen against the light.
Sharkforum OpEd Cartoons and Comics by Steve Hamann and Mark Staff Brandl
Steve Hamann and I will be doing an irregular series of cartoons and short comics on art for Sharkforum. They will primarily be collaborations between us, yet also individual pieces as well. All will be presented here in the future under the rubric Feeding Frenzy Funnies.
Our new design, a huge new server and fresh exciting directions have finally begun! Keep your eyes here for our electrifying plans. Thanks to Tim Olson for getting it all together, to Marianna Levant for the redesign and to Dave Roth for starting the transformation.
James Kalm brings viewers along for a tour of some of New York's most prestigious Upper East Side galleries.
Christian Viveros-Faune, left, Tyler Green, right
The recent events that culminated in New York City’s Village Voice “releasing” their art critic Christian Viveros-Fauné raise serious questions about the reasonableness of demanding a list of mandatory ethics for critics (who are the only people perhaps lower that artists on the art-earnings and power totem-pole), while ignoring the fact that there are far more pernicious webs of sleaze in more powerful sections of the artworld.
GROUP SHOW "15 years"
January 18th - March 14th
The Basel Miami Fair(s) covered from head to toe by Joanne Mattera. Almost all of ‘em. Mattera, a painter, does an excellent job. Check out her comments and images. at the Joanne Mattera Art Blog.
Her blog is a multipart report, one post per venue plus the prologue. The entries are posted sequentially, and as Joanna says, “There is a narrative to my reporting, so I hope you'll follow it through to the end.”
“By all accounts the mood going into Miami was wary. Dealers in general were fearful that the bubble was about to burst, and the smaller dealers were concerned that the greater number of satellite fairs this year would dilute their sales. Apparently the big guns had no problems; Gagosian sold $10 million worth of art, according to Bloomberg News. Among the smaller galleries in the satellite fairs, the mood lifted as sales began to rack up. Many smaller galleries sold out, and most at least broke even. The mood going out was simply weary.”
Continue reading here.
Part of the 'return to beauty idea' if I understand it correctly has been layed out as a type of revisionism
New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl said in a recent speech given there, that Chicago is a “receptor city.”
Let’s face it, he’s right.
We all know WHY and WHEN this transition occurred from a modest-but-improving “Transmitter” art-city to a “Receptor” one. And WHO was behind it.
What's next? Kinkade? This was the fare of Flash Art, "Stupid Trends R Us," until now.
Excerpts: "In art it is important to remember that the most substantial, meaningful, honest, spiritual, cultural rituals, forms and esthetics come from the underground."
"So you know that Dominic Molon, the curator of "Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll since 1967," is in deep trouble..."
"Another big problem was that the MCA seems to have scorned one of the most influential and rich rock ‘n’ roll scenes in America ...Chicago..."
Read on ...
What Is Painting? at MOMA
The call came in the middle of the night, and the voice on the line sounded hoarse and afraid. "John, it's MOMA. You have to tell us. What is painting?"
I reached for the light. "Go on."
"We have this show, 'What Is Painting.' We have to know." ...
Read the rest of the article here.
As Harold Bloom pointed out, Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed the authentic religion of the American was self-reliance.
Where is it in artists nowadays?
Martin Puryear: The Heights
Excerpts:
The Martin Puryear retrospective at MoMA (11 West 53rd St., to Jan. 14, 2008) presents a panoply of engaging sculptures. The large-scale pieces in the second-floor atrium conquer that unfriendly, gigantic-broom-closet space.
Miraculously, the suspended 36-foot Ladder for Booker T. Washington (1996) and the slender 63-foot stalk of the wheeled Ad Astra (2007) conquer the architectural mistake.
Alan Shields Returns; Glitter Can Be Gold
Excerpts: Alan Shields (1944-2005) is one of those artists who disappeared.
My theory is that the search for viable products during a hot art market is not only fueling the cradle-robbing of M.F.A. candidates, but also causing some exhumations.
We shouldn't leave art resurrections to the needs of the quixotic art market, now controlled by collector-dealers and their ilk. Couldn't at least one major New York museum include exhibitions of underappreciated artists who deserve a second look?
Read on at John Perreault's Artopia here.
A video at the opening with commentary by that NYC Guy on the Bike, artist and critic James Kalm, whose essays have been touted at Sharkforum before. As this short video is described on his youtube site, " Kalm makes his way to Chelsea to view the latest exhibition of David Reed. With a reputation in the New York Painting community that stretches back to the late sixties, David Reed continues to befuddle the public with his mysterious technical prowess and provocative conceptual approach to the medium of paint. Featuring a cameo appearance by David Humphrey." Click and enjoy. You can check out more of his videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/jameskalm .
I’d like to introduce a new term for a recent trend in Consensus Correct painting: Feeble Painting.
Actually, I already have been using it for a short while in my Art History classes when describing one current tendency. While discussing this with the Shark, he volunteered to help me delineate it and present it to a wider audience. We debated the idea in depth and here is the elucidation.
This person has similar credentials to the last in many ways. Caro Niederer, a Swiss artist, wife (I think maybe now ex-wife) of David Weiss of the superstar Fischli and Weiss humorous Conceptual art team. (Their most famous, and most wonderful work, is the Rube-Goldberg-like film “Der Lauf der Dinge.”) Represented by THE premier and most well-funded Swiss gallery, Caro is highly career-success motivated and has had all the correct connections, due to her liaison, and knows how to use them. Unfortunately, she has spent almost no time or motivation on developing any technical ability or heart. A true study in “Alessandro-Allori-ism.”
In his recent article “Zhang Huan, Stark Naked and Covered With Flies,” Perreault discusses and dissects some artworld bubbles. Two excerpts:
“Artopia pays no attention to the Chinese art bubble, nor to the bigger art bubble in general. Bubbles come and go. The Bigger Bubble is tied to the stock market. The stock market drops and the art market follows one year later. It has happened twice on my watch. Now it is real estate, everywhere but in New York City high-income zip codes, that is plummeting. Will art follow?”
Yes, also at this moment greatly pushed by the Consensus Clique. David Chieppo. A very young American living in Switzerland, hanging with the Right Crowd. It can't have anything to do with that or his boyfriend being an important curator can it? He has even been recently put in a museum show with Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman and Joseph Beuys. Good that the first and the last are dead, I suppose. Maybe True Consensus Correct "talent" has little to do with painting ability.
Presented without words. Getting better than Kilimnik, but ...
Peter Doig is a Scottish painter living in Trinidad. He's one of Europe's most expensive living painters.
Continuing our series on Consensus Malpractice ...
The Brooklyn Rail is a wonderful website of “Critical Perspectives on Arts Politics and Culture.” Sharkforum readers should check it out. One recent article in the “Art Seen” section I found very enjoyable: “Call it Merde” by artist and art critic James Kalm. He has his own youtube page with videos of art criticism.
A few excerpts to tantalize you:
"As the new art season opens, led by the charge of the market bulls, we’re confronted once again with the latest, the hottest, the chic-est. For this somewhat jaded spectator, who’s experienced our culture’s willing desensitization via a plethora of evermore “shocking” gestures, I find myself wondering about its relationship to that most base of all materials: shit, crap, doodoo, poop. ..."
View image largerAnd the week is launched with a Feeding Frenzy Funny by Steve Hamann with MSB and some input by the Shark. Enjoy. MUCH more is to come!
It’s in the system, baby. You get that for which rewards are given. Here’s how it works, in list form.
1. If you are a curator in an out-of-the-way place, or at least want to climb the social ladder as a curator...
Coming Soon To Sharkforum! The Shark will take apart in large bite size chunks MCA Curator Dominic Molon's 'job search' like attempt to ingratiate himself with the international set, showing all the usual suspects from LA and from NYC in the Museum Of Contemporary Art's rock music and art exhibition 'Sympathy For The Devil' while almost completely ignoring the amazing art and rock scene right here in his own front yard. Grab your popcorn and find a front row seat people. This, is going to get sharky and prehistoric chomp chomp!.......Sympathy For The Devil, indeed......
One of my neighbours, H. R. Fricker, is a exceptional artist, originally known for his Fluxus, Mail Art work, but he has done a variety of artwork in his career. Fricker has pushed an approach influenced by early Conceptual Art into a personal and poetic "Contextual Art" far more intriguing than most Neo-Conceptual Art. Matthias Kuhn, himself a remarkable artist and curator-cum-art-project-organizer (as I find him to be, even if he was rather faint-hearted and worried about his “connections“ in the face of my newspaper article on local curatorial malpractice), has written a post about Fricker’s newest internet-based project. I translated it and am presenting here.
The internationally renowned Swiss artists H.R. Fricker has launched a new undertaking in his website “placeofplaces.com,” ...
Click here for a fascinating collection of Vincent Van Gogh's Letters. There are some interesting nuggets in here, including this one on hullucinations:
... Again - speaking of my condition - I am so grateful for yet another thing. I've noticed that others, too, hear sounds and strange voices during their attacks, as I did, and that things seemed to change before their very...I stumbled across this gem at the ever-so-indespensible Museum of Online Museums.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 22 May 1889
Recent Blog on Artopia about Editing: “Jack Kerouac, Pousette-Dart, and Me,” link
Recent Essay on “The Braid: A New Paradigm for Art” in the online journal theArtSection, Go to archive: Vol.1, No.3 (Aug.07), link.
Recent Podcast on PS1’s “Art Radio” Podcast site: link.
A taster:
In the summer of 2004 when I was teaching an introduction to contemporary art at the Anderson Ranch near Aspen, in Colorado, I came up with two ideas that I felt would help make sense of the confusion that prevails. Are we in a post-pluralist free-fall? Which direction is up? Who threw out the baby with the bath?
I was not convinced that art history and the art world were finished, yet the art world seemed at an impasse. Pluralism, long confused with anti-Leninist socialisms or, on an even deeper level, with polytheism, had been cast aside. Art was tied up in a knot, with no clear prerogatives and certainly without direction. But the term “direction” implies the dreaded Master Narrative that we have all tried to deconstruct, inadvertently letting it be replaced by…..the Market?
Perhaps it was not the end of art history, but the end of a certain restricted art history. Perhaps it was not the end of the art world, but the end of a certain kind of art world. I, of course, knew it was all rhetoric. Or as the Dadaists used to say, art is dead; long live art...........
Kevin Nance delivers yet another terrific (rave) review describing The Shark as Chicago's leading painter/provocateur and spilling way too much ink on The Finger! (Didn't he see the invitation?... sheeeeesh!)
The Plush works are extensions of drawn forms influenced to a great extent by cartoon imagery. The large sculptures are crafted from various flat forms of shaped and fitted wood understructures, the proto-objects start as large cut-outs, then come to life when fabric and underlying padding is applied, suggesting a hyper-synthetic taxidermy.
I don't have the time to go to my storage space and dig out my diary from 1979 so I'll have to write these notes relying on memory. Please forgive me if I've got the story a bit jumbled. I was in my last year at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) when my teacher/friend the neon artist Cork Marcheschi was awarded the DAAD grant and given a studio and an apartment in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, just about a hundred yards from the wall. He told me he could give me a place to stay if I'd fly over and help him out, photographing, cataloging and installing his work. So that January I took off for Berlin. It was a cold but wild winter. Working with Cork I met quite a few big leaguers in the art world including Ed Kienholz, who was a serious poker player. And I really dug the Turkish section of town, where I met some great musicians.
Jens Hoffmann is still right! He proposed this in his drawing (as seen above) last time around. Documenta needs to close, to get a non-consensus curator, and/or have an artist (non-consensus typus) curate it. Amen. How about a Sharkpackumenta?
On newstands/ at bookstores everywhere, Shelter Magazine features who else, but me! The Shark! Complete with full-bleed reproductions (of course!) and an article that coincidently, bites back!
Cayetanno Ferrer makes photo installations that reveal what's hidden. It's an interesting conceit, and the work look pretty cool. It's always hard to tell if this sort of thing is durable enough to extend to a whole show, but the work on his web site looks great.
ThreeWalls
119 N. Peoria #2D
Chicago, IL 60607
312.432.3972
Opening Reception: Friday, September 7, 2007, 6:00 - 9:00 PM
>Proteus Gowanus invites you to the opening reception for the yearlong interdisciplinary exhibit
“Play”
Friday, September 14, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
“You shall not bite, or not bite hard, your brother’s ear.”
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, (1944)
"It will be beautiful, it will be beautiful," is the stubbornly repeated, vague incantation of Roger Buergel, artistic director of the forthcoming Documenta 12, scheduled to open in June 2007. --from Artnet, June 2006I knew I wouldn't be able to visit Documenta early on, as I might assume many of my colleagues would have, given the propensity of the international art world to show up at opening celebrations, tempted by the sure knowledge, I suppose, that they'd run into dozens and dozens
of their colleagues and be able to chat, unimpeded by the crowds of ordinary art tourists that can clog the works at other times, so I steadfastly blanked out all references, news stories, and opinions about it. The catalogue sat on my desk for a month with its plastic wrapper intact. I returned from Documenta depressed and exhausted, and sat at my computer now doing the research most would have done prior to attending such an event. I didn't type into Google “Documenta exhausted depressed” but one of the first things that came up at the search "Documenta 12" was an article by Richard Dorment of the Telegraph (UK) returning from the show in June "exhausted and depressed" to write about his desperate search for "signs of artistic talent at the 12th 'Documenta' show in Kassel, Germany" under the headline "The Worst Art Show Ever."
231 box only for JAWS. from the movie. "Super Scenes" series. 1975. This is the one with the giant shark attacking Frogman inside his shark cage. This is the BOX only - no kit. great for display. mint. 25.00
Find It Here
MSB:
Considering the fact that I just received the invitation, via email, for applying for the next Artist Project, this post is probably too late. It appears they have made some improvements, but the discussion many artists have been having about this “project” is very interesting and should be continued.... into the realm of artist responsibility and actual inclusion of artists important and powerful ways within fairs or any art exhibition venue.
I’m posting here a LIST OF IDEAS for improving the ARTIST PROJECT. Even contradictory ones. This is / was a kind of brainstorming, aiming to increase creative proposals while whittling down less useful ones. Anybody want to help still discuss such ideas?
For my money Duchamp is one of the most important artists of the modern era, one of the funniest, and most certainly one of the most misunderstood (followed closely by Pollock and Warhol). Regardless of the fact that his legend has generated a raft of reductivist, mindless art babble, there's no question that the man's work is indispensable.
Even today these works seem retinal, vital and human. They're also far removed from the type of work we see today which lays claim to his legacy, much of which fits too-neatly into the rubric of "art for blind people."
Now we have the wonderful web site Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp, a timeline-based Flash site which provides something of a legend for the Legend. This site is great for both appreciators and detractors alike. Here's a quote from the site:
Bicycle Wheel was the first of a class of objects that Duchamp called his "readymades." He created twenty-one of them, all between 1915 and 1923. The readymades are a varied collection of items, but there are several ideas that unite them.Don't be a hater!
The readymades are experiments in provocation, the products of a conscious effort to break every rule of the artistic tradition. in order to create a new kind of art -- one that engages the mind instead of the eye, in ways that provoke the observer to participate and think.
Severity of sculptures stems from caprice
Alan Artner Tribune art critic
August 3, 2007
David Roth's painted wood wall sculptures at the Packer Schopf Gallery have some of the severity of abstract wall reliefs by Russian Constructivists such as Ivan Puni. But their assertiveness is often of a very different kind that comes from the forms being pushed into the territory of caprice to relieve the modern high seriousness.
The rest of Alan Artner's Review can be read here. You'll have to register, but it's free.
Low-ish res images of the work can be found here.
What is there for me to think? I've been miffed since the day I met him. All of the fierce competitiveness, creativity and flat out hard work that goes into making a viable painting and then here comes the photographer, who with one click of the finger (don't strain yourself and break a sweat now! Careful! Don't snag that finger and get a hangnail!...Ouch!...) and Presto! An image! Hence, comes a name; 'THE FINGER'...
Here is a guest essay by Leonard Bullock, an artist living in Basel who has contributed to Sharkforum in the past. His article is a bit longer than usual for posts on the internet, but well worth the read — and every thought here is necessary and vital. Read on ...
10 New pieces, plus a select collection of recent work. All of this work finds it's pretext in High Modernism, natural processes, and the ever-fascinating subject of symbolism.
For more info, click here.
Steve Litsios is an artist and frequent contributor to the Swiss Sharkforum. He lives in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and has frequently exhibited paintings, sculpture and installations in many parts of Europe. Here, he discusses the “king” of art fairs, the Basel Art Fair, called oh-so-trendily simply “Art” in German and French, as if the fair owned the word. I hope to have contributions from him at Sharkforum central regularly as well.
Art Unlimited
I just had to laugh: a lottery had been organized in a nearby town at the soccer field which had been divided into 4000 lots. Two cows were set free and the winner was the owner of the lot that received the first cowpie.
On January 1, 2008, a new management team will be taking over at Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach. Supported by an appointment committee of international experts, Messe Schweiz has decided that the current Director, Sam Keller, will be succeeded by a triumvirate: Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, Annette Schönholzer, and Marc Spiegler will be assuming joint responsibility for the international art shows.
Kevin Nance’s excellent review of Tony Fitzpatrick’s first book, The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City -- The Dream City, from the Sun-Times, August 2, 2006, is no longer available on-line. Or at least very difficult to find, as most newspapers tend to delete archives of art articles after a relatively short time. I was able to find it at FindArticles.com, a great resource, which may not exist forever, considering the current, often oppressive, use and interpretation of copyright laws. I think Nance’s article should be readily available to read for individual research. So here it is. Just use it for your own intellectual delectation and study, don’t make any money from it, etc. Fitzpatrick’s books, both volumes, are true delights. Get them!
I have a rather large back yard by many standards, and especially by urban standards, although it is not as large as some of the other Wicker Park properties I view when walking the crazy dog about the neighborhood. My “back yard” includes my garage roof, upon which, as I have previously mentioned, I have installed large boxes in which I grow both tomatoes and potatoes. (I prefer the “toe-mato,” “poe-tato” pronunciation at the moment, but then again this is about being weak.) And a lot of other things. Carrots. Okra. Jalapenos. Cucumbers. Baby Bok Choy. Indian Corn. Zinnias. But even on the garage roof, the trees are encroaching. One of my favorite artworks is a section of a video opera by
Miroslaw Rogala, a hugely underrated media artist who happens to live in Chicago. The section is entitled “The Trees Are Leaving Us.” 
I know what he means, and I want to cry at the truth of it. But in my back yard, the trees are coming to me. Shading the southern half of the yard, there’s a diseased Siberian elm that just won’t die while all the magnificent American Elms in the entire metropolitan area wither and succumb to Dutch Elm disease. And then that huge mulberry tree from my northern neighbor’s yard that has claimed all the airspace the Siberian elm hasn’t. And then there is the crab apple tree that was the sole feature of the back yard when I was a mere renter and my elderly Polish landlord kept four or five dogs who trampled the earth so effectively that nary a weed would grow. The crab apple tree hovers over the garage, and it a convenient place to hang my tomato cages when turning over the boxes, but it has grown tall and blocks the sun as it sinks into the west. It has gotten to the point where the yard is dark, and not even shade-loving plants will grow. So of course, being the self-reliant person that I am, I must trim the trees.
The following shots were taken by Chicago photographer Jordan Schulman, whose bio follows these wonderful shots. We're very happy to show his work. The these images are © copyright Jordan Schulman 2007 and cannot be reproduced without permission and written consent.
I recently did a podcast on an important “midcareer” artist in Switzerland, Lucie Schenker. My contribution had such terrible sound that I am putting a transcript of my discussion here, for those who don’t want the pain of listening to my feedback-backgrounded, tinny broadcast.
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
Does The Shark care about or covet the 10k just awarded by The Driehaus Foundation to two members of the Consensoriat? -neither of them particularly strong or interesting 'painters' (-I use the term lightly).....No! Of course not. But what does bother me is the blatant corruption and cronyism practiced, even flouted!, with such sneering impudence by (but who else?) Mr Curator himself, in the uhhhhhm! 'decision' making process...