SECOND CHANCE
By Dennis Matthews
One of the best shows in Chicago this summer was down the street from SAIC at the Chicago Cultural Center. It was free every single day and a rare show that illuminated the art of India whose artists don’t have many chances for exposure in America.
Ranbir Kaleka is one of the artists featured who will be back for a second chance in Chicago at the Spertus Museum at 610 South Michigan Avenue. (That’s about 5 Blocks south of the Art Institute and the Maclean Center).
It is always best to let the artist tell the story so…“The image may fall on the retina in an instant, but its reading takes place in time. Paintings usually reveal their details/nuances only gradually through many viewings. Our own state of mind at different moments reveal different relationships within a painting. A great painting (I am not referring to my work) is never depleted, it always holds back a little for your next visit.”.
Kaleka comes from the town of Patiala in the Punjab region of India. Born in 1953, Ranbir is one of the most strange and intriguing multimedia artists that I have recently been introduced to while living in Chicago. Turning the corner towards his sixtieth year, Kaleka has not lost pace with many younger artists working in the chasm between video and painting. He lives in New Delhi and London most of the year, and spends much time teaching and “keeping up with my deadlines.” as the artist has told me through exchanges of emails over the last few months.
Kaleka’s work is carefully painted images of people on canvas on which he projects video of the same people who slowly come to life. The video projections are of landscapes, trembling motions of the people as they begin to interact with each other or the story, and sometimes things like a white horse walk into the scene. To quote the artist, he says, “Technique and method are secondary, except in those cases where the 'process' of 'making/creating' a piece is the 'meaning' of the 'work' and the end product is just the ' by product'.”.
The video installations rely on our imaginations that what Kaleka is presenting could happen to us, for instance if you sit still on a stool for too long a horse may stop by. His work brings to mind other artists such as Bill Viola who presents slow videos that are clearly mixing animation with the still, ever-lasting image of a painting to bridge our expectations of art even further. On the website, AnotherSubContinent.com, Ranbir says of his work that, “When I do heads, I try to make the face particular and at the same time general. What I am trying to say is that every face, how so ever ordinary looking, has a distinctive character and mark of individuality. I try not to make an easily readable face as we are not easily definable. Looking at a face for a long time can be a humanizing experience, some aspect of the face invariably begins to look attractive…there are no ugly faces. There are two things I am doing while painting a face...I try not to fix it but bring ambiguity to it and then bring intensity to its presence.”.
This work will also be an permanent multi-media installation commissioned by Spertus Museum, Chicago. Tentative title, ‘Thus time passed and we got used to many things’. The new Spertus Museum is scheduled to open on November 30th, 2007.
The Spertus is a center for research of Jewish Studies that will soon open their new building. You’ve probably seen it walking to the Utrecht or down to the Field Museum, it’s the cracked, folded glass building being built on Michigan. For the most astute observer it was the site of an installation of Jewish “bad words” by Mel Bochner done in what he called “holocaust yellow” on black at his lecture last fall.
Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies
610 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605
FREE
all quotes courtesy of the artist and originally published on www.AnotherSubContinent.com
www.rkaleka.com
Monday, July 28, 2008
Nonart object review
Dennis Matthews
November 27, 2007
How I spent my Friday with the most important
yet pointless monument in Chicago.
A lone tombstone is anchored on a street corner near Chicago’s Orange Line 35th/Archer stop. No one is buried underneath this marker though. A reminder of the history of our city’s foundations is mostly forgotten amongst garbage, a bad neighborhood, and fencing that demands that this historical preservation site shall go no further. Nearly shadowing the monument is a single condo that sets a bar higher than the neighborhood cares to reach.
Chicago is a great city for history fans and those that visit will probably learn something before they leave. There are great monuments to important events in the history of the entire nation, like the Haymarket Riot and the Water Tower, but this marker may be the biggest deal of them all. Besides appearing to be a dead guy in his own cemetery, it refers to the two of the first Europeans who traveled all the way to the Gulf of Mexico from the Great Lakes.
Well not quite so far, the two explorers Marquette and Joliet stopped at Arkansas fearing if they went any further the Spanish would capture them. The oddness of what looked like a single grave marker stopped me and I felt forced to investigate. There are many things about this monument that I have problems with, for one it was put up by the Bigane family in 1973 who appear to have no connection to either explorer. But they thought it was important to have this made on the 300th anniversary of the expedition. And further to put it in a completely culturally irrelevant area. I mean it doesn’t even get tethered to the really nice park across the street. Seriously fudge the details here and put up a fountain or place to walk a dog.
The travels they embarked on led to LaSalle later claiming the second fourth of America for France. Alongside the Mississippi river, he would set up very successful trading posts making the Louisiana Purchase more of buying a ready-made market. According to what the text on the monument claims, “We thank God for these natural waters and lands which we hope may be saved from pollution.” Marquette and Joliet’s experiences are remembered here in hopes that it will save the area from being trashed. The text on the stone further talks about how much the two explorers also found like Indian trails, waterways and apparently Wisconsin was also discovered during their travels. At least this grand historical event will always have its ten foot by ten foot street corner.
November 27, 2007
How I spent my Friday with the most important
yet pointless monument in Chicago.
A lone tombstone is anchored on a street corner near Chicago’s Orange Line 35th/Archer stop. No one is buried underneath this marker though. A reminder of the history of our city’s foundations is mostly forgotten amongst garbage, a bad neighborhood, and fencing that demands that this historical preservation site shall go no further. Nearly shadowing the monument is a single condo that sets a bar higher than the neighborhood cares to reach.
Chicago is a great city for history fans and those that visit will probably learn something before they leave. There are great monuments to important events in the history of the entire nation, like the Haymarket Riot and the Water Tower, but this marker may be the biggest deal of them all. Besides appearing to be a dead guy in his own cemetery, it refers to the two of the first Europeans who traveled all the way to the Gulf of Mexico from the Great Lakes.
Well not quite so far, the two explorers Marquette and Joliet stopped at Arkansas fearing if they went any further the Spanish would capture them. The oddness of what looked like a single grave marker stopped me and I felt forced to investigate. There are many things about this monument that I have problems with, for one it was put up by the Bigane family in 1973 who appear to have no connection to either explorer. But they thought it was important to have this made on the 300th anniversary of the expedition. And further to put it in a completely culturally irrelevant area. I mean it doesn’t even get tethered to the really nice park across the street. Seriously fudge the details here and put up a fountain or place to walk a dog.
The travels they embarked on led to LaSalle later claiming the second fourth of America for France. Alongside the Mississippi river, he would set up very successful trading posts making the Louisiana Purchase more of buying a ready-made market. According to what the text on the monument claims, “We thank God for these natural waters and lands which we hope may be saved from pollution.” Marquette and Joliet’s experiences are remembered here in hopes that it will save the area from being trashed. The text on the stone further talks about how much the two explorers also found like Indian trails, waterways and apparently Wisconsin was also discovered during their travels. At least this grand historical event will always have its ten foot by ten foot street corner.
Tara Donovan vs. Julia York
Dennis Matthews
Show Comparison
November 8, 2007
Tara Donovan at David Weinberg Collection
300 W. Superior, Ste. 203
Tel 312-529-5090
Tue-Fri 10-5:30, Sat 10-4
versus
Julia York at Perimeter Gallery
210 W. Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60610
(312) 266-9473
Tue-Sat 10:30am-5:30pm
Hey where did those chicks just go? What you see isn’t what you get; in fact it actually leaves you and walks away. Appearances, disappearances, reflections and ideas of what constitutes form are formidable foes for viewers of the work of Julia York and Tara Donovan.
Showing in Chicago this month at Perimeter Gallery and David Weinberg Collection, respectively, are two young artists whose approach depends on the particularities of which material is being used at the time. Last year, in obvious awe, the critic Fred Camper wrote an article in the Chicago Reader, which praised the work of York at the Sculptural Objects and Functional Art fair. In this article he mostly gives a biography with snippets culled apparently from an interview (when it took place is not mentioned) in lieu of saying anything solid. Camper outright feels the need to explain that York’s objects “they’re obviously not functional.” in his write up on the work.
The gross misconduct that train of thought will lead to while attempting to find a critical viewpoint is hardly productive. To expend the bit of energy needed to come up with that realization might have been redirected to saying something, anything in the essay.
Taking it further there is a mention of tying her work to her dyslexia, which albeit is very weak but an easy way to keep writing about something else, although self-admittedly important to her work. Perhaps it would be more believable if York had Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, it could explain the attention span needed for her process at least. Working in Philadelphia for the last seven years, Julia York has stretched her work across the United States and Canada with her lengthy exhibition record while maintaining a Residency at The Clay Studio.
An equally obsessive, yet much more successful so far, artist is Tara Donovan showing an installation one city block away at David Weinberg Collection.
Relying on mass-produced materials that are easily obtained and even easier to be manipulated into very deceiving forms that clearly conjure up all things organic. This stepping out of the realm of expectations of the material utilized is found in the work of Donovan and the “functional”-ity of York’s ceramic, glass, and mineral oil works. Doesn’t the work of both artists do something, they function oddly yes but they act, they react to the movement of he who views them. They flash, sparkle, and tend to get aggressive if left at “eye-candy” level. York’s images will disappear when you walk too far away, exit stage left, if you’re not looking then York is out the door too.
Donovan’s “reefs” aren’t much more solid as objects either. (In fact I kicked a piece, it kind of went flying). They shimmer it all off and are, in fact, pretty honest objects about what they do which is nothing. Camper should have seen their lack of function and the unapologetic tone Donovan’s objects take with their viewers. Though fixed on my return visit, to see roughly five thousand dollars get misplaced by my foot was an anxious moment in my recent life.
Here’s hoping that York speeds up and over the success Donovan has had in the last few years. High prices and cheap material really only leads to a huge margin of profit, not profundity or even curiosity this is where York has achieved leaving Donovan in the dust.
Interview by students of Dennis Matthews
Interview with Dennis Matthews
a short survey of questions given to the artist on October 24, 2007
Dennis Matthews is a current graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As he prepares to leave school, possibly for good, he reflects on where his work begins and his particular angle of what to be a working artist means. An organizer of many shows and events, mostly out of lack of other hobbies he would say, Dennis Matthews has been involved with the arts for nearly a decade. His entire life has been broken into short periods of living across the United States and the world, not one to settle or to be happy with just maintaining a mediocre view or acceptance of what’s presented to him. His current projects involve arranging his own lectures, exhibitions, teaching, and “keeping a few paintings in circulation”. Most recently the work has been shown at the Chicago Art Open and at the 101 Paintings Show at Co-Prosperity Sphere. The biggest project he embarked on over summer 2007, is to present the 2005 Venice Bienalle representative of India, Ranbir Kaleka at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in late November as a Visiting Artist. He would say jokingly that, “Its just a little of what I do here.”.
1. Although you have done many different kinds of work, do you have a process or aspects that you always use?
2. Are the artists that you are most drawn to visible or apparent in your own work?
3. Where does your inspiration come from?
4. How do you take drawing into painting? How do you approach color?
5. Do you sketch first? Do the abstract shapes create an image? Do you know what it’ll look like?
6. What are you trying to accomplish with your paintings? What’s your thematic focus?
7. Does the MFA program at SAIC provide real insight on how to build a career as an artist? Once you graduate, do you feel as though you will be equipped to accomplish your dreams or goals?
8. If you were going to start a movement, what would you call it?
9. If art was not an option, what would you do with yourself?
1. I think it comes down to rely on a very involved process. Very hands-on approach. I started art as a screen printer, working with an ex-graphic designer. I’ve been into photography at times, the crop, composition is a the most relevant pain in photography whether as attempting it or as a viewer.
2. I think a lot about the structuring of my favorite works, the step by step, the how did they do it. People like Wifredo Lam aren’t stylistically apparent in my work but the concern of décor versus an attention to detail. What’s there and what’s just out of frame is important.
3. Many areas, recently I’ve been thinking of comparisons and how anything one knows is by way of referring to another thing we assume as related. A “its just got to be this way” moment, that helps us understand why we’re still looking at an object or idea in art. I’ve also been looking at patterning, décor, and how they can be used to redirect one’s focus in viewing a work to literally highlight the comparisons being made.
4. I feel like I am always drawing at every stage of a work. My videos even rely on a ‘drawing’, a schematic. Even the drippy, gestural areas are careful and lengthy.
5. I have photographic evidence of sketches. I wouldn’t say at any point that I was an image-maker. Its all comparative, relational, I’m interested in developing curious relationships within each painting.
6. A reverberation is the aim not a communicatory thing. A pinball machine way of viewing, even if one does not follow how to enter or leave a work they’ll bounce around.
7. Yes. Yes. Both. “…as an artist?” It’s the agenda of the individual artist of how they’ll choose to function in the system of the art world. My peers would only be lost if they weren’t looking at function and only at developing connections.
8. I don’t really believe in movements. It gets really complicated and artists tend to get tacked onto something that they weren’t that interested in, a don’t judge me by the company I keep thing.
9. Probably be someone’s accountant, you know a business I was comfortable with. Everything in my work is pretty calculated, its my approach to many things.
a short survey of questions given to the artist on October 24, 2007
Dennis Matthews is a current graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As he prepares to leave school, possibly for good, he reflects on where his work begins and his particular angle of what to be a working artist means. An organizer of many shows and events, mostly out of lack of other hobbies he would say, Dennis Matthews has been involved with the arts for nearly a decade. His entire life has been broken into short periods of living across the United States and the world, not one to settle or to be happy with just maintaining a mediocre view or acceptance of what’s presented to him. His current projects involve arranging his own lectures, exhibitions, teaching, and “keeping a few paintings in circulation”. Most recently the work has been shown at the Chicago Art Open and at the 101 Paintings Show at Co-Prosperity Sphere. The biggest project he embarked on over summer 2007, is to present the 2005 Venice Bienalle representative of India, Ranbir Kaleka at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in late November as a Visiting Artist. He would say jokingly that, “Its just a little of what I do here.”.
1. Although you have done many different kinds of work, do you have a process or aspects that you always use?
2. Are the artists that you are most drawn to visible or apparent in your own work?
3. Where does your inspiration come from?
4. How do you take drawing into painting? How do you approach color?
5. Do you sketch first? Do the abstract shapes create an image? Do you know what it’ll look like?
6. What are you trying to accomplish with your paintings? What’s your thematic focus?
7. Does the MFA program at SAIC provide real insight on how to build a career as an artist? Once you graduate, do you feel as though you will be equipped to accomplish your dreams or goals?
8. If you were going to start a movement, what would you call it?
9. If art was not an option, what would you do with yourself?
1. I think it comes down to rely on a very involved process. Very hands-on approach. I started art as a screen printer, working with an ex-graphic designer. I’ve been into photography at times, the crop, composition is a the most relevant pain in photography whether as attempting it or as a viewer.
2. I think a lot about the structuring of my favorite works, the step by step, the how did they do it. People like Wifredo Lam aren’t stylistically apparent in my work but the concern of décor versus an attention to detail. What’s there and what’s just out of frame is important.
3. Many areas, recently I’ve been thinking of comparisons and how anything one knows is by way of referring to another thing we assume as related. A “its just got to be this way” moment, that helps us understand why we’re still looking at an object or idea in art. I’ve also been looking at patterning, décor, and how they can be used to redirect one’s focus in viewing a work to literally highlight the comparisons being made.
4. I feel like I am always drawing at every stage of a work. My videos even rely on a ‘drawing’, a schematic. Even the drippy, gestural areas are careful and lengthy.
5. I have photographic evidence of sketches. I wouldn’t say at any point that I was an image-maker. Its all comparative, relational, I’m interested in developing curious relationships within each painting.
6. A reverberation is the aim not a communicatory thing. A pinball machine way of viewing, even if one does not follow how to enter or leave a work they’ll bounce around.
7. Yes. Yes. Both. “…as an artist?” It’s the agenda of the individual artist of how they’ll choose to function in the system of the art world. My peers would only be lost if they weren’t looking at function and only at developing connections.
8. I don’t really believe in movements. It gets really complicated and artists tend to get tacked onto something that they weren’t that interested in, a don’t judge me by the company I keep thing.
9. Probably be someone’s accountant, you know a business I was comfortable with. Everything in my work is pretty calculated, its my approach to many things.
Jeff Wall Review
Jeff Wall Dennis Matthews June 29th to September 23rd 2007 The Art Institute of Chicago's Regenstein Hall Jeff Wall, born in 1946, is one of the leading artists of the photo-conceptualist movement started by several artists living and working in Vancouver, Canada. This grouping of contemporaries in the movement, such as Rodney Graham, are a community of artists who with the use of large format photography have expanded the realm of expectation and further increased the dividing line between the viewer and the image's subject matter.
In the work of Jeff Wall we are no longer only left witness to the grand events of everyday life, the subject is not some other story being told it is yours. Told most definitely through the common language of art history, as easy as we recognize Munch's "The Scream" being used for selling credit cards, we have Wall taking up two views on the subject, offering us a choice in Man on the Street of 1995. In images such as this one we have Wall "blatantly devising his shots, he induces us [viewers] to ask exactly what is we ordinarily read as "natural"---and why," Richard Vine, writer for Art in America comments.
The advent of being able to manipulate photographs by way of computers has only strengthened the illusionism and insight of his work as we see the changes clearly in this retrospective. Jeff Wall's newfound digital edge on more traditional photographers has not made his efforts any easier. The stages upon which his dramas are played still take weeks of constructing the final image and months of planning how to even get the images out of the vault of ideas and into some kind of feigned reality that almost stops at believable.
The use of montage in fusing two moments after each other as the one incidental moment he has just snapped blends ideas of what memorization and a replaying of a memory is, they may just be the same thing Wall suggests. In an interview for the last retrospective of his work, he tells Arielle Pelenc that, "...the illusion that something was there in the world and the photograph is a trace of it. In photography, the unattributed, anonymous poetry of the world itself appears, probably for the first time.", it would be clear to say that the work remains aware of the fact that every photograph is only a presentation of a possibility of its own occurrence.
In 1977, Wall traveled to Spain where he was enlightened by his encounters with the lit up ads on bus stops. One of his most ambitious early projects was in the following year with "The Destroyed Room" where he used this format when it was exhibited. The strength of its art historical overtones could not be left unattended to by the viewers and its magnificent contemporary presence in 2007 a generation later shows that it will be viewed as the turning point to greatness in Jeff Wall's career.
Revival, decay, danger, and the grit involved in our everyday are painted across each lightbox illuminated like grand Spanish Renaissance work such as Murillo's many "Mary Magdalene"s from the inside out, they flash to us a feeling and a suspicion that the adjective amiss may be an understatement. Jeff Wall's "The Vampire's Picnic" is a classical copy of Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" but it carries the composition close to the original, there are many new characters introduced in this image.
Some clearly mimic the gestures of the contemporary Master Manet's while the others appear to be lost in the feasting, one man holds a pair of a lady's shoes the owner not to be found in the composition. The literal bloodline I am referring to is being carried on in the work of today's photographers who are providing new possible routes for the expansion of our usual expectations of the art form of making it appear like one can always click at the right moment.
In the last dozen years, the work of Jeff Wall has gained a cinematic sheen and set production level of his stages for these moments. The scale of the final images refer more to projections of films than the wall coverers of the previous generation of large abstract painters.
One of the most memorable sets of works are his "Movie Watchers" beyond being a bearer of regrettable haircuts, its the same daze we find in the misplaced vampires at the picnic. Jeff Wall has created those suspicious, unforgettable moments that have happened to all of us and re-presented all of the times we didn't trust our experience of some occurrence as not really happening at the time.
In the work of Jeff Wall we are no longer only left witness to the grand events of everyday life, the subject is not some other story being told it is yours. Told most definitely through the common language of art history, as easy as we recognize Munch's "The Scream" being used for selling credit cards, we have Wall taking up two views on the subject, offering us a choice in Man on the Street of 1995. In images such as this one we have Wall "blatantly devising his shots, he induces us [viewers] to ask exactly what is we ordinarily read as "natural"---and why," Richard Vine, writer for Art in America comments.
The advent of being able to manipulate photographs by way of computers has only strengthened the illusionism and insight of his work as we see the changes clearly in this retrospective. Jeff Wall's newfound digital edge on more traditional photographers has not made his efforts any easier. The stages upon which his dramas are played still take weeks of constructing the final image and months of planning how to even get the images out of the vault of ideas and into some kind of feigned reality that almost stops at believable.
The use of montage in fusing two moments after each other as the one incidental moment he has just snapped blends ideas of what memorization and a replaying of a memory is, they may just be the same thing Wall suggests. In an interview for the last retrospective of his work, he tells Arielle Pelenc that, "...the illusion that something was there in the world and the photograph is a trace of it. In photography, the unattributed, anonymous poetry of the world itself appears, probably for the first time.", it would be clear to say that the work remains aware of the fact that every photograph is only a presentation of a possibility of its own occurrence.
In 1977, Wall traveled to Spain where he was enlightened by his encounters with the lit up ads on bus stops. One of his most ambitious early projects was in the following year with "The Destroyed Room" where he used this format when it was exhibited. The strength of its art historical overtones could not be left unattended to by the viewers and its magnificent contemporary presence in 2007 a generation later shows that it will be viewed as the turning point to greatness in Jeff Wall's career.
Revival, decay, danger, and the grit involved in our everyday are painted across each lightbox illuminated like grand Spanish Renaissance work such as Murillo's many "Mary Magdalene"s from the inside out, they flash to us a feeling and a suspicion that the adjective amiss may be an understatement. Jeff Wall's "The Vampire's Picnic" is a classical copy of Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" but it carries the composition close to the original, there are many new characters introduced in this image.
Some clearly mimic the gestures of the contemporary Master Manet's while the others appear to be lost in the feasting, one man holds a pair of a lady's shoes the owner not to be found in the composition. The literal bloodline I am referring to is being carried on in the work of today's photographers who are providing new possible routes for the expansion of our usual expectations of the art form of making it appear like one can always click at the right moment.
In the last dozen years, the work of Jeff Wall has gained a cinematic sheen and set production level of his stages for these moments. The scale of the final images refer more to projections of films than the wall coverers of the previous generation of large abstract painters.
One of the most memorable sets of works are his "Movie Watchers" beyond being a bearer of regrettable haircuts, its the same daze we find in the misplaced vampires at the picnic. Jeff Wall has created those suspicious, unforgettable moments that have happened to all of us and re-presented all of the times we didn't trust our experience of some occurrence as not really happening at the time.
Judith Geichman
Interview with Judith Geichman
By Dennis Matthews on October 17, 2007
1. If you weren’t an artist what do you think you would be doing?
2. Material and process seem to be at the forefront of the experience of your work, is this a reaffirmation of the impactfulness of painting versus digital media’s ease to create bold images?
3. If your work could create or be combined with sound, what would we hear?
4. What was your first experience with art?
5. Last good show/Favorite painters?
6. How far back would you go in Art History? Modernism? Is it over?
7. If another medium was it, which would it be?
8. In the most recent installation there were a group of Sumi Ink drawings, these careful arcs, the slight whips of the brush, seem to evoke an Eastern air, donde esta tu influence? (Motherwell’s Eulogy to the Spanish Republic?)
9. How do you deal with a painting’s success relying on a balance of both accomplishment and resignation?
Bonus Round:
* I like Motherwell, Franz Kline versus Robert Motherwell who wins?
1. If I had the science and math skills it would be a surgeon. Visual experience of going through the body, dissection, another world, glistening, bloody, physical. How these things are attractive, unknown. Or a chef
2. Don’t worry about competition, out of fashion doesn’t matter, empower it, do what I got to do. The Personal is essential to a (success). Growth, cycles, images revealing other actions. Teaching, traveling, experiences feed the work. Loss and joy can be worked through in a singular piece. Turn off what It ought to look like. Comes up over time. Iceland, M. Louis Atl Retrospective (gave support) Editing! How things are momentary in the contemporary world, fragility has become more apparent.
3. Opera, theaterical, Bjork, sigur ros,
4. Staring at little imperfections, notches/dimples in cement. Making pictures out of just shapes…Looking gave me a lot of inspiration, way of reinvolving myself outside of what was really happening lifewise. My dad was a bartender, met a lot of people, one sold art books, he brought back a series of time life feature books. Kept pictures of art early on, treasured these playing cards (Goya’s boy with bird cage)
5. NY Chelsea, dutch paintings at Met., Gagosian show late de Koonings. Neo Rauch, (Carroll Dunham, Terry Winters) (people following) Brice Marden, Lydia Dona, Eva Hesse. Fraganard, the past!
6. 18th century, cave walls at one point, modernism can be here and fresh, defining such a challenge. Not over, dialogue of space, paint quality, talking about painting is happening, engagement with how to
7. Times when I needed to make things, sculpture, involving my hands, figuring out how to add to the painting work with something 3d.
8. Pat Steer, Chinese paintings, scholar rocks/paintings, atmosphere, first place I go to at the Met. Poured, curious, created a figure/ground. Southwest/Iceland Lava areas (seeing images emerge)
9. Start with chaos, clear is not there, enough random acts add up to develop to a point that it can be listened to as to what happens next. Belabored is gone, allow the last painting guide the next. Year and a half. Earliest they were let go, developing faith, recognize mystery.
10. It’s a tie, Kline first, Motherwell
Elkins :painting as liquid thought. Yves Klein print painting.
Answers Judith Geichman by Dennis Matthews on October 17, 2007
By Dennis Matthews on October 17, 2007
1. If you weren’t an artist what do you think you would be doing?
2. Material and process seem to be at the forefront of the experience of your work, is this a reaffirmation of the impactfulness of painting versus digital media’s ease to create bold images?
3. If your work could create or be combined with sound, what would we hear?
4. What was your first experience with art?
5. Last good show/Favorite painters?
6. How far back would you go in Art History? Modernism? Is it over?
7. If another medium was it, which would it be?
8. In the most recent installation there were a group of Sumi Ink drawings, these careful arcs, the slight whips of the brush, seem to evoke an Eastern air, donde esta tu influence? (Motherwell’s Eulogy to the Spanish Republic?)
9. How do you deal with a painting’s success relying on a balance of both accomplishment and resignation?
Bonus Round:
* I like Motherwell, Franz Kline versus Robert Motherwell who wins?
1. If I had the science and math skills it would be a surgeon. Visual experience of going through the body, dissection, another world, glistening, bloody, physical. How these things are attractive, unknown. Or a chef
2. Don’t worry about competition, out of fashion doesn’t matter, empower it, do what I got to do. The Personal is essential to a (success). Growth, cycles, images revealing other actions. Teaching, traveling, experiences feed the work. Loss and joy can be worked through in a singular piece. Turn off what It ought to look like. Comes up over time. Iceland, M. Louis Atl Retrospective (gave support) Editing! How things are momentary in the contemporary world, fragility has become more apparent.
3. Opera, theaterical, Bjork, sigur ros,
4. Staring at little imperfections, notches/dimples in cement. Making pictures out of just shapes…Looking gave me a lot of inspiration, way of reinvolving myself outside of what was really happening lifewise. My dad was a bartender, met a lot of people, one sold art books, he brought back a series of time life feature books. Kept pictures of art early on, treasured these playing cards (Goya’s boy with bird cage)
5. NY Chelsea, dutch paintings at Met., Gagosian show late de Koonings. Neo Rauch, (Carroll Dunham, Terry Winters) (people following) Brice Marden, Lydia Dona, Eva Hesse. Fraganard, the past!
6. 18th century, cave walls at one point, modernism can be here and fresh, defining such a challenge. Not over, dialogue of space, paint quality, talking about painting is happening, engagement with how to
7. Times when I needed to make things, sculpture, involving my hands, figuring out how to add to the painting work with something 3d.
8. Pat Steer, Chinese paintings, scholar rocks/paintings, atmosphere, first place I go to at the Met. Poured, curious, created a figure/ground. Southwest/Iceland Lava areas (seeing images emerge)
9. Start with chaos, clear is not there, enough random acts add up to develop to a point that it can be listened to as to what happens next. Belabored is gone, allow the last painting guide the next. Year and a half. Earliest they were let go, developing faith, recognize mystery.
10. It’s a tie, Kline first, Motherwell
Elkins :painting as liquid thought. Yves Klein print painting.
Answers Judith Geichman by Dennis Matthews on October 17, 2007
Negative Review of "Gray"
Jasper Johns Dennis Matthews
Gray
At the Art Institute of Chicago
Nov. 3rd to Jan. 6th
What is this? A retrospective or an excavation of some half-brained theme? The concept of a retrospective is odd and can only get more odd when the artist would be included in an overall one of the last 40 years of American Art also. Anyone who gives such an integral artist a bad review on his retrospective, let alone the last one he’ll probably be alive for, is crazy. A good review is no more allowed in my mind either, I mean if you’re crazy successful in your late 20s, 28 to be exact, and that was fifty years ago then what’s the point of this sort of reiteration. It’s a lot of fun and nice to see it all at once, but it is hardly an inspection as in the second half of the word; retro-spective.
A retrospective is about the development over years of an artist and how they have met all challenges along the way. These challenges come from exploring differing mediums and investigations of similar themes in one’s work. How do we even begin to judge a looking back on the work of one artist when we cannot separate the development we are being shown from the context of the same work’s early success? My question needs an answer that only a parallel universe could give us about Jasper Johns’ growth. Can we go through his garbage that would be more enlightening to me about who he is now.
A few guidelines can be utilized if we want, simple stuff like how technically well is it done, but I don’t want to. Where my concern lies is, does the strength of individual ideas had by the artist abandon his overall theme for the sake of one’s progress?
Do we follow his train of thought in the exhibition, is the curator successful at relaying the what for, the “Why is this show happening again?” was my biggest question after several visits. Even if conceptual progression is not linear, is it coherent, is the artist just rambling along but we’re not supposed to notice that an art historical figure like Johns may not be saying anything anymore.
Are we even interested enough fifty years later to “shadow” the artist through his career in the guise of a formal retrospective? I keep using the word retrospective but the Art Institute of Chicago doesn’t, to explain I feel that it really is a surveying of a lifetime of work and that it shouldn’t just be trying to pluck a theme out of thin air then curate a show out of it.
Do we want to even ask why does John care about 0-9 and the complications involved with such a concept? I think Johns is concerned with the idea because it is about ascribing worth by a method of counting used to define what quantity looks like. How the multiple extends to many media and reflects, in art, a disillusionment of concepts like quantity, of bountifulness, security, and brings up the question of what is the real worth of material things. I see the foresight in Jasper Johns’ work, this idea of quantity and its repercussions slides over to, what I think is, a premonitory feeling of how artists like Andy Warhol would abduct this idea a decade later than most of the earliest work in “Gray”.
Honestly, this show is a bore it only becomes a curiosity to see a lot at once of one artist. It could have used half as many galleries to get the idea across that gray is a really important color but more so as a concept to Johns. Really I got it, I trust that you worked these ideas out but I don’t need to see the 6 lithographs of the painting. Either way, the painting came first in every case, can’t you just move on from an image. Jeez if Johns had just picked one image to do, once you know, he would’ve had all the time to do all types of images.
This vocabulary is stifling for intelligent viewers; its dull without the use of the color gray, “Seizure-inducing-Yellow” couldn’t save this show. I feel that he is shown to be very lazy or just not interested in his own work. Early success will kill personal inquiry of one’s own work apparently. I am left as a painter, art historian, teacher, critic with the impression that Jasper Johns stopped being involved, there came a point probably because of the immediate success he had that his work wasn’t personal any more.
There are many ridiculous moves in this exhibition beyond the convoluted descriptions of the wall text. One example is in the number motif gallery, where the voice of the curator is heard saying, “The work plays with the graying of the black-on-white printed elements when seen from the distance required to take in the full canvas.”. Nobody’s smart enough to not be stopped by that wad of crap. I translated it to mean very simply that, if you can see the whole painting at once from where you are standing, then its numbers will look blurry.
The work “Periscope (Hart Crane)” is an excellent example of this too. We are told that every element in this painting is to allude to a “desperation” of its subject, Stephen Crane a poet who committed suicide by drowning. This subject for Johns is expressed by way of the three primary colors, both in text form and as actual color. Did I miss that lesson in color theory? Suicide equals red, yellow, and blue? Really doesn’t give me a feeling of someone who didn’t want to keep his head above water anymore.
What’s less valid about this work is when we notice that there is a 1972/1994 Flag piece. So you did a carborundum wash in ’94 over a ’72 litho? Good thing this piece happened to be in your own collection…otherwise its burglary and destruction of property, jerk. In the same room is a 1960 Flag made of Sculpt-metal from the collection of Robert Rauschenberg, very nice of him to put this one on loan for the show. They are the only case of a break-up becoming a friendship I guess, I would’ve sold it personally.
I imagine Jasper Johns, now aged 77, being one of those stubborn old man characters shown in the movies, like a Walter Matthau if he had been a painter. I see Jasper the man in the show, but it’s not a nice experience, I see him picking up a paintbrush, telling us to shove it and don’t ask questions. I heard he was here in Chicago, did he see this show? I thought I saw him on the street the other day, if it was really Jasper Johns I am not one hundred percent sure, but he didn’t look happy.
Gray
At the Art Institute of Chicago
Nov. 3rd to Jan. 6th
What is this? A retrospective or an excavation of some half-brained theme? The concept of a retrospective is odd and can only get more odd when the artist would be included in an overall one of the last 40 years of American Art also. Anyone who gives such an integral artist a bad review on his retrospective, let alone the last one he’ll probably be alive for, is crazy. A good review is no more allowed in my mind either, I mean if you’re crazy successful in your late 20s, 28 to be exact, and that was fifty years ago then what’s the point of this sort of reiteration. It’s a lot of fun and nice to see it all at once, but it is hardly an inspection as in the second half of the word; retro-spective.
A retrospective is about the development over years of an artist and how they have met all challenges along the way. These challenges come from exploring differing mediums and investigations of similar themes in one’s work. How do we even begin to judge a looking back on the work of one artist when we cannot separate the development we are being shown from the context of the same work’s early success? My question needs an answer that only a parallel universe could give us about Jasper Johns’ growth. Can we go through his garbage that would be more enlightening to me about who he is now.
A few guidelines can be utilized if we want, simple stuff like how technically well is it done, but I don’t want to. Where my concern lies is, does the strength of individual ideas had by the artist abandon his overall theme for the sake of one’s progress?
Do we follow his train of thought in the exhibition, is the curator successful at relaying the what for, the “Why is this show happening again?” was my biggest question after several visits. Even if conceptual progression is not linear, is it coherent, is the artist just rambling along but we’re not supposed to notice that an art historical figure like Johns may not be saying anything anymore.
Are we even interested enough fifty years later to “shadow” the artist through his career in the guise of a formal retrospective? I keep using the word retrospective but the Art Institute of Chicago doesn’t, to explain I feel that it really is a surveying of a lifetime of work and that it shouldn’t just be trying to pluck a theme out of thin air then curate a show out of it.
Do we want to even ask why does John care about 0-9 and the complications involved with such a concept? I think Johns is concerned with the idea because it is about ascribing worth by a method of counting used to define what quantity looks like. How the multiple extends to many media and reflects, in art, a disillusionment of concepts like quantity, of bountifulness, security, and brings up the question of what is the real worth of material things. I see the foresight in Jasper Johns’ work, this idea of quantity and its repercussions slides over to, what I think is, a premonitory feeling of how artists like Andy Warhol would abduct this idea a decade later than most of the earliest work in “Gray”.
Honestly, this show is a bore it only becomes a curiosity to see a lot at once of one artist. It could have used half as many galleries to get the idea across that gray is a really important color but more so as a concept to Johns. Really I got it, I trust that you worked these ideas out but I don’t need to see the 6 lithographs of the painting. Either way, the painting came first in every case, can’t you just move on from an image. Jeez if Johns had just picked one image to do, once you know, he would’ve had all the time to do all types of images.
This vocabulary is stifling for intelligent viewers; its dull without the use of the color gray, “Seizure-inducing-Yellow” couldn’t save this show. I feel that he is shown to be very lazy or just not interested in his own work. Early success will kill personal inquiry of one’s own work apparently. I am left as a painter, art historian, teacher, critic with the impression that Jasper Johns stopped being involved, there came a point probably because of the immediate success he had that his work wasn’t personal any more.
There are many ridiculous moves in this exhibition beyond the convoluted descriptions of the wall text. One example is in the number motif gallery, where the voice of the curator is heard saying, “The work plays with the graying of the black-on-white printed elements when seen from the distance required to take in the full canvas.”. Nobody’s smart enough to not be stopped by that wad of crap. I translated it to mean very simply that, if you can see the whole painting at once from where you are standing, then its numbers will look blurry.
The work “Periscope (Hart Crane)” is an excellent example of this too. We are told that every element in this painting is to allude to a “desperation” of its subject, Stephen Crane a poet who committed suicide by drowning. This subject for Johns is expressed by way of the three primary colors, both in text form and as actual color. Did I miss that lesson in color theory? Suicide equals red, yellow, and blue? Really doesn’t give me a feeling of someone who didn’t want to keep his head above water anymore.
What’s less valid about this work is when we notice that there is a 1972/1994 Flag piece. So you did a carborundum wash in ’94 over a ’72 litho? Good thing this piece happened to be in your own collection…otherwise its burglary and destruction of property, jerk. In the same room is a 1960 Flag made of Sculpt-metal from the collection of Robert Rauschenberg, very nice of him to put this one on loan for the show. They are the only case of a break-up becoming a friendship I guess, I would’ve sold it personally.
I imagine Jasper Johns, now aged 77, being one of those stubborn old man characters shown in the movies, like a Walter Matthau if he had been a painter. I see Jasper the man in the show, but it’s not a nice experience, I see him picking up a paintbrush, telling us to shove it and don’t ask questions. I heard he was here in Chicago, did he see this show? I thought I saw him on the street the other day, if it was really Jasper Johns I am not one hundred percent sure, but he didn’t look happy.
To The Museum and Beyond Final
THE GETTY CENTER IN LOS ANGELES
December 22ND, 2049
From the desk of Dennis Matthews, Director;
PRESS RELEASE & STATEMENT TO OUR MEMBERS
Apple has taken upon a partnership with the Getty Center in Los Angeles, tentatively titled the GettyApple Project. After the success of the Ipod, Iphone, and Itunes at the end of the last century, which led to the incorporation of all types of media not only at the home but also in the hand wherever one would go. We now see an opportunity for a grander experience.
The newest innovation of Apple will be called the Iglasses for the museum goer. The Iglasses will effectively replace the audio tour we have all become way too familiar with, the disenchanted and most often misinformed musings of the curator in question of the exhibition relayed through a clunky set of headphones and a bloated remote control one had to carry through the show.
In what will become the most exciting innovation since mandatory moving sidewalks in our cultural institutions, the Iglasses will give the museum goer the option to literally choose their own adventure.
Originally developed early this century as a webcam utility device, the Iglasses have dabbled in every area of our lives from keeping us awake on late night drives to digitally replacing bad actors with your favorites in the movies of your choosing.
The steady decline of museum popularity in the last fifty years has led Apple to reinvent this technology for the sanctity of our disappearing sense of culture. For example in recent years, many forms of cultural expression such as poetry and photography have disappeared entirely, due to their artistic and societal irrelevance and all around depressing nature of their subject matter most of the time.
Today the culturally inclined will be able to load a program for visitation of any institution at home, teleport to the institution, see exactly what they’d like nothing more nothing less, and the moving sidewalks will be programmed by your Iglasses to tour the viewer around.
Providing only generalized factoids that can’t be recanted by some book, wall text, or some delectable curator, the Iglasses will tell you what it is without telling you that its only that. Remember TiVo? Similar but with culture whatever that may be to you, well its all up to you!
Taking a cue from TiVo, the Iglasses will also allow the patron to fast forward past drab blockbuster shows like After Whistler at the High Museum and Homer & Hopper at the Art Institute of Chicago. By fast forward we really mean that the moving sidewalks will speed up and strap you into your chair, dumping you off at either the gift shop or the next art work in your program.
Enhancing a viewer’s experience is no longer enough; our mission is to exaggerate the experience. Anticipating the desire for and providing for an easier trip to the museum, all tours of the collection will be now self-directed as programmed through the visitor’s Iglasses.
Never-ending arguments about what to go see and in what order will disappear entirely when the Iglasses allow each member of your family to create their own tours. The Getty Center in Los Angeles and our new Now Art Wing will be the first testing ground for this new technological incorporation and remixing of the collection.
Since the opening of the Getty Center in 1997 the next ways of viewing art has been at the forefront of our mission. We even went to the lengths of building a Tram that divorces any “walk-on” viewers that wander in from the street level; it is to be an experience. For us it is our patrons’ nervous anticipation of what lies upon the hill that we offer.
The exclusive art museum you ask? Well of course there’s no VIP list, only wonders awaiting for those that climb the hill to come discover their own sense of culture in visual actualized form expressed through unique art objects.
The stakes were raised from this move, the resort museum was invented, and we could not allow let downs in the hearts of viewers. The art museum as the next hot vacation spot was here. Therefore the experience of the museum couldn’t let the illusion of escape to break even for one moment.
This idea had to pertain to the collection also, genres had to adapt, such often misused tropes of art like Realism and Figuration had to be forgotten and moved back to storage or sold off, literally swept under the rug never to be seen again. Seeing a still-life and feeling hungry would interrupt the escape that art, especially abstract, non-committal art offers.
The structure of the Now Art Wing will be a series of pods similar to garden conservatories encased in kaleidoscopic glass with moving sidewalks complete with benches ala the Jetsons that drop the viewer off at their next destination of culture. Taking advantage of the lush landscape and proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the city of Pasadena, the Tram has been extended in many directions to tether other destinations to our institution.
Imagine this, after a long day at the museum you can vacation at the beach or shop the beautiful streets of Pasadena. Of course all routes are one way, from the museum only. A city bus can take viewers back to the parking garage where they must have left their cars, at the foot of the hill the Getty Center stands upon.
Or just relax in our gardens now free of those indiscernible distractions that were popularized in the last century and called “public sculpture”. We don’t believe in that concept of letting art beautify through corrosion and exposure, we put it inside and keep it there, art is too important to allow it to deteriorate in the hands of nature. (Garden, Beach, or Shopping options only $150 per person!)
We, at the Getty Center aren’t here to tell you how it is. We are interested in what you think and what you want to see. So much so that we opened a research facility on the grounds from the very day of our founding, where you can tell us how it is (background as a verifiable scholar not longer required!).
The technology of the Iglasses also allows for an easier, more efficient tracking of statistics of the visitors and what they came to the institution to see and how long they viewed each art work in their program. If the question is what is more true now, well we are now gathering an answer from the public one validated through plain old pure statistical collection. The different works with the most of each category will be at the top in our hierarchy, (categories to be determined and altered as statistics change.).
It’s more than a surveying though in our minds, we will be rating art works in accordance to their popularity and relevance to other works in the collection. The Getty Center is a forward thinking, progressive institution and we are not afraid to let the public vote art works off the hill. We trust you and only want to learn about what do you want to see more of or in our next exhibition.
If Mondrian loses to Picasso, then Piet retires with no regrets, after all dead men can’t make for sore losers. And if Pollock and Durer are chums in the minds of the public then the wall texts and the installation of the collection will have to reflect that.
In this post-wikipedia age of editable history that only has to be agreed upon to remain published and available, the museum has to let the public create their own lineages and truth in art too.
This will also allow for works to reemerge from decades of storage room limbo due to popular demand. We have anticipated the problems that may arise from this such as the Art Institute of Chicago becoming the Picasso Institute of Chicago or the Met becoming the Matta.
It is indeed a slippery slope we have created but the most exhilarating ride to take all the way down. We at the Getty Center think you are smart, that you have your own sense of history that is undeniable to you and more excitingly so one that is unique to you as an individual. Other museums may ignore you but the Getty Center knows that you feel that way; your vote always counts with us.
Even the craziest vagrant on the street knows history and can quickly tell you how it all went down. Sure Old Saint Nick may have founded America just the other day. And with the help of Vice President Easter Bunny defeated the Commies in the Civil War. But who are we to say that the vagrant couldn’t see history, specifically art history, in the way he’d like.
Our belief is that the public has tired long ago of the miss musings of some defiant curator’s pet project always taking that familiar condescending tone with them. As for administrating and handling the usual business of an institution, we will maintain a committee board. Our committee functions as a group of delegates that can only cast the same vote that their districts tell them to for purchasing and in organizing every new exhibition.
Absentee ballots will be available and necessary in this situation for many of our members don’t live in Los Angeles. Sample images of prospective acquisitions will be linked to their corresponding check boxes as to avoid any confusion and the purchasing of work that didn’t receive the popular vote i.e. how we fixed the Electoral College system in 2012 by putting the candidate’s face next to where you put the check.
The New Acquisition of Now Art committee will be searching far and wide for art works that point elsewhere in the collection that have grown off the ideas of the Now Masters like Lawrence Weiner, Alan McCollum, Louise Lawler, and Joseph Kosuth.
In a way this will require of new acquisitions to be institution-specific to the Getty Center but will anticipate and allow for many works that are able to speak of art in general.
In the first decade of the century we witnessed an incredible achievement and invention in the form of “Personal Sound Amplifiers”. These wondrous devices allowed one to watch television without disturbing other people in the room.
It allowed people to spend time with their families without having to listen to them, you could be listening or the game could be on. The more particular users of this product would dim their television sets to a step before off and still be able to hear every play of the game.
The Getty Center and Apple thought long about this desire to immerse one’s self while seeming to be all there at home. Why not take a spin through the museum and see all your lost loves at your own leisure? Spending time with the family doesn’t have to involve television; you could all learn something over dinner.
Which brings us to our next exciting opportunity for advancement in the field of culture. The Iglasses will also have an option of home viewing, where you can tend your own garden while seeing the masterworks of the next generation. Can’t make it to the Getty Center? Our collection and your masterpiece mix list will come to you. (Do not operate heavy machinery, attempt to drive while using this product, or use illicit drugs or alcohol).
Debating where to go next summer? The Iglasses will now allow you to compare our institution with selected works of numerous other museums and cultural centers of the world. On that note you can even see the library at the zoo and vice versa, good luck studying with lions roaming the stacks!
Bibliography:
Iglasses
http://www.i-glassesstore.com/
TiVo
http://www.tivo.com/
After Whistler
http://www.docsnews.com/high.html#whistler
Homer
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/homer
Hopper
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/hopper/visitor
Wikiality and Agreed Upon History
http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site
2000 presidential recount
December 22ND, 2049
From the desk of Dennis Matthews, Director;
PRESS RELEASE & STATEMENT TO OUR MEMBERS
Apple has taken upon a partnership with the Getty Center in Los Angeles, tentatively titled the GettyApple Project. After the success of the Ipod, Iphone, and Itunes at the end of the last century, which led to the incorporation of all types of media not only at the home but also in the hand wherever one would go. We now see an opportunity for a grander experience.
The newest innovation of Apple will be called the Iglasses for the museum goer. The Iglasses will effectively replace the audio tour we have all become way too familiar with, the disenchanted and most often misinformed musings of the curator in question of the exhibition relayed through a clunky set of headphones and a bloated remote control one had to carry through the show.
In what will become the most exciting innovation since mandatory moving sidewalks in our cultural institutions, the Iglasses will give the museum goer the option to literally choose their own adventure.
Originally developed early this century as a webcam utility device, the Iglasses have dabbled in every area of our lives from keeping us awake on late night drives to digitally replacing bad actors with your favorites in the movies of your choosing.
The steady decline of museum popularity in the last fifty years has led Apple to reinvent this technology for the sanctity of our disappearing sense of culture. For example in recent years, many forms of cultural expression such as poetry and photography have disappeared entirely, due to their artistic and societal irrelevance and all around depressing nature of their subject matter most of the time.
Today the culturally inclined will be able to load a program for visitation of any institution at home, teleport to the institution, see exactly what they’d like nothing more nothing less, and the moving sidewalks will be programmed by your Iglasses to tour the viewer around.
Providing only generalized factoids that can’t be recanted by some book, wall text, or some delectable curator, the Iglasses will tell you what it is without telling you that its only that. Remember TiVo? Similar but with culture whatever that may be to you, well its all up to you!
Taking a cue from TiVo, the Iglasses will also allow the patron to fast forward past drab blockbuster shows like After Whistler at the High Museum and Homer & Hopper at the Art Institute of Chicago. By fast forward we really mean that the moving sidewalks will speed up and strap you into your chair, dumping you off at either the gift shop or the next art work in your program.
Enhancing a viewer’s experience is no longer enough; our mission is to exaggerate the experience. Anticipating the desire for and providing for an easier trip to the museum, all tours of the collection will be now self-directed as programmed through the visitor’s Iglasses.
Never-ending arguments about what to go see and in what order will disappear entirely when the Iglasses allow each member of your family to create their own tours. The Getty Center in Los Angeles and our new Now Art Wing will be the first testing ground for this new technological incorporation and remixing of the collection.
Since the opening of the Getty Center in 1997 the next ways of viewing art has been at the forefront of our mission. We even went to the lengths of building a Tram that divorces any “walk-on” viewers that wander in from the street level; it is to be an experience. For us it is our patrons’ nervous anticipation of what lies upon the hill that we offer.
The exclusive art museum you ask? Well of course there’s no VIP list, only wonders awaiting for those that climb the hill to come discover their own sense of culture in visual actualized form expressed through unique art objects.
The stakes were raised from this move, the resort museum was invented, and we could not allow let downs in the hearts of viewers. The art museum as the next hot vacation spot was here. Therefore the experience of the museum couldn’t let the illusion of escape to break even for one moment.
This idea had to pertain to the collection also, genres had to adapt, such often misused tropes of art like Realism and Figuration had to be forgotten and moved back to storage or sold off, literally swept under the rug never to be seen again. Seeing a still-life and feeling hungry would interrupt the escape that art, especially abstract, non-committal art offers.
The structure of the Now Art Wing will be a series of pods similar to garden conservatories encased in kaleidoscopic glass with moving sidewalks complete with benches ala the Jetsons that drop the viewer off at their next destination of culture. Taking advantage of the lush landscape and proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the city of Pasadena, the Tram has been extended in many directions to tether other destinations to our institution.
Imagine this, after a long day at the museum you can vacation at the beach or shop the beautiful streets of Pasadena. Of course all routes are one way, from the museum only. A city bus can take viewers back to the parking garage where they must have left their cars, at the foot of the hill the Getty Center stands upon.
Or just relax in our gardens now free of those indiscernible distractions that were popularized in the last century and called “public sculpture”. We don’t believe in that concept of letting art beautify through corrosion and exposure, we put it inside and keep it there, art is too important to allow it to deteriorate in the hands of nature. (Garden, Beach, or Shopping options only $150 per person!)
We, at the Getty Center aren’t here to tell you how it is. We are interested in what you think and what you want to see. So much so that we opened a research facility on the grounds from the very day of our founding, where you can tell us how it is (background as a verifiable scholar not longer required!).
The technology of the Iglasses also allows for an easier, more efficient tracking of statistics of the visitors and what they came to the institution to see and how long they viewed each art work in their program. If the question is what is more true now, well we are now gathering an answer from the public one validated through plain old pure statistical collection. The different works with the most of each category will be at the top in our hierarchy, (categories to be determined and altered as statistics change.).
It’s more than a surveying though in our minds, we will be rating art works in accordance to their popularity and relevance to other works in the collection. The Getty Center is a forward thinking, progressive institution and we are not afraid to let the public vote art works off the hill. We trust you and only want to learn about what do you want to see more of or in our next exhibition.
If Mondrian loses to Picasso, then Piet retires with no regrets, after all dead men can’t make for sore losers. And if Pollock and Durer are chums in the minds of the public then the wall texts and the installation of the collection will have to reflect that.
In this post-wikipedia age of editable history that only has to be agreed upon to remain published and available, the museum has to let the public create their own lineages and truth in art too.
This will also allow for works to reemerge from decades of storage room limbo due to popular demand. We have anticipated the problems that may arise from this such as the Art Institute of Chicago becoming the Picasso Institute of Chicago or the Met becoming the Matta.
It is indeed a slippery slope we have created but the most exhilarating ride to take all the way down. We at the Getty Center think you are smart, that you have your own sense of history that is undeniable to you and more excitingly so one that is unique to you as an individual. Other museums may ignore you but the Getty Center knows that you feel that way; your vote always counts with us.
Even the craziest vagrant on the street knows history and can quickly tell you how it all went down. Sure Old Saint Nick may have founded America just the other day. And with the help of Vice President Easter Bunny defeated the Commies in the Civil War. But who are we to say that the vagrant couldn’t see history, specifically art history, in the way he’d like.
Our belief is that the public has tired long ago of the miss musings of some defiant curator’s pet project always taking that familiar condescending tone with them. As for administrating and handling the usual business of an institution, we will maintain a committee board. Our committee functions as a group of delegates that can only cast the same vote that their districts tell them to for purchasing and in organizing every new exhibition.
Absentee ballots will be available and necessary in this situation for many of our members don’t live in Los Angeles. Sample images of prospective acquisitions will be linked to their corresponding check boxes as to avoid any confusion and the purchasing of work that didn’t receive the popular vote i.e. how we fixed the Electoral College system in 2012 by putting the candidate’s face next to where you put the check.
The New Acquisition of Now Art committee will be searching far and wide for art works that point elsewhere in the collection that have grown off the ideas of the Now Masters like Lawrence Weiner, Alan McCollum, Louise Lawler, and Joseph Kosuth.
In a way this will require of new acquisitions to be institution-specific to the Getty Center but will anticipate and allow for many works that are able to speak of art in general.
In the first decade of the century we witnessed an incredible achievement and invention in the form of “Personal Sound Amplifiers”. These wondrous devices allowed one to watch television without disturbing other people in the room.
It allowed people to spend time with their families without having to listen to them, you could be listening or the game could be on. The more particular users of this product would dim their television sets to a step before off and still be able to hear every play of the game.
The Getty Center and Apple thought long about this desire to immerse one’s self while seeming to be all there at home. Why not take a spin through the museum and see all your lost loves at your own leisure? Spending time with the family doesn’t have to involve television; you could all learn something over dinner.
Which brings us to our next exciting opportunity for advancement in the field of culture. The Iglasses will also have an option of home viewing, where you can tend your own garden while seeing the masterworks of the next generation. Can’t make it to the Getty Center? Our collection and your masterpiece mix list will come to you. (Do not operate heavy machinery, attempt to drive while using this product, or use illicit drugs or alcohol).
Debating where to go next summer? The Iglasses will now allow you to compare our institution with selected works of numerous other museums and cultural centers of the world. On that note you can even see the library at the zoo and vice versa, good luck studying with lions roaming the stacks!
Bibliography:
Iglasses
http://www.i-glassesstore.com/
TiVo
http://www.tivo.com/
After Whistler
http://www.docsnews.com/high.html#whistler
Homer
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/homer
Hopper
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/hopper/visitor
Wikiality and Agreed Upon History
http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site
2000 presidential recount
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