February 2012
1 post
January 2012
2 posts
Claudy Jongstra art is all about process
This morning I went on a WEF “artist walk” to check out Claudy Jongstra’s art from the Netherlands. Her work is hanging through out the conference center.
These are the reasons she is RAD and expands beyond the norm:
Claudy raises 17th century Drenthe Heath sheep (almost extinct) that provide the wool for her materials.
She and her team make dyes from a vast garden, almost...
“Projects that are open to participation—where the audience is invited to comment...”
– Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook in Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (2010)
December 2011
4 posts
The High Line: I'm a fan
After reading Rachel Wetzler’s distaste for the High Line, I spent last night chewing on it. An excellent moment when someone goes directly against the grain, however, I disagree. Am all for green space. The High Line was slated for demolition and the alternative would have been a huge loss for the city. Giuliani threatened to wipe it away and in its early days, “Friends of the High...
Thoughts on the High Line
objectivecorrelative:
(Rendering of the High Line, James Corner)
I was having a conversation with someone the other day at a book party and said that I didn’t like the High Line — that I thought there was something vaguely sinister about the whole thing, that it was too shiny, too wrapped in the rhetoric of good-living-through-design, that I found it disturbing in the same way I find New...
October 2011
1 post
Objet d'art from the Original 1%
Last week visiting my husband’s parents in Cambridge, England, I had the great luck of catching a sleepy exhibit, “Splendour & Power: Imperial Treasures from Vienna” at the Fitzwilliam Museum. A selection of this collection was on loan from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where I traveled last year.
Because I have long been studying the Habsburg dynasty for a current...
August 2011
1 post
“If a double-dip recession was in doubt a few weeks ago, it is less in doubt now,...”
– SPIEGEL Interview with George Soros: ‘You Need This Dirty Word, Euro Bonds’ - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International (via felixsalmon)
July 2011
2 posts
Pairings II
New pairings from 100 Tweets:
On Twitter:
Jerry Saltz on Twitter:
On bagels:
On Osama:
On Brooklyn:
Communication woes:
Pairings
Each week I’ll release pairings for 100 Tweets here, as well as other groupings. As the letterpress project evolved, I noticed patterns within the content of similar topics and still find them now. Featured from last week -
On bikes:
On conservatives:
On taxis:
On government:
On the NYT Paywall:
On jam:
On 2:30AM:
Overheard:
On the East Village:
...
June 2011
3 posts
100 Tweets Index
1) lindsayism 2) MarcDSchiller 3) SarahKSilverman 4) aboutlaw 5) gastropoda 6) ktm_film 7) manbartlett 8) mattyglesias 9) FrankBruni 10) NoReservations 11) Powhida 12) rebeccadana 13) SkeeterNYC 14) ezraklein 15) BorowitzReport 16) felixsalmon 17) fireland 18) johngapper 19) LOOKINTOMYOWL 20) Prosperopatrick 21) yokoono 22)...
100 Tweets in hand typeset letterpress
THE PROJECT
In September 2010 I began collecting tweets written by people I follow on Twitter. By early December I was in the print studio typesetting the tweets by hand for letterpress, and just finished up last week.
Here were my rules: only one tweet per author, no links, no promotions and no general retweets (content was written by the author). All 100 selected must be from people I follow;...
May 2011
2 posts
Art In The Streets at MOCA
So after all the controversy Jeffrey Deitch caused by removing Blu’s mural for “Art In The Streets”, the exhibit is clearly hit - and probably just the blockbuster show MOCA needed to draw giant crowds. It almost looked like a county fair.
In saying that, I definitely enjoyed parts of the show, and particularly appreciated a lot of the historical photographs and information I...
April 2011
2 posts
my latest comment to Star Wars Modern...
Many years ago, Felix and I backpacked throughout Japan we noticed there were no homes built on the hillsides of towns. This seemed odd, so we inquired with an English speaking friend as to why. It was explained that Japanese society reject the “king of the hill” stature, as it’s a blatant way of displaying wealth, power and importance. It’s garish. Tokyo’s imperial palace is in the center of...
Without an Artist, There is No Art
Bill Murray in “Caddyshack”, 1980
Why are movies not the art of our time? Because movies are entertainment.
The Hollywood machine, creator of popcorn movies, works as a business to entertain their viewers. Yes, there are instances where an auteur is hired and given carte blanche to create a film. But there are so few directors with that kind of power, and John Powers is posing...
March 2011
4 posts
Movies are not the "Art of Our Time."
Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men” directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007
Although film is just one of the many mediums used in contemporary art, John Powers argues that movies are “the art of our time”. We disagreed over a couple of beers, and vowed to take it online.
John is a sculptor from Chicago, I am a painter from LA. Both of us are movie lovers, but he spends more...
December 2010
2 posts
Strange Art Days
I would have liked to attend Ed Winkleman’s on the 30th to help bridge the gap on #rank, but unfortunately I will be out of town. And although I did not formally submit any project for #rank (other than assisting Greg Allen on “The Gala As Art”), had the last 45 days of insanity flared up prior to Miami, I would have done. Somehow in the last several weeks, we’ve gone from the...
A Fire In My Belly
David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One day this kid…), 1990/91
While some may be protesting in front of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, others far and away remain outraged by the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s piece, A Fire In My Belly from the show “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”.
I don’t need to go on in detail about the...
November 2010
3 posts
Photographs of the Habsburg Staterooms
Restored in 2000, you are now able to visit these Habsburg staterooms inside the Albertina museum in Vienna. There are Rococo rooms and oodles wealth from the 18th century, riches one would expect to see of European royals.
Is it Meissen? Or is it Jeff Koons?
Under a chandelier
Silk textiles and gold decor abound
Emperor Stephan von Lothringen (Francis I), Jean-Étienne Liotard
...
For better and for worse; marriages in the...
Germany, France and Spain fought decade after decade. Germany and Spain aligned via the Habsburgs and battled France on and off for centuries. Further east, there was the Turkish Ottoman Empire. It was the Catholics against the Protestants against the Muslims. In the name of religion and land, they fought endlessly. Peace came when countries were broke, and war started again when armies were...
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Traveling from Berlin to Vienna, I was overloaded in historical material revolving the Habsburgs. Although I’ve spent many hours in the Deutscheshistorishes museum in Berlin over the past few years; this time I continued on to Vienna. There I was able to visit entire museums dedicated to the Habsburg art collections and fortunes.
Many Habsburg emperors and kings amassed giant art collections,...
September 2010
3 posts
What a princess goes for today
Diego Velázquez, Maria Teresa of Spain, 1652
The princess Infanta Maria Teresa, a subject of my Habsburg project, had a dowry of roughly 500,000 French Écus (according to Wikipedia). Her arranged marriage to (double first cousin) King Louis XIV, the “Sun King”, was a highly important union. France and Spain had been endlessly fighting during the Thirty Years’ War,...
Conversation, it's what's for dinner
Jack Pierson, Listen, darling 2007
Four weeks to the hour in advance, Felix called to make a reservation for our 5th anniversary. We had gone to Eleven Madison the last 3 times, it being our favorite fine dining restaurant in the city. Last year, the resto received 4 stars from the NYT (thanks Frank Bruni) and has now become extremely...
Into The Wild, Pt. 3: The Final Chapter
Now where was I?
Yes… the rain kept at it all night. In the morning, Emelie, Felix and I met around the kitchen stove for some pancakes. We dipped them into jam and chocolate. Felix and I were feeling lazy, and had slept in until something like 9 or 10 (in camping land, that’s an extreme lie in). All of us agreed we had a perfect night’s rest.
“Now,” Emelie pipes...
August 2010
2 posts
Into The Wild, Pt. 2
Day 2
We meet down by the stoves where coffee and bagels were served at 7:30; “My boyfriend said, ‘You can’t give them bagels! They’re from New York!’” Emelie obviously ignored her boyfriend and plopped them down in front of us. One of the wonders of camping: everything tastes amazing, even fake bagels. We had a break in the weather during breakfast, but it...
Into The Wild, Pt. 1
Recently Felix and I were in Alaska. I took my drawing book with me but instead filled it mostly with words, not drawings. We hired the adventure company, Arctic Wild, to plan an outdoor trip for us. I had a couple of restrictions:
1. No small planes or helicopters.
2. No hanging off the side of a mountain. I’m a decent hiker, not a good climber.
With these obstacles in mind, owner Mike...
July 2010
1 post
Philip IV's Family Tree
This is a cobbled together family tree which I compiled in my notebook of Philip IV of Spain. I should call this “Philip IV: It’s Complicated.” He was connected to some extremely important figures of European history… Joanna The Mad was his great-great-great grandmother, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was his great-great grandfather. Not to mention his daughter...
June 2010
1 post
Artists chase celebrity through veil of reality TV
As much of the art world descends on to Bravo’s “Work of Art” new reality television program, I am off to the sidelines jumping up and down. Ewww! Does everything have to be on TV, and most of all - does this profession need to be chewed up and spit out by Bravo reality producers?
The stakes for this show are large, $100,000 plus a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (that...
February 2010
2 posts
Valentino vs. September Issue
What are the chances I’d see both films in 24 hours by mistake? Watched Valentino: The Last Emperor at a friend’s apartment in Paris and then September Issue on a plane ride back to New York.
For the record: I’m not a real fashionista but I sometimes follow Cathy Horn’s reviews, because creatively it’s good to know what designers are producing. I’m...
Across the pond, more Dada & Bauhaus please
Each visit to London includes the Tate Modern, and to my surprise a beautiful show called “Van Doesburg & The International Avant-Guarde: Constructing A New World” continued the theme of Bauhaus and Dada from a few weeks back.
Theo Van Doesburg was born in 1883 in Utrecht and became a painter and art critic. By the end of the Great War, he started a magazine called De Stijl to...
January 2010
3 posts
What I don't get about Americans
After last night’s Democrat defeat in Massachusetts and Scott Brown’s vow to vote down health reform, I’ve been wondering what the hell voters are thinking. Am gutted that Coakley couldn’t run an efficient campaign and the Dem. machine wasn’t able to fill the shoes of Ted Kennedy (it’s not like they didn’t have plenty of notice regarding TK’s...
Masculine Feminine
I was going through my office today, tossing paperwork and sifting through files. I found a piece of old notebook paper with purple marker scrawled across… a quote, I think, from Jean Luc Godard’s “Masculine Feminine”, I always loved this:
“I discovered that all the questions I asked conveyed an ideology which corresponded to yesterday’s customs, rather that...
Bauhaus Night
Seven people gathered at the home of artist John Powers last night and discussed the current Bauhaus show at MOMA. We talked about the Futurists, Constructivists and other movements taking place at that time and how they influenced each other and how Modernism was born. Todd Gibson started the talk by asking the group questions - and one of them was “If painters were in charge of the...