Under An English Sky [Part II] : Christian Boltanski’s Les Archives Du Coeur At The Serpentine Gallery
London, Kensington Gardens, August, Sunday, blue skies, warmish. Just off the entrance to The Serpentine Gallery stands a temporary pavilion in hospital white. I approach the small building just as one of the last English heartbeats is recorded for posterity; that is, copied to a fat hard drive to be added to yet another fat hard drive then shipped to the uninhabited Japanese island of Teshima and digitally secured at the Benesse Art Site Naoshima…until Doomsday. This is the premise of the expanding and ongoing work of Christian Boltanski, Les Archives du Coeur , registering a rambling sample of the world’s pulse. Boltanski Beat: Charlotte Cooper with her heartbeat on CD, treasured souvenir of Christian Boltanski's Archives du Coeur Charlotte Cooper, an English teenager who with her mother trained down from Bristol to have the sound of her heart recorded for all time, emerges with her dog Toffee (on a outfit-matching pink leash), tenderly holding the two-minute CD of her heart’s lively beat, (she’s no
Read the original post:
Under An English Sky [Part II] : Christian Boltanski’s Les Archives Du Coeur At The Serpentine Gallery
This could get ugly. My colleague Martin Knelman reported last week that Michael Snow, Canada's eminence grise of conceptual film, had sued the developers behind the construction of TIFF's Lightbox (and, ahem, condo tower) for breach of contract over a work he says was commissioned for the building. The developers, Daniels Corp., have replied they have no such contract with Snow (Snow's lawyer acknowledges there's nothing in writing, though he argues an “exchange of considerations” is legally binding.”) Slightly old news, perhaps, but when you think about it, it's a wily bit of PR on the part of the Snow Camp
Continued here:
Well, this is awkward: Snow warning at TIFF?
It gave me exactly no pleasure today to shruggingly pan the AGO's Julian Schnabel show, Art + Film . More than anything, I guess I hated having to do it at all; so much ink has been spilled on Schnabel's art career over the years — most of it bloody — that I felt like my adding to the pile was an exercise in general futility. Still, everyone has to have a job, and part of mine, at least, is writing about shows, so I did what I had to in the space that I had to do it.
Here is the original post:
Julian Schnabel: Picking up the pieces
Though it doesn’t open officially until Sept.15, I discovered on a recent visit — to get another look at Julian Schnabel — that one third of the AGO's exhibition “At Work,” featuring three mini-solo shows in parallel from Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse and Betty Goodwin, quietly opened to the public Monday. It's the Goodwin portion of the exhibition, and, like Goodwin herself, it's a quietly intimate stunner. A few larger pieces hang on walls all their own, but the centrepiece, a vast collection of Goodwin's sketchbooks, sit in vitrines, revealing the moments that built her deeply personal practice.
Continue reading here:
Shhh — Goodwin open at the AGO
Also in New York, I fought the Saturday crowds to get a look at Haunted, the Guggenheim's extraordinarily thoughtful, well-mounted exhibition of contemporary photography and video. Thoughtful because, above it all, it strives to make connections beyond simple media and into the realm of idea, reference and intent, understanding formal concerns like appropriation — a huge current in the early moments of conceptualism, and a lingua franca of contemporary art today — and its connections across that epochal divide.
See the original post:
Haunted: Luis Jacob at the Guggenheim
As kind of a last minute thing, I took off to New York for the weekend, and in the 36 hours (minus sleep) I had to spend there, I managed to take in the Starn twins' (Mike and Doug's) mind-bendingly great (however oddly named) installation “You Can't You Won't You Don't Stop,” a vertiginously parasitic-seeming, two-story high tangle of bamboo installed on the roof deck of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That deck has always been one of my favourite places on earth, a rare oasis of tranquility amid the madness of the city; with the installation, you'd think its zen-like vibe would be disrupted by an inevitable sense of claustrophobia, but not really; rather, it makes you aware of not just itself, but the built structure with which it bluntly intervenes. In a revelatory sort of way, its chaotic, organic assembly of material counters the ordered stone structure of the building, that softening and and balancing both (its uncanny ordered filtering of the piercing sunlight was extraordinarily gorgeous, too).
Continued here:
Big Bambu at the Met
I blathered on at length in the paper today about the ridiculously chock-full season of (mostly) goodness that awaits us this fall. I was ordered to cease and desist at the very long length at which it appeared, but even so, there were several things I omitted that I wish I hadn't. I'd love to hear what you're looking forward to that didn't make the list
Read more:
Meanwhile …
This morning, a reader sent me a link to a story in the Denver Post by its Fine Arts Critic discussing a show of young Canadian artists there. He seems dumbstruck that not only are there people actually making art in Canada — the shock! — but that — Good God! — it's contemporary, topical, technologically savvy, and relevant ! ( The show includes Toronto artist Alex McLeod (above) and Sobey nominee Brendan Tang.
Read the original:
"Yes, there is Canadian art." So says Denver. Yes: Denver.
Illustration: Arpad Dekani Lace design c1908 Much of the early twentieth century revival of practical lace making, but more particularly that of designing lace within Hungary, can be attributed fairly squarely to Arpad Dekani. Professor Dekani, who started his career relatively humbly as a teacher at a provincial school in Hungary, eventually became a professor at the Arts and Crafts School in Budapest.
View original post here:
Lace Design Work of Arpad Dekani
About that aforementioned rant: Of all the people to take umbrage with my litany of bellyaches in the paper today, Tim Jones, CEO of Artscape , was very upset with my characterization of his arm's-length city-associated agency as “tiny” (he didn't like “city agency” either). While it's completely true that, with the addition of the Wychwood Barns and the forthcoming Shaw/Givins School redux, Artscape's physical holdings are far from tiny in the literal sense, I was suggesting that, in the context of actually meeting the need of a perpetually migrant art community, Artscape, though it provides desperately-needed space buffered from the market, is barely a drop in the bucket when it comes to demand.
Strange + Wonderful = Mary Catherine Newcomb’s "Product of Eden"If you're passing through Kitchener, as I was on the weekend, you'd be silly not to stop off at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and see what's growing in the front garden.
See more here:
Strange + Wonderful = Mary Catherine Newcomb’s "Product of Eden"
Announcements continue to come out of the TEDx Fullerton camp. The most recent is that Kimberly Brooks will be added to the line-up on Friday Sept 10th. TEDxFullerton’s special guest speaker is Kimberly Brooks , who recently conceived and launched the Arts Section of the Huffington Post, a new “vertical”, where she serves as Arts Editor
Here is the original post:
TEDx Fullerton- Line Up Continued
Illustration: Anders Zorn. Dalecarlian Scene tapestry panel, 1909 Anders Zorn the Swedish fine art painter is probably better known outside of his native Sweden, as that of an accomplished and highly successful nineteenth and early twentieth century portrait painter. Zorn travelled widely in both Europe and North America and his portraits made him wealthy and acclaimed.
Excerpt from:
Anders Zorn Tapestries
Carolee Schneemann is one of the most important artists of the past forty years, so why did I find myself on a bus headed to a rural university an hour and a half north of New York City to see the most complete American overview of her work since an exhibition at the New Museum in 1997? Performance art is unthinkable without Schneemann who developed a feminist-centered art before the feminist movement existed
Original post:
Carolee Schneemann in New Paltz
This morning's paper offers a severely abbreviated version of the story I wrote about Ansel Adam's “lost” negatives being revealed at a Beverly Hills gallery yesterday. As many readers have asked for more detail — things like background, figures, etc, that were included in my original story — I'm re-publishing it here.
Read the original here:
Ansel Adams in full
You probably already read t he story in the paper by my colleague, Wendy Gillis, about former chief curator Dennis Reid being forced to retire prior to the 2014 date written into his contract. There are a million arguments to be made here, about clearing the way for young, dynamic staff, or for an infusion of independent projects giving the museum new life, and none of them are bad; but one thing's for sure: At the age of 67, Reid (left, with painter John Hartman) was likely the most prominent scholar on Canadian art actually working in a museum, not a university, and moreover, was a tireless champion of Canadian artists — a conscience the AGO needs, and will miss. I wish him the best in whatever he does.
More:
AGO news, some happy/sad, some just sad
It looks like OC is going to get its own independently produced TED event taking place on Sept 10th at Fullerton college. I'm hopeful and excited about the creative/arts direction they're taking. Hopefully I will get an invite
The rest is here:
TEDx Fullerton Now Live – Creativity in Orange County
I have to say that I picked the right weekend to spend all three days going to openings. Starting Friday with Christine Nguyen at the HB Art Center and finishing today at Angels Gate it has been a solid weekend of stand-out art, and I did not have to go to L.A. to see any of it
Visit link:
Camilo Cruz/Slobodan Dimitrov/Nicholas Grider @ Angels Gate
I ran over to Chapman University's Guggenheim Gallery for the opening of New, Used, Borrowed. I promise I'll start bringing a camera other than the iPhone from here on out. I really enjoyed the curatorial concept around this show
Originally posted here:
New, Used, Borrowed @ Chapman University Gallery – Opening Photos
Tonight I had a chance to make it to the Christine Nguyen show at the HB Art Center and it is a beauty. The show will be running for the next couple of months and I urge to get out there and take a look
Read more here:
Christine Nguyen @ The Huntington Beach Art Center – Opening Photos