Robert Smithson, The Machine Taking a Wife (1964), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Before he began his pioneering work in land art and environmental sculpture in the late 1960’s, and shortly before his untimely death in 1973, Robert Smithson was exploring the quirkier, more colorful ends of the pop art spectrum, pulling from a broad range of figurative and cultural images.  Pornography, textured plastic, machinery and photographs collided in the Pop works, drawing from the often lascivious but always captivating landscape of Times Square, with its sci-fi movie houses, porn shops and street walkers combining to create a fitting commentary on the excess of American consumer culture.

Robert Smithson, Untitled [Zig zag star center, motorcyclist with wings, and microscope with wings] (1964), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

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The Guardian profiles the work of Robert Smithson this week, particularly his movement from his brash, colorful collage and drawing works of the mid-60’s to the epic land art and natural inversions of masterworks like Spiral Jetty. (more…)

An historic drought in Utah has brought water levels around Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty to their lowest point since 1963, a point which many familiar with the work state is part of the work’s execution.  “The current thinking by most is that Robert Smithson would have loved to see the environmental changes that occur around his artwork, so there is no real talk of intervention,” Bonnie Baxter, the director of the Great Salt Lake Institute. (more…)

Installation view, Cellblock I, Andrea Rosen Gallery. All photos on site by Erica Simone for Art Observed

The Andrea Rosen Gallery opened Cellblock I at its main space on December 1st, 2012, and simultaneously inaugurated its new, second location–just down the street at 544 West 24th Street–with Cellblock II. Both shows, held together under the theme (and anti-theme) of imprisonment, were curated by the prominent scholar and curator Robert Hobbs.

Robert Motherwell’s Dover Beach III at Cellblock II, Andrea Rosen Gallery

Hobbs is well-known for his work as an art historian and writer. He has been the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at Virginia Commonwealth University since 1991, and a visiting professor at Yale University for eight years. He is known as the definitive Robert Smithson scholar, and has contributed seminal writings on many of the artists he selected to show, including Alice Aycock, Beverly Pepper, and Kelley Walker. (more…)

Bruce Nauman, Parallax Shell (1971-2000).

Currently on view at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery is The Parallax View, an exhibition curated by Manuel E. Gonzalez exploring the nature of conflict in the works by acclaimed artists Teresita Fernández, Dan Flavin, Gego, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Robert Irwin, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson. Centered around the notion of “parallax,” which is defined as “the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer,” the exhibition examines how each artist confronts notions of space, light, and observation in their work. Works by such stylistically disparate artists spanning the course of post-war 20th century confront each other through various shapes and forms resulting in an expression of conflict and disharmony.

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Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, 1970. Image via Whitechapel Gallery.

Currently on view at Whitechapel Gallery is “Painted Truths,” the first major European exhibition of work by American artist Alice Neel (1900-1984).  Featuring more than sixty paintings produced over the course of her artistic career, the show focuses upon the psychologically insightful and expressive portraits for which she is best known. Also included are a number of Neel’s cityscapes, in which the anonymity and exteriority of New York City are shown alongside the artist’s intimate depictions of its inhabitants.

Alice Neel, Ninth Avenue El, 1935. Image credited as above.

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Eva Hesse, No Title, 1969

Currently on show at Hauser & Wirth, through April 24, is a series of small sculptures by Eva Hesse that are essentially fragments rescued from her studio. They are fragile and diaphanous in substance, almost anti-sculptures. A year before her death, in 1969, Hesse wrote of her desire “to get to non-art, non-connotive, non-anthropomorphic, non-geometric, non-nothing; everything…It’s not the new, it is what is yet not known, thought, seen, touched; but really what is not and that is.” Though not quite there, or not quite anything, the works, nonetheless, feel significant and demanding. As Leslie Camhi wrote for the New York Times blog, though the work in the exhibition seem closer to prototypes to autonomous works of art, they are compelling in revealing those familiarly Hesse-ian themes: “plasticity, an engagement with ephemeral materials, the elusive and incomplete nature of memory, and a redolent corporeality.”

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Untitled, Ellsworth Kelly (1959) via Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Currently showing at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England are a selection of early, unseen drawings by one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century – Ellsworth Kelly. Executed by Kelly between 1954 and 1962, the drawings have traveled to Middlesbrough directly from the artist’s New York studio where they have been hidden for more than 50 years. The 23 works are all studies for larger pieces and have been presented now, for the first time ever, to illustrate an important period in the artist’s career during which he pioneered his much-admired abstract style that has been integral to the evolution post-war American art.

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Jeanne-Claude and Christo via smh

Jeanne-Claude, the radical artist best known for the joint projects undertaken with her husband Christo – most notably the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in Paris and the installation of 7,503 vinyl gates with bright orange panels in Central Park in 2005 – dies at the age of 74 in New York City [Guardian] a review of some of the couple’s monumental art here [Guardian]

Jeff Koons’ train installation via artculture

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) reconsiders plans for a Jeff Koons sculpture involving a replica of a 70-ft 1944 Baldwin locomotive to hang from a crane and estimated to cost $25 million [LATimes]

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Bruce Nauman, Self Portrait as a Fountain (Eleven Color Photographs) Courtesy of Whitney Museum

Investigating photography in the Whitney’s collection, Photoconceptualism 1966-1973 is the last in a three-part series of installments. The recognition of the mediums of video and photography as fit for Conceptual artwork was at its height in the 60s and 70s. Works are being shown on the mezzanine level of the Whitney Museum in a small one room gallery. Some of the artists presented are Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mel Bochner and Michael Heizer. The show will be over September 20, 2009

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Edward Ruscha, Universal Studios, Universal City (Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles) courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art

Related Links:
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Photoconceptualism 1966-1973 [Whitney Museum]
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Photoconceptualism 1966-1973 [DLK Collection]
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Now at the Whitney: Photoconceptualism, 1966-1973 [Fanzine]

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