‪‬James Rosenquist interviewed by Vanity Fair about new full-room installment in MoMA, originally shown at Leo Castelli’s 77th Street gallery, “All you need to see my work is to bring your own intuition and sunlight.” [AO Newslink]
‪ French-Canadian eatery M. Wells will reopen at MoMA’s PS 1, after recently closing its acclaimed Long Island City location [AO Newslink]
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Marina Abramović fielding questions after the preview screening of Marina Abramović The Artist is Present at Soho Beach House. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.
Marina Abramović was on site at Soho Beach House to present her new documentary Marina Abramović The Artist is Present, which was recently confirmed to show at Sundance Film Festival, and will air on HBO next year. The showcase featured a looping 15-minute preview clip—made while the film was still in production—and between each screening was a Q & A session with the artist and her filmmakers Jeff Dupre and Matthew Akers. Moving from the second floor screening room, a cocktail reception at the 8th floor poolside bar followed. The after-party was attended by the artist herself, along with Dasha Zhukova, magazine editor Jefferson Hack, and Waris Ahluwalia, among others. Both the viewing and the party were sponsored by NOWNESS, an online publication on luxury lifestyle and entertainment. A slide show of fashion, travel, art, and gastronomy was projected by the pool.
‪‬Ai Weiwei to be named WSJ Innovator of the Year in Art, Marina Abramović to accept on his behalf at MoMA award ceremony this Thursday [AO Newslink]
‪‬MoMA collaborates with Uniqlo for ‘Message Art Now!’ artist-designed T-shirt series [AO Newslink]
The MoMA adds itself to the list of museums that have acquired Christian Marclay’s crowd-drawing video piece, The Clock [AO Newslink]
Installation view of Willem de Kooning: A Retrospective at MoMA. Image via New York Times.
Currently on view at MoMA is Willem de Kooning: A Retrospective. Impressive in its depth and breadth, it is the first retrospective since the artist’s death. De Kooning (1904 – 1997) is hailed as one of the most important and prolific artists of the previous century.
Installation view. Via Artinfo.
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Carlito Carvalhosa, Sum of Days (2010). Via MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) presents Carlito Carvalhosa: Sum of Days, a large-scale interactive installation that engages the visitor’s visual, tactile and auditory senses. Brazilian artist Carlito Carvalhosa (born 1961) has suspended a lengthy, white, semi-transparent fabric from the spiral-like support attached to the ceiling of MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, draping a nearly 20 meter tall stucture. The fabric loosely touches the ground forming an elliptical walkway, the audience invited to walk through the installation and touch the fabric walls. Ceiling-mounted microphones record each days’ background noises which are then played back the following day. This “accumulation” of sound through time is reflected through the title Sum of Days. The installation also includes the occasional live music performance.
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Francis Alÿs, Modern Procession (2002), via PS1
Initiated in collaboration with, and previously presented at, Tate Modern, London and WIELS Centre of Contemporary Art, Brussels, Francis Alÿs’s survey show entitled ‘Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception’ is now on view through August 1 at both MoMA and MoMA PS1. Largely drawing upon MoMA’s collection of works from the Belgium-born artist and grouped around three recent acquisitions—Re-enactments (2001), When Faith Moves Mountains (2002), and Rehearsal I (Ensayo I) (1999–2001)—the New York iteration of ‘Franicis Alÿs: A Story of Deception’ brings together a sizeable amount of the artist’s works, which characteristically emphasize performance and repetition with results that range from absurd to stunning.
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Screen shot, Palace of Versailles, via Google Art Project
Over 1,000 works from 17 museums are now available to view online in high-resolution, thanks to today’s launch of Google Art Project. Founded and headed by Amit Sood, the new site combines several Google applications to provide virtual tours similar to Google Street View, with a zoom-in feature and information on each work. Most noted is the the project’s use of gigapixel resolution—7 billion pixels—rendering a virtual view magnified greater than the naked eye could achieve; at this stage the extra gigapixel technology has only been employed on one work per musuem.
Screen shot, max zoom of Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (1533), via Google Art Project
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Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano, 2010. Via Initart Magazine
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano (2008) is the MoMA’s current installment in their Performance Exhibition Series. The duo prepared a Bechstein baby grand by cutting a hole through the center of the piano, rendering two octaves unusable. The pianist stands in the space and leans over the front of the piano to play the keyboard upside down and backwards. While playing the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, commonly known as “Ode to Joy,” the pianist walks the wheeled piano around the performance space.
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Gert & Uwe Tobias, Exhibition Poster, Woodcut, CFA Berlin, 2010. All images via Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin.
Currently on view at Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin is “Neue Arbeiten,” an exhibition of recent work by fraternal collaborative Gert & Uwe Tobias (b. 1973). The show features over fifty pieces by the Romanian-born twins, including ceramic sculpture, drawings, collages, and the colorful, large-scale woodcuts for which they are best known. Their interdisciplinary practice incorporates folkloric imagery, regional iconography, and popular culture, creating a self-referrential, multimedia visual narrative. Like all of their previous exhibitions, they designed a site-specific woodcut poster for the CFA show, which comments upon and participates in the body of work on view.
Gert and Uwe Tobias, Ohne Titel (Untitled), Woodcut, CFA Berlin, 2010.
MoMA PS1. All images by Lucy Kissel for AO.
Greater New York, the third quinquennial exhibition organized by MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art, features 68 artists and collectives from metropolitan New York. Recently completed and specially commissioned works alike showcase diverse talents and media, including sculpture, painting, photography, film, and large-scale installations. A purposefully provocative exhibition, Greater New York emphasizes themes of trauma, identity, and ecological, political, and psychological exploration. Curators of the colorful 2010 iteration selected artists of varying degrees of repute through online submissions, studio visits, and recommendations, assembling a brimming observation of contemporary New York City culture.
Images, text, and an interview with participating artist Conrad Ventur after the jump…
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Above: Karen Kilimnik, Me Corner of Haight & Ashbury, 1966, 1998.
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Below: Joseph Cornell, Untitled, c. 1953.
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Image courtesy of the Artists, 303 Gallery New York and Sprueth Magers Gallery Berlin London.
Currently on view at Sprueth Magers London is “Something Beautiful,” a collaborative show by American artists Joseph Cornell and Karen Kilimnik. Curated by Todd Levin, the exhibition features paintings, collages, and mixed-media installations that reflect the influence of the Romantic-era ballet on both artists.
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was an American artist known for pioneering the art of assemblage. Created from found objects, Cornell’s boxes often read like three-dimensional Surrealist paintings. He admired the work of Max Ernst and Rene Magritte, but claimed to have found their work to be too dark. His work was also inspired heavily by his beliefs in Christian Science, which he adopted in his early twenties. He never received formal training as an artist, but was influenced by American Transcendentalist poetry and French Symbolist painters, such as Mallarme and Nerval. Another motif of his work, 19th century European ballet dancers, comes to life in this exhibition.
Similarly, Karen Kilimnik’s work redeploys discreet objects in a quest for the romantic sublime. Theater and stagecraft have figured strongly in her installations, and her use of particular materials suggests the influence of Cornell. Often making direct references to Degas and other Impressionist painters, Kilimnik’s subjects occupy a nineteenth-century world: one of mystery, drama, and romance.
Anthony Byrt, in his review for Art Forum, refers to Levin’s conceptual approach here as a “bold curatorial statement,” suggesting that the premise upon which the two artists are connected is a precarious one. However, “Ballet aside,” says Byrt, “tangible links do emerge, such as theatricality, quiet spectacle, and ideas of feminine beauty, which both artists explore.”
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Karen Kilimnik, Paris Opera Rats, 1993. Image credited as above.
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Tanguy/ Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction, Installation view. Image via L & M Arts.
In 1942, Peggy Guggenheim wore one earring by Yves Tanguy and one by Alexander Calder to the opening of Art of This Century; a year later, Pierre Matisse presented the artists in adjacent rooms of his gallery. In the 1940s, critics began to notice the aesthetic likeness of the artists’ work, including mutual biomorphic designs in paintings and sculptures. The colloquy and stimulus inspired by the pair’s mutual Connecticut community is explored in this extensive, two-floor exhibition. Tanguy/ Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction at L & M Arts celebrates the creative relationship between these two artists, presenting their works from the 1930s-1950s alongside photographs and previously unpublished documents that testify to the collaborative aspect of their rapport and seamlessly harmonizing abstraction and Surrealism.
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In 2005, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, held a retrospective of the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat. In conjunction with that exhibition was a short 20 minute film of an interview by Tamra Davis, a friend of the artist. The footage shows a young Basquiat speaking about his works and his life, and is one of the few instances we have of the artist on film. The rare footage also shows Basquiat at work on a number of paintings, providing insight into his artistic process and highly intuitive means of creation. Because of the rarity of the footage, and at the encouragement of Jeffrey Deitch, Tamra Davis decided to work with Arthouse Films to make a feature length documentary entitled Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, combining the original eighties footage with interviews by various artists, gallery owners, and friends of Basquiat. The film constructs a psychological portrait of the artist tracing his humble beginnings as a street artist to his extreme success.
Afterparty at the Boom Boom Room
More images, story and documentary preview after the jump…
Drawing from Stereoscope (1998-1999) by William Kentridge, via The Museum of Modern Art
I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing-the contingent way that images arrive in the work-lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are and how we operate in the world.
-William Kentridge
Currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is “Five Themes” by William Kentridge (b.1955). The exhibition features a comprehensive survey of the artist’s career highlighting more than 120 works made in a variety of mediums such as visual art, film, and theater. Known for exploring social conflict in his work particularly that of his South African homeland, he often questions themes of personal and cultural memory, oppression and reconciliation. This exhibition underlines the inter-relatedness of Kentridge’s various mediums while exploring five themes present in his work since the 1980s.
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Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present, MoMA. Installation view with Portrait with Flowers, 2009. All photos by Ipek Irgit for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.
Marina Abramović is notorious for the centrality of her own body within her artwork. True, Abramović’s career can be read as a sort of bewildering physical endurance test, yet this would seemingly belie, a more important relationship than the artist to her own body, but the relationship between the artist, artwork and audience. In the case of her newest performance, The Artist is Present, part of the retrospective of the same name at MoMA, the artist is very much present, but most significantly the audience is present also. In an interview on the MoMA website Abramović discusses her belief in the essential role the audience plays in performance art, if not all art work, “The work is done for the audience, without the audience the work doesn’t exist, it doesn’t make any meaning.”
Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present, 2010
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Rosson Crow, The Dakis Joannou Collection at the New Museum, 2010 All images via Deitch Projects
Currently in its last days at Deitch Projects 18 Wooster Street location is an exhibition of new paintings by Rosson Crow exploring the rebellious and lawless side of New York history. Entitled ‘Bowery Boys,’ the super-scale works comment on a long line of underground “bad boys” who have existed in New York City from the 1800s to the present day. Deitch Projects’ reputation for exhibiting and supporting the current generation of rebellious youth from this lineage makes this a fitting location for Crow’s sassy attempt to mimic the spirit of gangs, graffiti, drugs and illicit sex so inherent to the city she has called home for the past six months.
Rosson Crow, Bowery Boys, installation view
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Luc Tuymans The Secretary of State , 2005 on display at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. All images via SFMOMA unless otherwise noted
Currently on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a very significant retrospective of the work of Luc Tuymans, a renowned artist from Antwerp, Belgium. This comprehensive retrospective is the first American show of such scale for the artist. The traveling exhibition opened in September 2009 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, then on January 3, 2010 it traveled to SF MoMA. The show will then travel to Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The exhibition features seventy five paintings produced since 1975 to the present. The retrospective is co-curated by Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (and former SFMOMA Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture), and Helen Molesworth, Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum (and former chief curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts).
CCTV, 2009
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Ida Applebroog’ s ‘MONALISA” 2009 Installation View All images via Hauser and Wirth unless otherwise noted
Currently showing at Hauser and Wirth Gallery, 32 East 69 St., New York, NY is “MONALISA”, an exhibition of works by an American artist Ida Applebroog. The present exhibition is a debut of the entirely new body of work, with a centerpiece of a rudimentary wooden structure that the artist’s calls “MONALISA’s House”. The structure’s walls are covered by one hundred drawings of the artist’s genitals that she produced in the seclusion of her bathroom, while living in California in 1969. The artist speaks about her work: “It was a certain period of my life and before I got into the tub I’d sit with a full-length mirror on the floor. It was before my own radicalization.”
Ida Applebroog’ s ‘MONALISA” 2009 Installation View
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Artur Zmijewski, “Powtorzenie” (Repetition), DVD, master DV, 2005 via Culture PL.
Currently on view at X Initiative as part of Phase 3 is a comprehensive solo exhibition of work by the controversial artist Artur Zmijewski. It is easy to misunderstand and disprove of Zmijewski’s intentions, and easier to feel uncomfortable and conflicted by his video propositions. This conclusive installation in a year-long experimental non-profit space marks a culmination of its mission to “inspire and challenge us to think about new possibilities for experiencing and producing contemporary art.” Mr. Zmijewski reminds us that the experience of art can be as challenging as its production. The subject matter he explores is often heavy, the manner of delivery – raw, frank, often unedited – documentary. The videos resemble an archive of a continuous social experiment where social situations, belief systems, reality and memory are test-driven for their endurance.
“80064”, DVD, master DV, 9’20”, 2004 via NY Times and Culture PL.
Zmijewski’s work is politically oriented as much as it is emotionally moving and complex. He acts as an activating agent by creating scenarios and situations in which initially passive and apathetic participants are galvanized and stirred, their actions documented and on view.
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Tacita Dean’s Christmas tree, ‘Weihnachtsbaum‘ at Tate Britain via Zimbio
The Tate has been embracing the Christmas spirit this week with a series of headlining seasonal happenings. The Tate Christmas Tree 2009, “Weihnachtsbaum” designed by Tacita Dean, shocked critics by actually appearing “Christmassy”[Bloomberg] This weekend, Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall was taken over by Rob Pruitt‘s festive ‘Flea Market’ – originally held at Gavin Brown’s Passerby gallery in New York in the late 1990s, this event was programmed to coincide with the Tate Modern exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World, in which Pruitt also appears [POP Magazine]
Italian police have seized works of art belonging to Carlisto Tanzi – founder of the Italian firm Parmalat who collapsed in a massive fraud scandal in 2003. The 19 paintings and drawings, included works by Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh, and is estimated to be worth more than 100million euros [BBC News]
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Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon that will appear in New York’s Madison Square Park in March 2010 via ArtInfo
Antony Gormley has announced plans to install 31 nude sculptures cast from his own body in and around Madison Square Park in Manhattan’s Flatiron District beginning March 26 [NY Times]
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