Over at 20x200 we're introducing a piece by Kent Rogowski today in conjunction with the opening of his show Love = Love tonight at the Jen Bekman gallery.

In this project Rogowski makes montages from puzzles with landscape scenes. The results would make the Cubists proud. I think they're great.

Check out many more fun projects on the artist's website.

William is a semi-neighbor of mine and I often see him puttering around the neighborhood doing normal everyday things which is odd after seeing his work because you imagine him going home to a room full of black balloons and guns or an all white lab full of trampolines and people in white hazmat suits. Don't know what I'm talking about? Time to click over to his site.

If I had the money, I'd fill my kid's room with paintings by Edward del Rosario.

The artist David Horvitz maintains a web page titled "THINGS FOR SALE THAT I WILL MAIL YOU". On it he offers exchange of money for his time.

For example,

If you give me $400 I will take a train to a desolate area with a packed lunch and sit down and read Anna Karenina. I will do this for 6-10 hours. I will repeat the same thing the following days until I have finally read the entire book. Finally! I am only going to do this once, so this is an edition of one only. I will send you documentation of this from the closest mailbox to where I do this. I'll also write the location of the mailbox on the envelope if you ever wish to go to where I will have sent it to you from.

and

This one is really serious. I'm scared to do this. But I think I have to. If you give me $10 I will think really hard of someone who I need to apologize to. I will write them a letter of apology. I will make two copies of the letter. I will send one to you and one to the person who I am apologizing to.

(via jen bekman who spends most days sitting at a desk a few feet away from me in the 20x200 office and still manages to send several IMs and many emails a day)

I collect Mexican retablos- small paintings of saints on tin. One of my favorite dealers James Caswell has written an insightful book titled Saints and Sinners on Mexican devotional art with a big section devoted to retablos illustrated largely with selections from his own impressive collection. The book came out 2 years ago but somehow escaped my notice until recently. I recommend the book as well as his gallery's website which contains a good selection of links and explanatory information and where most items for sale have detailed descriptions to give context. For example on the image above:

An illustration of the Catholic belief that Camille guides and protects at the final hour. Titled at bottom San Camilo de Lelis Patron de los Agonizontes, or "San Camilo of Lelis patron of people in final agony", depicts a fascinating cast of Hieronymous Bosch like characters who represent spiritual hazards of death. San Camilo and his acolytes guard the dying soul against final temptations of a host of satanical troublemakers. A devil in the window says, "I can't" (meaning he can't get to the dying man to detour him to hell). The demon floating above the enthroned Virgin Mary threatens, "your children". The Virgin invites, ven a mi gloria, "come to my glory". Notice the dying man's little white soul flying up to the Virgin's open arms..... The devil beneath the bed says, vuelvale intentar "try again". On the left are the seven demons of the deadly sins...

Photo by Lisa Ross
This Friday Lisa Ross and I will be speaking at SVA. Lisa and I have both made made many journeys through China's western provinces and our work from those parts of the world will be the focus of the discussion. Our gallerist Nelson Hancock who also wears a professor of visual anthropology hat (and is an amazing photographer himself) will be moderating the discussion afterwards. The talk is part of the ongoing Artists Talk on Art series. Annoyingly there is an entry fee, but it's worth it to hear Lisa speak. If you don't believe me, check out what Holland Cotter has to say about her work.

Info:

School of Visual Arts
209 E 24rd Street, NYC
Auditorium
Friday 7:00 PM, doors open at 6:30
$7 General Admission
$3 Students
SVA students

For the last several months I've been working with my friend the gallerist Jen Bekman on a project called 20x200. It's about getting high quality prints from emerging fine artists and photographers out into the world in a way that makes sense for the artist, for the buyer, and for the gallery. We're in preview mode now, but starting next week we'll be fully launched, shipping prints, and introducing two new editions per week... Please check it out and let us know what you think. We'll be tweaking and polishing based on your feedback...

Marcel Dzama's folkloric history of downtown NYC

Love downtown NYC?

Then head on over to Get Lost: Artists Map Downtown New York, an exhibit at the New Museum

(via youngna's del.ico.us feed)

Although I'm generally not big on conceptual art, I've had a soft spot for the work of Keith Arnatt since discovering a zine-like book of his images many years ago in my college art library. The book, consisting mainly of people being buried in one way or another, was unexpected, amusing, and compelling.

The Photographer's Gallery in London is running an Arnatt show through September and if there are any English readers of this blog who want to win my eternal gratitude, I'd love to be sent a catalog (catalouge!), a postcard, or even a review of the show...

Continue reading Keith Arnatt »

Someone who calls himself foxhat13 emailed and asked:

"Is your interest in emerging artists limited to photography or do you look at painters as well? If so do you have a couple of names for me. [clip...] Also I'm moving to New York August 15th. Do you have any tips on how to find good artists?"

The truth is that I don't keep up with the non-photography parts of the contemporary art scene as much as I'd like to. If you were to press me I might mention someone like Natalie Frank. Critics imply she can't help but give into her pre-raphaelite urges to make things visually lush, but that's exactly what I like about the work... the thumbnail on the top of this post is one of her paintings. It's titled War. These are best seen in person.

I also like many artists like Rachell Sumpter whose work has a lighter feel, but is witty, relevant, and sometimes happily subversive. The piece below is titled Baghdad Boogie.

And then there are artists like Yang Shaobin who has recently been making portraits of miners in China (he's not exactly an emerging artist but...) who I admire but never think I'd like to own one. That's how I decide if I really love something. The desire to possess is my ultimate approval stamp.

As for finding out about new artists the easiest thing to do is to wander around NY with a gallery guide, mark the galleries you like, get on their mailing lists and start going to shows. And then of course there are scores of art blogs. One of my favorites is paintersnyc (2 of the artists above were blogged on paintersnyc) . The artists highlighted usually have new shows and the blog always inspires fun comment threads.

I painted (badly but of course with great enthusiasm) when I was in my 20's and in my own life the collection of specific paintings that mean something to me is much larger than the collection of iconic photos with similar impact so perhaps I should pay more attention to painting... and yet I can't help shake the feeling that contemporary painting forms almost no imprint on culture at large, that the canon is ossified, and that what's left is artists making art for each other or to be hung above sofas in fancy apartments... My wife says that today everyone thinks of themselves as an artist or a potential artist which might be part of the problem.

The reason photography is so exciting is that the canon—especially the art photography canon—is still largely unwritten. Photography is a medium in it's infancy and its artists don't suffer the weight of history nearly so much as those who paint. Also, perhaps just perhaps, because it transforms easily into bits to be seen on computer screens photography has a chance of staying relevant in a world less interested in the work of people who do something as archaically wonderful as putting paint on canvas.

"Why? Who cares? Who doesn't care? Dada is dead. Or is Dada still alive? We cannot revive something alive just as we cannot revive anything that is dead.
Is Dada dead?
Is Dada alive?
Dada is.
Dadaism.

Man Ray
July 8 1958"

The original handwritten note and an extensive archive of Man Ray images can be found at the Man Ray Trust.

Have you ever met anyone who didn't love Brancusi's sculpture? I never have.

One of my favorite Brancusi facts is that he considered his careful photographs of his sculpture just as important as the sculpture itself. What I didn't know until today is that he was an avid self portraitist...

Another bit of fascinating Brancusi trivia (involving Edward Steichen) can be found in this blog post titled: Bird in Flight, Brancusi, & US Customs law.

I've included an additional self-portrait of Brancusi (as well as one of a young Edward Steichen) after the jump...

(All these self portraits were found on the Réunion des Musées Nationaux photo site. Start at the portfolios link to sample the scope of the collection).

Continue reading Brancusi Self Portraits »

A video posted by autistic woman titled "In My Language" has sparked lively online debates on personhood, the essence of language, and the nature of her condition (some claim that someone who expresses herself so clearly can't be autistic). While these debates interest me, they weren't the questions that came to my mind on seeing the video. Instead I was fascinated by purity of experience it portrayed, a kind of purity most often seen in children, and which artists are always talking about trying to reclaim: a state of elemental awareness, an almost painful sensitivity to the world...

Last weekend 60 minutes profiled Daniel Tammet, a savant who was able to recite pi to 22,514 digits (it took him 5 hours), and was able to learn conversational Icelandic within a week. Unlike most other known savants, he can interact fairly normally with other people in everyday social situations. And unlike most other savants he can narrate his mental process. Numbers for him aren't abstract things, but objects with mental geographies, "Every number up to 10,000, I can visualize.... [each] has it's own color, has it's own shape, has it's own texture," he explained in the interview. He spoke of the beauty (and ugliness) of numbers and illustrates their forms as landscape-like paintings.

I believe savants are not much different that the woman in the first video, it's just that the focus of their intense gaze happen to to have practical application in our world—descriptions of numbers versus descriptions of water or some other more ineffable obsession. The cerebral wiring that allows this focus, limits human interaction. Daniel Tammet for all his startling abilities can't remember faces a few hours after meeting a person, instead he memorizes the number of buttons on a coat, or the count of stripes on a shirt, but even so Tammet is unusual amongst autistics. He can have human relationships. Most severely autistic people have trouble relating to anyone. What "In my Language" was saying, I thought, was that this was ok. The author wanted no pity. Her life is not empty, her gestures are not randomness, or madness as is often supposed by outside viewers, just the opposite, it is a life emotionally overfull- her brain is saturated with dense thought much of it beyond our comprehension.

Most anyone who has dabbled in the arts, I think, can relate to these inward impulses. We become immersed in the clarity of a particular interaction, in the love of the word, in an idea, in a particular emotion, or in a fleeting vision and the artistic instinct is to fix time telegraphing the moment so it can be remembered. We live for those moments of heady transparency when the mundane veneer of our lives is peeled back to reveal something extraordinary. But of course usually we fail even at holding on to the thing for ourselves. It is the rare individual who can marry impulse, idea, and technique to produce something that allows us to peek into that hidden world of extravagant beauty surrounding us... Despite our clumsy fumblings the important thing I think is to try. Because in trying we build bridges between the worlds and we become more adept at living in them both.

Related: Tammet on Wikipedia (contains many other links)

The Metropolitan Museum is displaying a must see exhibition of portraits from the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. The show is titled 'Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s' and runs through February. The New York Times ran a nice review of the exhibition this weekend rightfully highlighting the Otto Dix portrait above titled "Lady With Mink and Veil". The review speculates "the image may depict one of the many war widows who turned to prostitution to keep afloat."

A book of the exhibition is available from the Yale University Press.

The artistic culture of Weimar Germany always fascinates and looking at the images one always wonders what happened to this rowdy saturated world; what were the stories of the sitters in the years that followed? Many reviewers then and now, call these portraits grotesque, but I wonder if the artists artists saw them that way or if they were celebrating the extreme in the manner of Almodovar or Diane Arbus, only in a more extreme political climate...

More reviews: New York Magazine, DP, CultureGrrrl

In case you haven't discovered it, UbuWeb is an archive of avant-garde and outsider arts, a rich repository of films, mp3s, papers, and images. The ubu film archive is a particular favorite with films by everyone from Duchamp to Leger to Rauschenberg.... My only complaint is that films are sometimes presented very small and in mac-unfriendly formats. Avant-garde film not your thing? Head over to the 365 days project which includes 365 outsider mp3s. There is bound to be something that delights. Start with Muhammad Ali singing Ali's Historical Theme Song (download songs by clicking the mp3 document icon).

My friend Julien is an equal opportunity offender and one of my favorite people on the planet. His play THE BEASTLY BOMBING
or A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love opens September 29 for an eight week run at the Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles. From the title you've probably guessed it's a terrorist farce told in the manner of Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Several songs from the production are available on the website. I suggest you start with The House of Saud. If you are in LA don't miss this show.

everyday
A few weeks ago I wondered if Noah would ever turn his 6 years worth of photo-a-day's into a movie...now he's done it. The results are hypnotic...and a little bit sad. The video covers January 11, 2000 - July 31, 2006.

These are the original stills and this is Noah's excellent portfolio site.

Artist Ahree Lee took pictures of herself everyday from 2001 to 2004 and edited the results together as a movie, a clip of which became popular on youtube. The original can be seen in it's entirety (after an annoying long ad) on atom films.

Noah, it's time to make that movie...

More obsessive photography and time related projects can be found at c71123.com.

This recreation of Ole Worm's one room museum by artist Rosamond Purcell pretty much made my day. (via the Kirshner Society) Images of Museum Wormianum always seem to inspire a certain gothic sensibility in artists.

From a radio address by Albert C. Barnes on the establishment of his foundation.

"Stated in simple language, the fundamental ideas of our educational program are:

Art is not a phase of life apart from work-a-day world, to which one may turn in moments of leisure or perhaps in the name of so-called 'culture', or in a spirit of worship. In the Foundation's courses art is taken out of its usually detached, esoteric world and is linked up with life itself, because all the qualities which give painting its value are those which are found in various phases of everyday life; and art has value only because it expresses those qualities. In other worlds, 'art is a fragment of life presented to us enriched in feeling by means of the creative spirit of the artist.'

We do not teach students how to paint, for that would be like teaching an injured person how to scream. We teach them how to learn to see; that is to perceive the meanings in events of everyday life, as well as in paintings, sculpture, music, furniture, objects in wrought iron, trees and flowers.

We try to eradicate the almost universal, bad, confusing habit of looking at a painting for what it is not intended to be - information about subject matter, reminiscence, likeness to familiar objects, etc...

We endeavor to create new habits of perception by means of objective observation of the relationship of line, light, color, and space that constitute form. We study the artist's language and how at all periods of time it has been affected by his environment in other words, we study the great traditions."

More about the Barnes foundations in this episode of Weekend Edition aired a few years ago. On an stranger note it is said that Barnes' ghost still wanders the halls of the galleries he built.

I remembered this portrait of Mark Ryden when reading this essay on artist portraits in the Village Voice. I've seen Ryden in person a couple of times and he was always somewhat non-descript. The portrait tries to create mythology... and perhaps it is successful because now when I see a Ryden image I instantly picture of him in his studio by that portrait of Lincoln... Similarly while reading the article I could only think of one or two iconic images for each artist mentioned. For me the same is true for musicians whether they be Billie Holiday, Hank Williams, or the Cramps. For each, one photograph eclipsed all others creating an indelible image in my head. This holds true in the personal sphere... My Tia Elva will forever be in her flowing wedding dress, her stern rancher husband standing uncomfortably behind her... I wonder if, in this age where digital images are so cheap, where so much of our lives are catalogued, whether this phenomenon still holds true... Perhaps our own personal iconic images are just that, the pixel icons we use onscreen to represent ourselves... Sad really. They seem so small.

I don't know anything about her, but any artist with a yeti fixation is cool with me. Enjoy the art of Megan Whitmarsh. She also makes short films.