Steve Aishman Photography: Recent Episodes
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The Aishmans' Summer Movie Review
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Quicktime version The Aishmans' review movies on a flight to Korea.
Confessions of an Art Nerd
Throughout my life I have been called a nerd.
This has always been fine for me because I am a nerd. In fact I am multiple types of nerd.
To make things a worse, I seem to live in a perpetual state of Nerd Rage.
Statements that have sent me into nerd rage:
"Greedo shoots first." (SW nerd)
"Selig should overturn Joyce's call to give Galarraga the perfect game." (Sports nerd: not considered a type of nerd by many, but should be classified with other nerds.)
"Mac servers are now more stable than UNIX servers." (Tech nerd)
"Dio didn't invent the "devil horns" hand gesture, it was Motley Crue."(Metal nerd)
"The 1969 Mustang's engine is as well built as the '69 Charger's." (Car Nerd: again, not considered a type of nerd by many, but should be classified with other nerds.)
"Tasha Yar died for no reason." (Star Trek nerd)
"Pine is fine for most furniture needs."( Carpentry nerd.)
"Gimli was just there for comic effect." (Middle Earth nerd)
"Granule fertilizer works as well as liquid fertilizer." (Gardening nerd.)
"The Silver Line can get you to the Airport as fast as the T."(Boston nerd)
"X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a pretty good movie." (X-nerd)
"Baldessari Sing's Lewitt" has proven to be more influential than "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art." (Art nerd)
For some reason, very few people admit to being art nerds. I once called someone and art nerd and she was truly offended.
"I'm not a nerd, I'm a curator." she replied.
"Yeah, I pretty sure that's just someone who is a paid to be an art nerd." I said.
I have witnessed far more nerd rage over art than Star Wars.
I have seen two people, both in thousand dollar Gucci shoes, yelling at each other at an opening that Damien Hirst is crap (the strange thing is that they agreed with each other, just the extent to which he is crap!) I have seen two art historians almost come to blows over whether or not Hill and Adamson's calotypes of the village of New Haven in 1843 should be considered documentary work.
An opening is nothing more than a meeting of art nerds.
The Venice Biennale is the art nerd version of Comic-Con.
Big Red is New England's art nerd forum.
If you have any example of art nerd rage, please list them in the comments below.
"Baldessari Sing's Lewitt"
Han shoots first
Some texts I or my friends have received during or after art openings.
In no particular order.
1)This work is so bad. This wine is so bad. So many reasons to puke tonight. I'm going to puke tonight. Just puked.
2)Opening's warming up, a tranny just got here...
3)Artist statement is hippie crap all "harnessing positive energy". Fuck positive energy. I choose drinking instead
4)is your mom at the gallery?
5)Ha. Yes. I ditched the openings. I'm at a strip club. I'm the barack obama of strip clubs
6)Why'd you bring her here? Your girlfriend is such a south jersey whore
7)I hate your face. I heard we made out
8) you never wrote back on my facebook wall
9) I quit. all artists suck. signing up for eharmony. Don't judge
10) Fucking hipsters really piss me off man. They are just such punk as bitches, all of them. Oh, and fuck Ed Hardy too.
11) That's just how i roll, and this dress she is wearing is dirty and needs to get pulled over her head.
12)Can't get out of the opening. Every time I try to leave, I have to say bye to someone else for like a 5 min. conversation.
13) yo i stole a wine glass from the party next door but i spilled wine on my hundo dolla shirt
14) this art is predicting the future and apparently in the future we'll all be gay
15)I mean a good dj is a huge turn on
16) your dad is the best wingman ever
17)you dirty dirty liar I like the way you twitter
18) we're facebook friends in real life
19) You'd love this place it's beautiful. Plus these people smell like garlic
20) Needless to say when I told my parents they loved me less
21) Homeslice needs to figure out he's so 2006
22) So I'm looking at this sculpture and some guy came up looks at my boots and goes, "you should've got the boots with the fur"
23) WTF is with this opening? We are surrounded by old people. Heavens waiting room for sure.
24) I'm so fucking centered right now
25) I'm gunna smoke cigs today. I feel like I'm in that powerful and gritty mood which requires them
26) she has a tiny mouth but huuuge vocal chords
27) I took shrooms and thc before coming out, but its okay i'm surrounded by freaks
28) I only want to know people that are dynamic intelligent and totally insane
29) Those kids are glorified dude-bros. It's banal.
30) More tranny stories later!
31) Why do girls always cry in front of galleries? Are they having an exestensial crisis at the gallery?
32) I wish I could punch you in the face.
33) if you dont talk to me in person you cant text me
34) You're mentally unstable and I would hate to be you
35) Ppl just aren't as funny as we are
36) the sham wow guy got arrested for beating up a hooker.
37) It's not a performance piece. Its a bunch of hippies dancing in front of a stobe light. For ten dollars I could have gone to the strip club and at least had a lap dance
38) Youre a pretentious asshole and im not sure who you think you are. Get the hell over yourself and the self righteous culture snob image because its pretty obnoxious.
39) This gallery smells like vodka and shame
40) remember facepaint boy? turns out it stains. aaaand i have it all over my face and neck.
41) i'm pretty confident that i watched a woman making love to a german shepherd.
42) Ha. No worries! So loud here &god I love drag queens! How does it happen, the congealing?
43) Real busy. everything is packed. thats why we ended up at the strip club
44) I'd rather drink alone in my closet than hang out with that artist
45) that chick doesn't look like she's put anything in her mouth for weeks other than his dick.
46) Cool, I just put that together. I didn't know if using a tie-died sub machinegun was too crazy
47) A big part of growing up is learning how to tastefully stare at women
48) No one appreciates an amoeba in a balloon hat.
49) I wish my penis had an off switch
50) I'm pounding a vodka drink as we speak to make her interesting
51) I hate you but I'm not in hate with you
52) Drawing on your hand and calling it art is crap!
53) Well I thought that next 8 ball would either kill us or turn us into Gods
54) she asked me if the dress made her look fat, i told her no - the fat made her look fat.
55) im ready to get crazy and take my wig off
56) Any chance you got 3000 bucks on you?
57) someone just threw a dead crab at me
58) it was nice. we just kind of hung out. she didnt even mention the farting incident.
59) Holy cold harsh reality of bad art batman
60) It really wasn't that bad. Well, it was pretty bad, but only in 3 second bursts.
See more texts from last night here
Do you have some texts from art openings that you'd like to share? Add them to the comment section:
The Sham Wow Guy:
A Brian Berman Furry Photo
The Budget Biennial
By Steve Aishman April 25, 2010
JP Morgan is where Jesus saves. Sometimes
I buy RH Quaytman’s work and the rest
of the Whitney. It’s not for sale. No sound
to hear in this grab ass scene. Gary’s so broke
he buys pot by the pound. I’m Rihanna’s rebound.
That's not my gun? The Bruce High Quality
Foundation is not God’s own creation.
The Museum is broke! We’re shakin’
in shit! There’s no architecture to see
in Frecon. Hell, I eat paint like Bacon.
It was love at first sight, so I looked again.
Art is for shoppin’, we poppin’ champagne.
This show is a joke, this show is on crack.
When you spend more, you’ll earn more cashback.
Charles Ray is chokin’. It's intoxication!
Don’t give a damn ‘bout my bad reputation.
Francesco Bonami can’t find the new,
so when I drink, I drink Mtn Dew.
Suzan Frecon, embodiment of red (soforouge), 2009.
While on a hike in the deep woods of Brooklyn, I found some split open trash bags with paper pouring out. Covered in dried blood and with multiple missing pages, I saw it was a journal/tactical notebook/garbage. Here is some of the reconstructed text as far as I could assemble it:
Modernist Painting and the Undead Plague
By Dr. Hide and Mr. Greenberg
1960/2010
Modernism includes more than art, literature and zombies. By now it covers almost the whole of what is truly alive in our culture and with the recent resurgence of walking dead; most of what is undead in our culture as well. It happens, however, to be very much of a historical novelty as most of civilization is now in full decay due to the rapid speed at which the plague is spreading. Western civilization is not the first civilization to turn around and question its own foundations, but in a desperate attempt to understand how things could have gone so wrong, Western civilization is the one that has gone furthest in doing so. I identify Modernism with the intensification, almost the exacerbation, of this self-critical tendency that began with the philosopher Kant. Because he was the first to criticize the means itself of criticism, I conceive of Kant as, the first real Modernist and either the first zombie killer or in fact, as some have surmised, the patient zero of the zombie plague that currently threats all of civilization.
The essence of both Modernism and the solution to the zombie plague lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of undead extermination to criticize the discipline of zombie killing itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of death dealing competence. Kant used logic to establish the limits of logic, and while he withdrew much from its old jurisdiction, logic was left all the more secure in what there remained to it. However, history has now shown that Kant himself was blissfully unaware of the true power his incantations held and only generations later when Kant’s words were twisted and perverted by mystics like Schopenhauer and Sorcerer Supreme Nietzsche did the undead throngs begin to erupt in numbers to great to be stopped.
How can we forget “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of the Undead” were Nietzsche wrote:
“The extraordinary courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer have succeeded in gaining the most difficult victory, the victory over the optimism concealed in the essence of logic—an optimism that is the basis of our culture.”
It was soon after Nietzsche’s declaration of the victory over optimism, the reports of walking dead in the local paper rose from a few occasional sightings that were frequently confused with people who were simply depressed or feeling ill; to the full blown plague of undead we now have to deal with on a daily basis. (Where they have come from is still not known, but the fact that their appearance so closely matches with the writings of Nietzsche who maintains a quasi-mystical control over the mindless zombies from beyond the grave, cannot be coincidental.)
The self-criticism of Modernism grows out of, but is not the same thing as, the criticism of the Enlightenment (The Enlightenment is the name historians have given to time directly preceding our Modern, zombie-plagued era when lycanthropes ruled the world through brutal, feral force. It was brave French revolutionaries who discovered that the only way to effectively kill the shape-shifting monarchy was to cut of their heads while they were in human form. Many revolutionaries fell before the claws of Louis XVI and his she-wolf bride Marie-Antoinette before the cursed family found their heads beneath the guillotine.) The Enlightenment criticized the ruling werewolf clans from the outside, the way criticism in its accepted sense does; Modernism has no choice but to criticize from the inside because most of society is now part of the zombie plague we are in fact trying to eradicate. It seems natural that this new kind of criticism should have appeared first in philosophy since most of the first zombies were philosophers who fell prey to their own dark magics, but as the 18th century wore on, it entered many other fields. A more rational justification had begun to be demanded of every formal social activity, and Kantian self-criticism began infecting and turning every other discipline.
[Pages too covered in blood to be read]
Zombie hunting in its latest phase has not abandoned the notion that zombies can be turned back into functioning human beings. What both Modernist painting and the art of zombie killing have abandoned in principle is the representation of the kind of space that recognizable objects or the undead can inhabit. To achieve autonomy, culling the undead has had above all to divest itself of everything it might share with normalized society that seeks to care for its sick and weak. The plague can not be turned back by trying to help those that have been turned and are now mindlessly undead, but must instead rely on the retrenching in the essence of the art of zombie killing set forth by those French that ended the age of “Enlightenment”: beheading. The undead are easily tricked, confused, trapped, hacked up, stabbed, lit on fire, and otherwise mangled, but only beheading truly represents the “pure” essence of zombie killing.
[Pages too shredded to be read]
Postscript (1978)
I want to take this chance to correct an error, one of interpretation and not of fact. Many readers, though by no means all, seem to have taken the 'rationale' of Modernist art outlined here as representing a position adopted by the writer himself that is, that what he describes he also advocates. This may be a fault of the writing or the rhetoric. Nevertheless, a close reading of what he writes will find nothing at all to indicate that he subscribes to, believes in, the things that he adumbrates. I in no way am implying that anyone’s head should be cut off. The writer is trying to account in part for how most of the very best art of zombie killing of the last hundred-odd years came about, but he's not implying that that's how it had to come about, much less that that's how the best art still has to come about. The philosopher or art historian who can envision me -- or anyone at all -- arriving at such violent judgments in this way reads shockingly more into himself or herself than into my article.
Jackson Pollock shortly before being eaten by a Zombie wedding party.
Blood splatters on paper
Jackson Pollock, Untitled (Green Silver), ca. 1949. on Paper
_________________________
Clement Greenberg's original "Modernist Painting" 1960 from which this was mashed up with zombie nonsense.
It’s a 13-hour flight to Dubai.
Not the kind of travel to be taken lightly but worth it for the experience of Art Dubai. For visitors like me, Art Dubai represents more than the other fairs like the Armory Show or Miami Basel because the fair was the best excuse I could come up with to visit the Middle East. Like all art fairs, Art Dubai was primarily focused on sales, however, there was a consolidated effort by the fair to extend beyond the walls of the fair itself in order to become an entire art world event representing the region as a whole. Proof of this was in the number of the auxiliary programs, the many parallel events in the city that were directly supported by the fair, and the “Global Art Forum” lecture series that made the fair feel less like a sales driven event and more like an all encompassing cultural event. Art Dubai fully supported the Al Bastakiya Art Fair, the one official fringe art fair, by running a bus between the fairs and encouraging all visitors to spend time at both fairs. Art Dubai even ran programs in other cities like tours of the Sharjah Museum, or programs in Doha. The fair fully supported the START program, a Middle East based program that helps orphans, refugees and street children in the MENASA (Middle East North Africa South Asia) region, through creative development. While at the fair, I participated in one of START’s programs and helped introduce local autistic children to art-making and the fair itself.
While the fair is not in charge of what any individual gallery chooses to show, there were some excellent pieces on display. Some of the highlights included El Anatsui’s “In the World But Don't Know the World” piece at London’s October Gallery booth. El Anatsui’s metal sculpture made from tens of thousands of bottle-tops that evoked sublime awe at its sheer enormity while also provoking a dialog about the cultural, social and economic histories of West Africa.
By far, the most provoking and stimulating piece at Art Dubai was created by the winner of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, Kader Attia and his curator Laurie Farrell. The Abraaj Capital Art Prize provides $1 million dollars in funding to three curator/artist pairs from MENASA to produce unique pieces for Art Dubai. Algerian born artist Kader Attia and curator Laurie Farrell produced “History of a Myth: Le Petit Dome du Rocher” which is an installation based in deep understanding of history and philosophy. In the piece, the viewer enters a darkened room to see a live camera feed projecting a sculpture of a bolt and nuts enlarged many times its size. The projection of the sculpture evokes the architecture of the Dome of the Rock and in so doing refers to Arab-Muslim history and all of the complexity of issues that surround representations of that history. The most amazing part of the installation is that it is an installation that cannot be accurately described in words, but a viewer must be in the room itself to feel the piece. Throughout the installation, there is a gentle breeze and sounds of nature that are subtly vibrating the sculpture and thus the projection as well. Kader Attia’s piece provides a peaceful space of contemplation where the viewer can mediate on the myriad of issues surrounding historical, architectural, political or aesthetic interpretations. The piece is simultaneously peaceful and provocative, troubling and soothing, pensive and visceral. Creating a piece that refuses to fit into any preconceived binary is definitely a piece that should not be missed.
Next year’s Art Dubai fair should be even bigger and more comprehensive than this years and is definitely worth 13 hour flight.
Kader Attia
History of a Myth: The Small Dome of the Rock, 2010
Video installation
© Photo: Alexzandra Chandler
Courtesy of Abraaj Capital Art Prize
El Anatsui
"In the World, But Don’t Know the World?”, 2009.
Aluminium and copper wire, 5.6 x 10 metres
Video of Steve Aishman at the VIP Patron's Preview of Art Dubai
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
-Emerson
I have never been able to throw. And I mean anything. I can’t throw a baseball, tennis ball, Frisbee, whatever. Don’t ask me to toss you a pen or a coin because you’re likely to have to spend more time reaching under the couch to try to find it than just asking me to walk it over to you. It’s also rather dangerous asking me to throw anything in your general direction because I could put your eye out, the eye of the person next to you or just break a lamp. I don’t even try to play sports where I have to throw because everyone just gets frustrated with me as they have to continually jump over fences or run across roads to retrieve my horribly targeted missiles. Dogs don’t even want to play catch with me because it is simply no fun.
However, I love to watch the Red Sox. I love watching Pedroia or Youkilis make perfect throw to first base and just beat out a runner by milliseconds. The problem is that now I have to apologize for enjoying watching someone make a great throw. I have to say something like, “I know it’s just a game, but I find it exciting and uplifting”. If I don't, someone will attack me. Someone will say something like, “That’s stupid.” “Baseball is a waste of time.” “If you like baseball then you’re clearly sexist.” Etc. Etc.
It used to be that enjoying something was a good thing. I remember when having a hero was something that was encouraged. Now if you say anyone is your hero, it opens up a floodgate of ridicule. A hero should be someone we can admire without apology, but most people have secret heroes. People we aspire to be like, but don’t dare tell anyone about.
The art world is a good example of this. Who would say that Damien Hirst is their art hero? He’s hugely successful and influential, but to say you want your career to be like his is an open invitation to being attacked. Marina Abramović’s show at MOMA just opened and it will feature a performance piece that will be the longest that she has performed a single solo piece. I would love to see the piece, but I would never say that a performance artist is a hero of mine because so many people hate performance art (usually without seeing it) and it takes too long to defend why I love performance art. This year’s Whitney Biennial is filled with great artists, but it is dangerous to say that you think of any of them as an art hero.
It’s possible that there are no more art heroes (or maybe heroes at all). No Michelangelos or Rodins who it is ok to call a hero in the art world. Someone to draw inspiration from … Someone to aspire to …
Is there someone you consider your art hero?
Someone you feel you don’t have to apologize for liking?
If so, please list them in the comment section.
(And if you’re really bold … leave your name!)
Marina Abramović
Damien Hirst
So I’m looking at Titian’s “Venus and the Lute Player” when I overhear a discussion being led by a teacher and some students:
Teacher - “What do you think this painting is about?”
Student A. – “It seems to be about whether beauty is better apprehended through sight or through sound.”
Student B. – “I think it’s just another example of pre-19th century art that assumes one single point of view of what beauty even can be. I mean seriously, another nude white woman as the object of beauty …”
Student A. – “I think you’re confusing social commentary with art. The piece is not supposed to be social commentary, it’s supposed to be beautiful. You can’t just substitute aesthetic beauty with irony and call it art the way a lot of artists try.”
Student B – “That may be true, but all standards of judgment are based at least in part in some kind of cultural bias. Beauty maybe the most biased of all and so without framing Titian’s biases we risk marginalizing and silencing virtually everyone else’s concept of beauty.”
Student A- “But it is too easy to just deconstruct the piece that way. Anyone who isn’t smart enough to build a building can spend their whole life simply burning them down. After deconstruction, there needs to be re-construction.”
Teacher –“So what can we do now to acknowledge the insight that all judgments are relative and context-dependant but still be able to move forward and appreciate this work of art?”
Student B –“ Why don’t we just use relative terms where the standards of judgment are not unilaterally applied as they were in the past, but explicitly stated and acknowledged to be immersed in the culture in which they arise.”
Student A –“ So we integral mode of criticism that includes context as an essential part of any judgment. Thus we can judge a piece based on the notion of beauty that exists in our culture. This allows me to make the judgment that Titian’s “Venus and the Lute Player” is more aesthetically beautiful than Duchamp’s “Fountain”. I can even go on to say that it is probably as provocative and controversial about notions of beauty because it does pose the question: Which is more beautiful, visual art or music?.”
Student B –“That sounds fine as long as everyone understands that the hierarchy you just created is inherently value free and that it is context driven. It has to be acknowledged that you are working with a continuum of sliding judgments and sliding contexts.”
Teacher – “Exactly, then we can move forward by understanding that we are no longer evaluating work based on one single standard, but there are some standards that have to be framed before the discussion can really begin.”
Titian’s “Venus and the Lute Player”
Duchamp’s “Fountain”.
“Art writing that attempts not to judge, and yet presents itself as criticism, is one of the fascinating paradoxes of the second half of the twentieth century." James Elkins
In 1970, Edmund Burke Feldman wrote a book called “Becoming Human Through Art” that proposed four elements of art criticism:
1. Description
2. Analysis
3. Interpretation
4. Judgment
The Feldman method of art criticism begins with description, where the art critic uses neutral language to describe 1. recognizable subjects, 2. visual elements and their qualities (form), and 3. technical qualities of a work of art. The second part of art criticism, analysis, consists of describing the relationship among the things that were previously listed. Interpretation is where the critic infers what the connections between various visual elements mean. Finally, judgment is where the art critic makes a statement about the value of a piece of work based on a stated context.
The central element of Feldman’s methodology of art criticism was the notion that clearly grounding criticism in a philosophy of art would allow the art critic to justify critical judgments.
Feldman used three types of art philosophy as examples of how to use his method of art criticism:
A. Feldman identified Formalism as an art philosophy that evaluates work based the importance of the formal qualities and the visual elements of art. Therefore, a formalist art critic will focus their criticism on the visual elements of a piece. The formalist art critic rejects interpretations that rely on symbols, subject matter, previous knowledge or viewer’s life experience and will judge the piece based on technical execution and visual organization.
B. Feldman identified Expressivism as an art philosophy that evaluates work based on how well it accomplishes the goal of communicating a specific set of ideas. Therefore, an expressivist critic would evaluate a piece based on its ability to arouse emotion.
C. Instrumentalism evaluates work based on the importance of the social intention of the work. Therefore, an instrumentalist critic will evaluate a piece based on how well it serves social institutions like the church, the state, business, politics, etc. and will reject art that develops from or depends on other art as inferior and self-serving.
Feldman’s goal in outlining his method of art criticism was fundamentally for educational purposes. Feldman once said, "what an art teacher does - whether in art appreciation or studio instruction - is essentially art criticism. That is, art teachers describe, analyze, interpret, and evaluate works of art during the process of instruction." (Feldman, Some adventures in art criticism, Art Education : Journal of the National Art Education Association, p.24)
For most of the artists I know that occasionally write criticism as well, Feldman’s basic concept of art criticism as a part of education still holds true. Artists write about art in order to learn more about their own practice and to codify their ideas. The act of analyzing someone else’s exhibition forces artists/writers to look much longer and harder than they might otherwise and to form connections they might not have seen. To a large extent, Big, Red and Shiny was founded on the notion of artists writing about art in order to improve their own practice.
It seems the goal of art critics who are not also artists may have a host of other goals. Some of the goals I see expressed in other art critics include:
- Art Criticism for Philosophers: The desire to pioneer and delineate a new art philosophy. In other words, the desire to expand from Feldman’s three basic examples to employ new philosophies. (Arthur C. Danto seems to be an example of this type of critic.)
- Art Criticism as Literature: The desire to use a work of art as inspiration for developing well-crafted or innovative writing.
- Art Criticism as Politics: The desire to make a political statement through art criticism.
- Art Criticism for Money: Participating the written branch of the economics of the art world.
- Art Criticism for Fame: Writing so people will recognize the writer.
- Art Criticism as part of Advertising: Writing to increase viewer participation in an exhibition.
Of course this is not an exhaustive link and most art critics have multiple goals as well. There are a number of websites that explain how to write criticism like eHow and others. But none of them emphasize the fact that goal of the writer should be clear. Similarly, the art philosophy or philosophies that the critic is using should also be clear. It should also be clear to the critic who is writing that it is in the area of judgment and application of art philosophy where reader of the criticism will either choose to enter a dialog about competing art philosophies or the discussion will descend into name calling. Any perceived crisis of art criticism seems to rest in the pularistic notion that opposing art philosophies can both be grounded in the sound application of equally empirical philosophies to works of art. When two equally grounded philosophies attempt to engage, the result can frequently descend into a cacophony.
So, for anyone interested in writing art criticism for any reason, know this: If you write criticism without judgment, it’s not criticism. If you choose to judge, back it up with a sound philosophy of art. After you publish what you write, get ready for someone to hate you and try to keep your philosophy down by yelling louder.
If you can think of any other reasons for writing art criticism or any philosophies that extend beyond Feldman’s examples, please post them in the comment section.
Good luck,
Steve
Some Critics
Danto
Krauss
Hickey
Artists and giving to charitable causes seem to go well together. The biennial ARTcetera art auction is a great example where Boston’s visual arts community has donated artwork and time to support the AIDS Action Committee since 1985. There are, of course, numerous other examples of charity art auctions across the globe for virtually every type of charity event. Most art auctions are supported largely by artist or collector donations and while every art auction is different, the quality of art and artists represented can be world class. The (RED) auction in 2008 raised $42.6 million to fight AIDS in Africa by auctioning works from artists like Banksy, Julian Schnabel, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Whitechapel Gallery’s charity auction in 2006 raised $5.2 million by auctioning works donated by artists like Carl Andre, Christian Boltanski, Angela Bulloch, Sophie Calle and many others.
Unfortunately, art auctions can also be sub-par displays of works that collectors or artists are trying to get rid of.
The reason why art auctions are popular and frequently successful is primarily because people want to donate to a cause, but also want to take something tangible home with them. Over the next year, charity art auctions to help Haiti will probably begin to pop-up as people stop donating directly to emergency aid foundations. So far, I have only seen one art auction where any artist can easily donate work to aid Haiti at:
http://140hours.com/
I don’t know anything about this auction or the people who are running it, so I can not recommend that anyone participate with this particular auction in anyway, but I can support the idea of artists donating work to charity art auctions for Haiti as a whole.
However, if you are an artist or collector who is asked to participate in a charity auction for Haiti, please do not contribute sub-par work. If every artist or collector donated excellent work for charity auctions, then people will be much more like to participate in future auctions.
If you know of any charity art auctions for Haiti, please list them in comment section. (Of course I can not vouch for anything posted in the comment section; always beware of donating or working with any charity.)
Banksy/Hirst piece sold at the (RED) Auction for $1,870,000 USD
TAKASHI MURAKAMI piece sold at the (RED) Auction for $1,650,000 USD
Top Ten Bad New Years Resolutions for a Stereotypical Artist
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Don't roll eyes at people who ask if all my clothes are black; just accept that they are jealous and move on.
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Stop worrying if smoking is killing me; Europeans have always smoked and they're all hot and skinny.
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Don't listen to my mother who keeps “worrying that I’ll always be poor”; realize that I’m a Bohemian - a nuanced class of poor.
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Less showers and more deodorant will save money on water bill.
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Try to get to most or all of my court appearances this year.
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Don’t get fired from more than four jobs this year even if my boss is nothing more than a wage-slave to the capitalistic pigs that own the corporation.
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Cut back on drinking to just lunch, dinner, after dinner and late night.
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Try to have most of my artwork done at least by the opening of the exhibit.
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Stop feeling bad when gallery owners say that I’m “hard to work with,” they secretly love the drama anyway.
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Try to convince at least one person that I’m not elitist, no matter how stupid, provincial, uncultured, uneducated, ignorant or boring they are.
Happy New Decade!
A typical Bohemian
Pigs from "Animal Farm"
The Storm and the Sculpture
The snowman is the quintessential piece of vernacular sculpture. True, people who don’t consider themselves artists also make sandcastles, bonfires and even Christmas lights can be viewed as vernacular installation art, but the snowman seems to hold a special place in both sculpture and culture as a whole. How many other types of sculpture have their own fully developed mythology with movies, books, songs, sub-characters, spin-offs, etc.? No one has ever heard of Sandy the Sandcastle Queen, but everyone can hum along to Frosty’s theme song. The snowman sculptural phenomenon is easily attributed to marketing for the holiday season (especially since Frosty was originally a Rudolph spin-off, who everyone knows was a Montgomery Ward marketing ploy), but snowmen are far more complex than other elements of the holiday marketing push.
Snowmen appear to be vaguely figurative and can be anthropomorphized, but it is easy to argue that snowmen are their own concept that actually has little to do with being a representation of a human. Ever seen a realistic snowman? Hyper-realistic snowmen are no longer snowmen, but rather figurative sculpture that happens to be made out of snow. Snowmen follow their own sculptural tradition that is always paired with social ritual. Ever made a snowman and then not come in to have hot chocolate? It would border on sacrilegious. Snowmen also function best as a communal sculpture-making endeavor since making a snowman alone seems to miss one of the purposes of why snowmen exist. Making snowmen is a winter bonding ritual between friends and family. For some children, finally being old enough to be allowed to participate in making the annual family snowman is a rite of passage.
Maybe people hold a special place for snowmen because they directly evoke complex associations with our own mortality. All snowmen are made with the knowledge that they will melt. Paradoxically, if snowmen lasted forever, no one would make them. They are made to have temporary lives; to die at the end of the season and then be re-born the next year.
Such a simple sculpture holds unbelievable meaning in our society. One of the most relevant elements about snowmen is that they are fun! Not many pieces of artwork can hold so much meaning while also creating so much pure joy and pride, no matter what the outcome. Every snowman I have ever made has been a complete failure and I have loved every part of them. Every photo album I have has a picture of my sister and me next too a terrible snowman made mostly of dirt and sticks; both of us with huge grins of pride.
The storm hitting New England right now will spawn armies of snowmen and I know I am looking forward to driving around and seeing as many as I can.
If you make a snowman this year, please take a picture of it and post a link to the picture in the comment section.
Frosty
Figurative snow sculpture or snowman?
A snowman like the kind I make
Somewhere along the way, rules got a bad name.
People began to associate rules with authority and oppression of freedom.
Rules are now seen as antiquated obstacles to individualism and progress.
Artists in particular decided that following any rules meant total subordination of personal liberties to potentially dangerous social institutions. Artists now fear that if any rules are allowed to even be uttered without immediately being contradicted, that there will be a return to social domination like the infamous degenerate art exhibition of 1937 or Lenin’s Izo-Narkompros where totalitarian social institutions attempted to dictate the rules of art for everyone in society.
The notion that rules can function as efficient ways of passing knowledge that require judgment before following and not blind adherence seems to have withered as fear of totalitarianism has risen.
A total rejection of all rules is fueled by fear. Fear of loss of individuality, fear of loss of freedom, fear of loss of the notion of self, fear of loss of liberty, etc. Perhaps the fear is well founded, or perhaps there is nothing wrong with rules as long as the focus is on judgment, not adherence.
Rules are _not_ meant to be broken; they are meant to be guides that the informed can choose to follow or break depending on the situation, not just always broken.
Here are some rules that may evoke vehement objection or vigorous endorsement. Either way, they are not meant to apply to every situation all the time. They are meant (as all rules are) to give a framework for the application of judgment.
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Be careful with irony in e-mails.
If someone is carrying a heavy package, hold the door.
Avoid gossip.
Don’t text while driving.
Don’t pose for a photo with a drink in your hand.
Facebook should not be used for a therapy session.
Keep e-mails short.
Let passengers off the train first before you get on.
Don’t forward hoaxes.
Re-size pictures before putting them in e-mails.
If people follow you on Twitter, it's polite to "follow" them back.
Don’t give your business card to just anyone.
Never ask someone if they are pregnant.
Have nothing to do with standing ovations unless a performance is actually close to a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Don’t hand out a postcard for your opening at someone else’s art opening.
Be on time.
Don’t walk into a gallery with your portfolio.
Replace your divots.
Don’t sabotage other’s efforts at creativity.
Be accountable for your actions.
Don’t send invitations to people who don’t know you.
Don’t be social in the bathroom.
Try to offer seats to those who you think need them.
What’s rude in life is rude on Twitter.
If you are in a store to use the free Wi-Fi, buy something.
Try to avoid interrupting conversations.
No matter how well trained your dog is, put your dog on a leash when near strangers.
Avoid profanity.
Don't spam.
Exit taxis on the sidewalk side only.
Always be kind to the wait staff, no matter what happens (and tip well).
Don’t buy purposely loud motor vehicles.
Don’t litter.
Don’t talk on your cell-phone in the checkout line.
The food at art openings is not a buffet.
__________________________
If you can think of any you want to add, please add them in the comment section.
Adolf Hitler and Adolf Ziegler visit the Degenerate Art exhibition, 1937.
Protesters outside the courthouse in 1990 protesting “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment” exhibit in Cincinnati.
Information has evolved into a new species of garbage.
The entire concept of someone who is “informed” has changed and now fragmentary 140 character lines of text pass as communication. It is not that this new breed of information is false that is the issue, but rather it is an illusion of knowledge.
We are all watching as knowledge is drowning in a river of irrelevance. There is constant stream of data flowing from one communication device to the other without picking up value along the way.
Sci-fi novels of the 20th century did not anticipate this 21st century state of reading. Bradbury and Orwell taught us to fear totalitarian governments that wanted to burn books, but no one warned us about the general public expressing their freedom to write so much that nothing would be worth reading.
This century’s dystopia novels will be populated by people who read and write all day long, but somehow they know nothing. People who are continually informed and yet have no information. The heroes of these novels will be underground rebels who insist on writing and reading more than 3 lines of text. They can have clever names like Edmund Spenser or Milton Vyasa and these new logos-heros will insist on things like news outlets that pay for and conduct thorough research. Inevitably the next generation of dystopia novels will conclude with death by communal distraction.
This new species of information is worse than being deprived of information because information has become a plague. The more you read, the less you know.
Tyranny is no longer required for the ruin of a society; the freedom to pursue an infinite appetite for distractions can do the job more efficiently. Included in this is the distraction of continual creativity without rationality or analysis.
A 14 year old girl is reported to have sent 35,463 text messages, or about 1 text message a minute in the month of June 2008. “The Old Man and the Sea” only has 27,315 words. The texter in question has stated she texted that much in one month because she was at cheer camp. It seems safe to say that while she wrote more than a Hemmingway novel in one month, the level of valuable information transmitted was probably significantly lower.
The antidote to the venom of cultural distraction is to return to state where reading is considered a serious business. Where the goal of information transfer is no longer quantity, but quality.
It is now November; ticket buying season for Miami Basel even in a down economy. All of the fairs can be followed on Facebook or Twitter:
Pulse on Twitter
Pulse on Facebook
Art Miami on Twitter
Art Miami on Facebook
Miami Basel on Twitter
Miami Basel on Facebook
Aqua on Facebook
Etc.
Etc.
I take these modes of communication seriously. Why would I follow Miami Basel’s Twitter account? Because I want to see if the fairs will be worth an investment in a trip this year. I expect the information they post to actually be valuable. I expect to see exhibitor lists. I expect to see performance art schedules.
But I am already wrong.
One of the fair’s tweets already says, “See you out there!”
It was not worth reading.
It was information evolved into garbage and I was its garbage collector.
I have faith in a return to the seriousness of reading, but I expect it will be a while.
-Steve
Me in Miami Basel 2006
Morgan Pozgar, age 13, is officially the LG National Texting Champion
P.S.Follow me on Twitter or Facebook
OMG LOL
This is a news report and criticism:
On Sept. 29, Boing Boing blogger Xeni wrote a criticism of this Ad by Ralph Lauren:
stating,"Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis."
Ralph Lauren's law firm has now threatened to sue the ISP of the website for use of an "infringing image" and sent them a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice. Copyright law clearly outlines "fair use" as including work reproduced for "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
So here is the simple question, does copyright law give people the right to threaten critics? Even if Xeni is ultimately proven protected under copyright law, BoingBoing, the ISP and Xeni all have to pay a lawyer in order to respond to the take down notice which has a very clear and formal procedure of notice and counter notice (Chilling effects explains the procedure here). Of course this is Ralph Lauren ultimate strategy because in the future, critics will be less likely to criticize their brand because the cost is not worth it.
In fact, if Big Red and Shiny or anyone else that reproduce my blog, runs the image, they may receive a take down notice and have to hire a lawyer to reply to it, ultimately not making this report worth running.
What about galleries, museums or artists that don't want negative reviews of their work? They can all send take down notices and effectively grind all criticism to a halt. In theory, as both a critical and news reporting publication, Big Red should be able to take any image from anywhere and reproduce it in any critical or news reporting article that is about the image. But in reality, Big Red has to be very careful because some images are simply not worth the required response to a take down notice.
Everything Ralph Lauren is doing is legal, just as it is perfectly legal for me to reproduce the image for reporting purposes on my blog and on Big Red. I say if every blogger joins with Xeni and BoingBoing and reports on this image, Ralph Lauren will be the one who can not afford to pay their lawyers to send out take down notices to everyone. As an added bonus, more people will see how terrible their ads, products and corporation are for our society.
So please, write a story about this image on your own blog. You can even take this whole article and reproduce it if you want with your own comments or criticism. I don't care, and trust me, I will not threaten to sue you for copyright infringement.
If you are a lawyer from Ralph Lauren, please send the take down notice to: saishman@blogger.com
Thanks and I look forward to the lawsuit,
Steve Aishman
There once was an artist from Boston
Who searched all the way to Austin
“Where is the art?”
He said with a fart
“If this country had balls, we have lost them!”
-A limerick by Steve Aishman
You shouldn’t be reading this in front of your computer.
People have a tendency to keep their computers in clean rooms like offices or on desks with flowers and potpourri.
This article should be read in your basement or in the archive section of the library.
Somewhere where dust mites thrive.
This article should be read somewhere that people try to avoid or cover up with a Glade plug-in.
Somewhere with history you can smell, but not nostalgia.
I’m not talking about nostalgia.
In the 19th century, nostalgia was considered a disease and its “symptoms” included despondency, melancholia, bouts of weeping, anorexia, and suicide attempts.
There is enough nostalgia and more than enough articles discussing how smell links us to the past.
I’m talking about a smell that snaps you into the present.
Like when you enter a room and you just know it is full of newspapers.
Or that it used to be a gym.
These are smells that make us hyperaware of our senses and more grounded in the present while simultaneously informing us about the past of a place.
Very few artists work with smell and I’m not sure why.
This weekend I saw Radcliffe Bailey’s piece “Storm at Sea, Chapter Three” at Solomon Projects in Atlanta. The piece is comprised of thousands of piano keys, a plaster bust, glitter, and silver candelabra. The problem in describing the piece on the Internet is that only a small part of the piece is visual. It’s easy to write about the intellectual elements of the piece like how the piano keys read as a link to jazz music while visually mimicking a wrecked ship in the gallery. It’s easy to write about how Radcliffe Bailey’s work is multi-layered examination of African American cultural history that reveals a deep understanding of how the past influences the present. What is hard is to evoke the visceral feeling of the piece that is only experienced when the piece is seen, smelled and heard.
Thousands of piano keys in a room have an overwhelming smell that is the grounding smell I am trying to describe. They also produce a palpable silence as the piano keys that were originally intended to make music, have been rendered eternally mute.
The smell of the gallery immediately makes the viewer’s senses hyper aware in the present, but the musty smell of the keys also speaks about the past. Radcliffe Bailey’s work is perfectly represented in this piece because his work deals with issues of African American history, but ultimately, the work is about providing an awareness of the present.
Because of the multi-sensory nature of the piece, it requires viewing in person. Hopefully, Radcliffe Bailey’s work will come to New England soon for more people to experience.
Radcliffe Bailey
Storm at Sea, Chapter Three (detail), 2009,
piano keys, plaster bust, glitter, silver candelabra
So the other day, I was at the Museum and I overheard two people talking about a Georgia O’Keefe.
“Oh they are clearly vaginas,” said one person.
“No, they’re just beautiful shapes and colors based on flowers, you’re imposing something that’s not there,” said the other.
“Well, flowers are sex organs, so work based on sex organs will always be suggestive, right?”
So I decided to try and find as many suggestive nature pictures as I could find on the Internet.
As usual with my column, I’m not sure if what I have compiled is an art piece made from appropriated materials, an editorial commentary, or just a form of pornography.
Enjoy.
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I'm often reminded of artist George Vlosich's work.
You're not familiar with his work?
He's one of the most written about artists of our generation.
The You Tube video of him making his work has been viewed over 1,600,000 times.
His art work has been featured in national press reports on CNN, World News Tonight, BBC, etc.
He even got to meet President Clinton and VP Gore while they were in office.
George was also featured on Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
You see, George Vlosich makes celebrity and sports drawings with an Etch-A-Sketch.
The first time I saw his work I was at a party held at a friend-of-a-friend's house when a report on his work came on. Everyone stopped in amazement to watch him make an Etch-A-Sketch drawing of a basketball player. When it was over, someone said, "Now that's real art. You know, something that takes skill and hours of labor. I know I couldn't do that because I don't have the patience."
I think I evaluate George Vlosich's work as a balanced between the questions of "how hard was it to make" versus "how much of this is just media sensation"?
Here are some other pieces for your judgment:
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Santiago Sierra's 21 huge blocks of human feces that were shown at Lisson Gallery in 2007.
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World's largest photo
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CNN report on a college student who used post-it notes to make a portrait of Ray Charles
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Micro-sculptor Willard Wigan who made sculpted the Lloyd's Building so it fits on top of a pin.
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Justin Gignac's New York City Garbage
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César Saez' Banana Over Texas work.
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Scott Wade's Dirty Car Art
8.Tim Knowles tree drawings.
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Steven J. Backman's toothpick art.
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and finally, George Vlosich's work.
Please feel free to post your opinion on any of these artist's works in the comment section:
Click to Play Heidi Aishman views her work at Peabody Essex Museum for the "Trash Menagerie" exhibtion
Interview with Jane Winchell