Plagues & Pleasures
Art as Authority
A contemporary, sometimes historical, art, social, political, blog in and around the art world and its artists. Poetry, litterature, commentary, images, music, books, life... Et aussi, un peu de la culture Française et ses artistes contemporains. A place to come to read, relax and contribute your ideas and projects.
février 04, 2010
janvier 24, 2010
The Problem of Contemporary Art
by Richard Gleaves
In the context of reviewing the current show at MOCA, ArtScene writer Mario Cutajar sidehands some acute insights for the benefit of artists, critics, and galleristas who find themselves unhappy with their current place in the world:
This imperative to ceaselessly produce stuff and fill ... large empty spaces ... is for me one of the most oppressive features of contemporary art…
I cannot help but think that this horror [of empty spaces] that drives artists to incessant production is the apprehension that the time of art is over. Duchamp announced as much with his ready-mades but we’ve pretended that those were just provocations. We’ve read Walter Benjamin on the death of the aura and technology’s reduction of art to distraction.
But the aura of the artwork, which was its connection to the sacred, couldn’t be allowed to evaporate because, strangely enough, art cannot be commodified without some remnant of the sacred remaining associated with it. The paradox is that we need art to have something like a “soul” in order to trade it at a price above what mere goods fetch.
The last purchase that art had on something resembling spirituality was through the much-abused notion of criticality. That too is now used up thanks to the postmodernist conflation of critique and complicity.
And despite attempts to reinvent the idea of community through subcultural affiliation, community would seem to require a foundation that exceeds the atomizing power of capital, which ceaselessly uproots and disperses people...
The larger question of what art’s purpose might be beyond amusing jaded rich people or contributing a veneer of [civic] sophistication ... will remain.
This should not be seen as a manifesto to commit identity suicide and take up volleyball, but rather as a call to think and think hard about all aspects of your practice, and then strive to ensure that none are based on the boatload of received ideas that pass these days for art.
One possible art centers on the idea of user experience — a kind of interactive participatory static theatre — which can be pursued in venues as large as the Jacobs building, or as small as a zine. In such a paradigm the traditional art object assumes the role of recyclable prop. But this is only one of many possible approaches: the important thing is to pursue a practice that actually fits with what's happening today in your life, in your society, on your planet.
décembre 26, 2009
The Future of Art Publications
by Kevin Freitas
I was recently asked by Patricia Frischer and SDVAN (San Diego Visual Arts Network) to give my thoughts on what the future of art publications might be for all of us that still read them. Several other arts writers were also asked to contribute to the discussion, they were: Robert Pincus, art critic for the Union Tribune; Keli Dailey, SignOnSanDiego; and Seth Combs, CityBeat. You can read all of our predictions on Frischer's A+ Art Blog which can be found here. Is there a future? Let us know.
décembre 14, 2009
YTPMV
YTPMV is a subgenre of YouTube Poop which uses the traditional YTP source material as a basis for composing original music.
Unlike the makers of classic music videos, YTPMV artists compose all aspects of their work: sound and image. They also take great pains to distinguish their work from the more popular AMV genre, which overlays pop songs with anime imagery.
YTPMV music itself hews closely to pop forms, but it's user-generated and (in the spirit of YouTube Poop) splats vast amounts of energy.
novembre 16, 2009
How to Kill a Rothko
by Richard Gleaves
Rothko's a must-see, but like Martin or Turrell you've got to show up in person — photos steal their soul.
Which brings us to American Artists from the Russian Empire — currently showing at the San Diego Museum of Art — and its promise of a Rothko experience to anyone who shows up.
The promise is false: the Rothkos at SDMA are entombed in glass which throws up a shiny reflective surface in front of the picture plane, obscuring the essential Rothko magic (which normally happens 1 to 100 feet behind the picture plane, virtually speaking).
So what to do? Go to SDMA for the Tchelitchews, two alarming exceptions in an otherwise staid show of period art.
Then art run to LA to see Collection: MOCA'S First Thirty Years — not only does it have more and better Rothkos, but they're crucially in the buff.
octobre 16, 2009
Debating the Exhaust Pipe of a Hummer
by Richard Gleaves
septembre 26, 2009
Esthetic Vandalism, Source Material, Subconscious, Free Art, Economic Viability, Gift of Anonymity, Hack Artists, and Damien Hirst’s Pencils.
by KAI ONE
Every second the art world breathes in another minute of life, one young person at a time. Every time a television clicks off or property is vandalized you are hearing the sound of our collective esthetic palette expanding whether you like it or not. This new generation of artists, art critics, and art collectors emerge as the youth shy away from vacuous commerce and slave labor crafted objects of fetishism. Perhaps pigment marking surface is now morally superior to Nike Airs made in sweat shops by nine year old girls. When I was a kid I coveted all sports card ephemera. I was only mildly interested in the sports themselves but the cards, banners, magazines, games, toys, and other collectibles delighted me. These objects of worship were also worth big money at the time and I acquired them like a cutthroat stock trader. I would hustle my less knowledgeable classmates out the choice shit because I had done all my home work. They invested their allowances in cards and I invested mine in the card price guides. As soon as the bottom fell out of the cards market I quit collecting them and left all of my prize cards in the bushes of the mall after being told by the card shop that they wouldn’t buy any of them back. It turns out that if I had held on to them about 15 years later (now) they would be worth a lot of money.
septembre 24, 2009
It is what it is — Quint at 30
by Kevin Freitas
The chaotic, haphazard and bizarre nature of modern art is easily explained: The painter finally settles for whatever satisfaction may be involved in working not as an independent member of a society that needs him, but as a retainer for a small group of people who as a profession or as a hobby are interested in the game of comparing one mutation with another.
— John Canaday (former art critic of the New York Times)
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
— Claes Oldenburg
By now, though, let's hope you are convinced that you need to see this show for yourself. It isn't to be missed, even if you have only a casual interest in contemporary art.
— Robert Pincus, “It starts with a good eye: Mark Quint's 30-year gallery history is richly dotted with highlights” SignOnSanDiego, September 3, 2009.
Preface
If you are not already immersed in its functioning, much of the art world can resemble a micro-industry supported and continually inflated by a host of individuals and entities who are willing to give lip-service and their last breath to keep it afloat, but for whom the “power of art” has been discarded in favor of a model defined by status, power, money, and social networking. Reform is needed in these parts, much as it is in any other industry or governmental agency that is more often than not flailing these days. While it is growing increasingly difficult to differentiate between what some might call standard practice in the art world and what good is being done by those who still believe art is important, I would argue that this schism is having a significant effect on the types of shows being organized, the artists chosen, and the internal complacency that sometimes exists between institutions. As a result, the public’s interests get neglected and their public trust in an institution can be jeopardized.
Detail of Olive Branch Rorschach, © 2008 Roman de Salvo. Courtesy the artist. Quint: Three Decades of Contemporary Art, California Center for the Arts, Escondido.
septembre 22, 2009
Social Sculpture
by Richard Gleaves
Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate is arguably the most successful public sculpture in the United States today. It draws the same number of annual visitors as the Statue of Liberty and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, yet derives its appeal solely through aesthetic pleasure not historical content. In short, it's a people magnet.
Accounts of the work uniformly cite its mirrored surface as the active ingredient — which it is — but then settle for comparisons with funhouse mirrors or the joy of narcissism.
While it's true that the work's close-range perceptual narrative initially engages the viewer in mapping themselves in a nonstandard visual field, that convex surface does a curious and wonderful thing: it visually situates each viewer not only in the context of the transformed landscape, but also — and more crucially — in the context of all the fellow viewers of the sculpture.
The movement of those others animates the surface in a way that could never be achieved by a single viewer... and animation (in its core cinematic sense) is the foundational property of our popular art.
septembre 14, 2009
Harry Bertoia
by Richard Gleaves
Harry Bertoia is best known for his Diamond Chair, one of the icons of Mid-Century modern design.
But Bertoia was also a sculptor, and beginning in the early 1960's he focused on sound sculpture to the extent that his sculpture evolved into instruments for making music, qualifying Bertoia as the plastic-arts obverse of Harry Partch (an American composer who in pursuit of his own music invented instruments so eccentric as to qualify as sculpture).
In 1970 Bertoia released a set of LPs containing original music he created playing his sculptures. The LPs — collectively titled Sonambient — anticipate by almost a decade both the sound and title of Brian Eno's highly-influential Ambient albums.
One of Bertoia's sound sculptures can be found in Chicago at the north end of Millennium Park, on the corner of East Randolph Street and North Columbus Drive.
The work in question exhibits far more sensitivity to site than the money-shot sculpture Chicago's famous for.
août 19, 2009
Anna Zappoli Jenkins
by Richard Gleaves
I.
I've been friends with Anna for easily fifteen years. She paints: canvas, wood, paper, flowerpots, construction walls, pretty much anything she can get her brushes on. She never stops.
The painting above is on bubblewrap: it's big, about five feet square. The first time I saw it I nearly jumped out of my shoes. The thing radiates light — the photo doesn't show this; no photo could.
août 12, 2009
Like a rolling stone
by Kevin Freitas
The following is a philosophical reflection on the manner in which we collect things, whether it is art, souvenirs, or stories. In doing so, we reveal to the world how we picture ourselves through the lens of an inanimate object.
These thoughts were also reassembled under the auspice of a performance piece, held at Four Walls Gallery in San Diego, in December of 2007. The performance was entitled Collecting Dust and Other Things. Fourteen members, collectively speaking of course, willing participants in San Diego’s artistic community were reassembled over the course of a month for a series of interviews and discussions about their involvement within it. All the while having their hair cut in the gallery turned hair salon. The clientele was as follows: Patricia Frischer, Kevin Freitas, Michelle Robinson, Monica Hoover, Hugh Davies, David White, Kinsee Morlan, Emily Fierer, Lea Caughlan, Carly Delso-Saavedra, Betti-Sue Hertz, Larry Caveney, Doug Simay and Luis De Jesus. The interviews were then gathered into a limited publication, and I was asked to write the introduction which you will find in its entirety below.
Finally, this commentary attempts to put into perspective the roles and objectives of the performers who participated, in relationship to what is missing within their artistic community and their needs, along with possible solutions to satisfy them. I’m dusting this essay off so to speak because a lot has changed within the community since. A little more than a year and a half later, many of its members — in fact almost half of them interviewed — have left town or closed their operations. The battle for consistency and longevity is far from being won and considering current economic times, jobless rate, cash flow and the rest, it might be awhile before we start to re-build or continue to build San Diego’s arts scene.
The stats:
Four Walls Gallery closed last month.
Kinsee Morlan, CityBeat’s arts editor, moved to Colorado.
Emily Fierer, co-owner of Spacecraft Gallery in North Park, closed its doors months ago.
Lea Caughlan, President of the North Park Nights association and co-owner of the Rubber Rose Boutique — currently its sole proprietor — has been forced to cut her space down to 1/3 its original size.
Carly Delso-Saavedra left the Rubber Rose.
Betti-Sue Hertz left her job as curator of the San Diego Museum of Art. Her boss, museum director Derrick Cartwright, recently did the same.
Doug Simay, owner of Simayspace Gallery, closed its doors. However, I’m happy to report that Doug currently resides on the Board of the Oceanside Museum of Art.
Hugh Davies is still at the helm of the MCASD after 25 years, perhaps he should start thinking about taking up golf in Palm Springs.
And finally, Subtext a small gallery and bookstore located in Little Italy, after three years of being open to the public is now open by appointment only. I suppose this is to accommodate the working of a normal 9 to 5 job to pay the rent.
The rest of us thankfully, all of us I hope, manage to keep our activities both little & large, going.
Patricia Frischer
Kevin Freitas
Michelle Robinson
Monica Hoover
David White
Larry Caveney
Luis De Jesus
juillet 30, 2009
Castles Made of Sand
by Kevin Freitas
And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually..
— Jimi Hendrix
PART I
In his highly regarded and influential essay Relational Aesthetics French curator Nicolas Bourriaud summarized the eponymous theoretical framework as comprising the following elements: “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.” I experienced a whole different set of relational aesthetics a few weekends ago while attending The 29th Annual U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition.
Team Kyle’s Karvers - "Easter Island"
Others claim to have been relating for years and quite successfully to boot. I wonder however, if as part of a dedicated and self-proclaimed group of San Diego artists we don’t already have the tools necessary, sitting right under our collective noses, to turn our community around and put it on the Google map of cultural destinations.
avril 17, 2009
"Security for All" - Agitprop - North Park
by Judith Pedroza
When one has the desire to embark upon a life project embodied in art, the initial questions are:
Why do I want to work?
With whom do I want to share a direct dialog?
And which pieces would I like to put together in the same space to make a coherent art statement?
Orlando Díaz
(4) Artists
We have shared a myriad of daily-lived experiences: personal, generational, and contextual questions and insights. In a place like Mexico City we experimented with artistic resistance, growing up in the moment where an artistic scene was forming. Over time, we saw museums, schools, galleries, and collections emerge from the labored efforts of contemporary artists born and raised in the “city”.
thru April 25th, 2009
619.384.7989
Pincus review: here
Continue reading ""Security for All" - Agitprop - North Park" »
février 09, 2009
A World Not Unlike Our Own
by Richard Gleaves
In 1970 a graffiti culture emerged in New York. Less than a decade later the cultural practice had become an urban fixture, public scourge, and (not least) a full-blown art movement which in its stylistic innovation rivaled anything in modern art history.
The rapid evolution of graffiti art followed from a specific set of circumstances:
- Ready access to the necessary technology
- A medium uniquely suited to reaching a large and diverse community
- A team of dedicated practitioners driven by social ambition
- A core set of aesthetic values shared by the practitioners
Such movements are easy to recognize in hindsight — but spotting them as they unfold can be a tricky proposition, for two reasons:
- The practice often remains hidden from or inaccessible to potential viewers.
- The esthetics employed are insufficiently mainstream to be acknowledged as art.
Fast-forward to 2009: graffiti is now a standard tool in the arsenal of corporate marketers. But what rough art lurks out there, waiting to be born?
The answer, it turns out, is on YouTube.
septembre 08, 2008
What San Diego Wants - Part II
by Kevin Freitas
I went to the “Movers and Shakers” opening Friday night at Art Expressions Gallery, located off of Morena Blvd. in some rather remote light-industrial building complex. If success can be gaged by the amount of people who show up at a reception, then “Movers and Shakers” was extremely successful. ‘Twas elbow to elbow. I’m guessing, but there might have been a certain amount of star-struck curiosity in the air by the attendees, desiring as it were to get a glimpse of who’s who. Credit is due to Patricia Frischer and the rest of the organizing committee, who were able to turn out such a large crowd, given the difficulties of a last minute venue change.
août 26, 2008
What San Diego Wants in the Arts
by Kevin Freitas and Patricia Frischer
The following is an overview of 40 Movers and Shakers answers to, and our commentary on, the following question: "What is your vision for the visual arts in San Diego?" We've broken down the most popular responses under eight general headings. It should be noted that this isn't an exhaustive list of the Movers and Shakers who live and work in San Diego, and you'll certainly know of someone who was left out, though not intentionally. There was a certain amount of serendipity involved in the publication of this survey, as Patricia and I later discovered, we we're both concocting our own private versions secretly. Patricia, as one of the Movers and Shakers committee members, along with Patricia Smith - Debbie Linn - Denise Bonaimo - Mireille Des Rosiers - Dennis Paul Batt - Rosemary KimBal - Kaarin Vaughn, is represented in this exhibit of portraiture along with myself. I have over the past year or so, been involved in other projects organized by Patricia, and hope to continue to do so.
Thus, in the spirit of collaboration, and as something San Diegans wanted to see more of, we decided to put our collective minds where are collective hearts are and make those visions a reality. Acknowledging that they exist, helps us obtain them that much quicker. Kevin Freitas
It turns out we got more than we bargained for when we asked forty Movers and Shakers, “What is your vision for the visual arts in San Diego?” They gave a pretty precise view of their particular aspirations, seen by us as a larger reflection on what exists here already and what is ultimately needed.
août 06, 2008
Rubber Rose est mort. Vive Rubber Rose.
by Kevin Freitas
I was recently asked the following question: What is your vision of the future of the visual arts for San Diego? This is how I answered:
That San Diego becomes another pole or axis in the larger national and international wild world of art. That its public and tourist profile goes beyond a city for sea sex and sun, the Padres, Midway, ComicCon, and the Gaslamp. That there is more to San Diego than the weather and Cow Parade 2009. That the artists and individuals who have been working behind the scenes, come out and take the scene. How? By sharing what they've discovered with their peers. That a few select museums here rid themselves of anything remotely "bureaucratic" in exchange for independent thinking and a caliber of exhibitions that could rival the Pompidou - since we are afterall, talking about visions. And in turn, we would gladly exchange these past and present conditions FOR a future where artists want to establish their careers here first, L.A. and the rest of the world second, a responsive and informed public, support by artists for artists, card carrying collectors with ID that states "I belong, I buy art, do you?", the building of an international cultural center for exhibitions, dance, music and theater. And finally, San Diego becomes the west coast Miami/Basel in the international art fair arena. But more importantly, artists who make their home and art in San Diego, with all their unbridled freedom to create, must have the opportunity to do so through greener economic and collaborative pastures.
My response after several rewrites is nothing spectacular in itself, but is less critical than it had begun. I now regret not submitting the “original” version since within the same day, I received the following email from Carly and Lea, proprietors of the Rubber Rose Sexuality Boutique and Rubber Rose Gallery, located on Ray St. Why the regret, read this and remember what I said about “greener economic” possibilities:
Continue reading "Rubber Rose est mort. Vive Rubber Rose." »
juillet 28, 2008
Art as Combustion: Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" Under Pressure - Part 1
by Kevin Freitas
“People who tell us that the solution to our problem is drilling offshore are peddling our addiction,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “The drug is oil, and they don't want us to get off it.”
With the latest brouhaha in Congress over George Bush’s recent lifting of a presidential moratorium, established by his father George H.W. Bush in 1990 limiting offshore drilling along our southern coast and parts of Alaska, it doesn’t take an oil rigger to figure out that our dependency on the “black gold” and its derivatives permeates virtually every aspect of our lives. It affects us in our addiction to foreign oil, the prices we pay at the pump, how much heating oil we can afford to stock up on, and the candidate we will choose in this year’s presidential election. Lou Reed sang about another type of addiction, heroin addiction. Here’s a small excerpt:
Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, its my wife and its my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I’m better off than dead
Or out of gas.
Oil is America’s heroin. A habit no methadone or corn oil is going to replace anytime soon.
I don’t want to argue the pros and cons of oil dependency. I do want to see fewer Hummers on the road, and a few less Republicans steering this doomed Raft of the Medusa we call government. However, on a smaller scale, oil has seeped into areas of our lives we likely never even considered shoring up – our appreciation for art. And since I know more about art than I do oil drilling (not surprising), I would like to demonstrate how a public outcry earlier this year and a recent trip to the Great Salt Lake of Utah, increased my love for one and my distaste for the other. My thanks go to an iconic figure and his mythical artwork entitled “Spiral Jetty.” Who is this personnage? His name is Robert Smithson, artiste extraordinaire.
The Spiral Jetty
Continue reading "Art as Combustion: Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" Under Pressure - Part 1" »
Art as Combustion: Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" Under Pressure - Part 2
by Kevin Freitas
Robert Smithson on the Spiral Jetty:
My concern with salt lakes began with my work in 1968 on the Mono Lake Site-Nonsite in California. Later I read a book called Vanishing Trails of Atacama by William Rudolph which described salt lakes (salars) in Bolivia in all stages of desiccation, and filled with micro bacteria that give the water surface a red color. The pink flamingos that live around the salars match the color of the water. In The Useless Land, John Aarons and Claudio Vita-Finzi describe Laguna Colorada: ‘The basalt (at the shores) is black, the volcanos purple, and their exposed interiors yellow and red. The beach is grey and the lake pink, topped with the icing of iceberg-like masses of salts.’ Because of the remoteness of Bolivia and because Mono Lake lacked a reddish color, I decided to investigate the Great Salt Lake in Utah. [From The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt]
The Spiral Jetty spirals out from the shores of Rozel Point, located on the northeastern side of the Great Salt Lake, on the western side of the Promontory Mountain Range that forms a peninsula there. If you recall your American history, you’ll remember that Promontory was the town where the first transcontinental train passed, linking the west and the east coast, with one Golden Spike. The Spiral Jetty is located within the Golden Spike National Park just outside of Brigham City, Utah (about 65 miles north of Salt Lake City). The jetty shoots out from the bank into the lake, and coils left to right on itself for approximately 1500’ until it forms a spiral. It is roughly 15’ wide and is composed of earth, basalt rocks (deposited from the great Lake Bonneville Flood about 15,000 years ago), salt (from the lake), and the red algae water it sits in. It is stunning. It is also threatened by oil drilling.
Satellite view: Spiral Jetty on the far left, abandoned oil jetty in the middle, and part of the dirt road to get there, on the right.
Continue reading "Art as Combustion: Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" Under Pressure - Part 2" »
juin 08, 2008
Lions for Lambs - Art and Artists in the Public Discourse
by Kevin Freitas
The following essay is part philosophical, part query into the role of art and artists in today’s social and political climate. It is disguised as a movie review of a popular film, Lions for Lambs, which spurred its writing.
I watched the film Lions for Lambs the other night. Some of you know this film already, starring Robert Redford, a very tired and grandmotherly looking Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise. I’m not really a fan per se, of any one of these actors — except for having a fantasy once, of replacing Tom Cruise as Joel in Risky Business — particularly the scene at home, frolicking on the stairs with Rebecca De Mornay in tow. I also enjoyed the goading and inspiration Joel gets from Miles, his best friend in the film, just before the soon-to-be-called escort girl De Mornay shows up. It just might be a metaphor for life as well.
“Joel, you wanna know something?” Miles says. “Every now and then say, 'What the fuck.' 'What the fuck' gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future. If you can’t say it, you can’t do it.”
Ah Miles, you are so right! But I digress — on to Lions for Lambs.
Continue reading "Lions for Lambs - Art and Artists in the Public Discourse" »
janvier 31, 2008
Towards a Theory of Art
by Richard Gleaves
Contemplating the ineffable sublime: the human mind as a virtually infinite state machine, with any given culture mapping only minuscule subsets of the full state space (but different-enough subsets to make anthropology an interesting proposition).
octobre 02, 2007
David Adey - "Atomic Particulars"
Spacecraft Studio Lands in North Park - Part II
by Kevin Freitas
“A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.”
(Dr.) Victor Frankenstein
“I was benevolent, my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?”
Monster
"Lamb of Man" - David Adey
David Adey could be a modern day Dr. Frankenstein. He is very fond of the literary genius of Mary Shelley and I would imagine, fond of any work of genius whether it be in literature, art, music or relevant discipline if somehow he could break it down, dissect it, and put it back together into his own vision of order. The world according to Adey. He is not a dictator and this is not about power, it is about structure. Adey doesn’t give you much wiggle room when looking at his oeuvre; you’re almost always reacting to or against the very visceral content laid out before you. The work is emotionally charged and spiritually complex, it assaults the viewer’s sensibility by controlling the viewer’s intake of what is being looked at. It is sensual, deceiving, mischievous and humorous. It is also obsessive, maniac, and perfection at its core. It can also be process, repetition, manufacturing, design. It is Adey’s penance for having created so “many happy and excellent natures” that owe their being to him.
septembre 18, 2007
Spacecraft Studio Lands in North Park - Part I
by Kevin Freitas
"To boldly go where no man has gone before" is indeed a lofty mission statement by which most of us know by now is the stuff of science fiction; much like the exuberant proclamations of the Administration’s equally enthusiastic “The Way Forward” or “Mission Accomplished”. The upside of the adventures of Capt. Kirk and the USS Enterprise is that their journey has never really ended, boldly moving forward exploring every nook and cranny of the universe. The downside of the political quagmire we find ourselves in today is that we are truly stuck, hardly advancing and sinking deeper.
A bit like the current art scene here in San Diego, wouldn’t you say? There’s the stuff that floats on the surface, bobbing for attention and then there’s the stuff that is already starting to decompose, shedding its superficiality and exposing its heart and soul. Not all bad art sinks and not all good art rises to the top, it takes a certain blend of ooze, time, permutation and quality of the ingredients – yes, the good art – to get a residue worth staining the knees of your pants as you dig down to pull up some of that primordial muck we call art. (All allusions to Peter Morgan’s recent expo at Spacecraft is intentional) But where do you know to dig? Call it Lady Luck, the environment, experience or just plain boredom, call it what you want but sometimes you needn’t drive from Houston, Texas to Orlando, Florida to find what you’re craving for. Sometimes it’s bubbling right up in your own backyard and sometimes it just lands there.
Take Emily Fierer and Christopher Puzio for example. They land in San Diego, stardate 2003, but it takes a meeting of the minds in Boston so to speak, via a voyage on their way here plus a long layover in Detroit to make it happen – that is to say, the building and opening of their design firm and gallery known as Spacecraft Studio in North Park. It is an interplanetary adventure that merits a closer look.
Continue reading "Spacecraft Studio Lands in North Park - Part I" »
février 02, 2007
A brief history of feminism, Porn is good, and riding the third wave. Does F-O-U-R add up? answers at the Rubber Rose
by Kevin Freitas
"Presto" - May-Ling Martinez
There’s Rubber-hose cryptanalysis and the Rubber Rose boutique. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis is a euphemism for the extraction of cryptographic secrets from a person through torture by beating them with well, a rubber-hose. The term was apparently coined by Marcus J. Ranum within the sci.crypt newsgroup, “the rubber-hose technique of cryptanalysis (in which a rubber hose is applied forcefully and frequently to the soles of the feet until the key to the cryptosystem is discovered.” A process that supposedly takes a very short time, is relatively inexpensive to implement and highly reliable given the human being is often considered to be the weakest link in any forceful interrogation. The Rubber Rose Boutique, Gallery and Community Space on Ray Street has from all appearances, taken a much gentler safer approach to obtaining those very intimate cryptographic secrets from its clients. Safe is the new sexy.
janvier 23, 2007
Exposé part II - Tom Torluemke - his paintings
by Kevin Freitas
“The Secret Life of Salvador Dali,” published in 1942 against the backdrop of spectacular world events including World War II, the Sino-Japanese War, the Wannsee conference in Berlin which opened the doors to the Holocaust - to name but a few, Dali wrote a manifesto of sorts aptly entitled “My Battle” which wasn’t fought with the Allies against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan but was fought against conformity in any spiritual, philosophical or aesthetic form. It was one man’s fight against the Nine Muses or any Muse for that matter that threatened to level the battle field to a match nul.
"Self-Examination"
Continue reading "Exposé part II - Tom Torluemke - his paintings" »
janvier 08, 2007
Exposé - Tom Torluemke
by Kevin Freitas
I WAS recently asked by Linda Dorman and Tom Torluemke of Uncle Freddy's Gallery (Hammond, Indiana), to write an essay about Tom's latest paper installation work and current paintings, to be published in a catalog. Here is the following article and some of Tom's latest creations.
In AD 105, a Chinese official by the name of Ts’ai Lun, invented papermaking using textile waste and is considered to be the birth of paper as we know it today. Since then, paper has been used by artists, society, and the government as a very vital and necessary documentary tool that links us to a rich past and increasingly perilous future.
And herein lies the rub. A classic example and struggle between the old and the new, an industrial age versus a technological newer one, craftsmanship versus commercially produced, made in America versus made in China, Taiwan, India, Mexico ad naseum, outsourced jobs that lead to outsourced unemployment in foreign countries outsourcing further still to more cost effective foreign competitors with not surprisingly, lower labour costs. The list is long, yet we still all have a dream no? Is it uniquely an American dream?
janvier 06, 2007
La Cage aux Ours - Bear cage
by Kevin Freitas
As you might recall, the gallery in Brussels was situated at the corner of a rond-point. In most cities in America and abroad, areas designated as parks or thoroughfares or even major intersections and the town square are typically named after some famous war hero, general, president or "illustre inconnu" - my rond-point was no exception. However, as you'll discover in the following article by Paul Simonetti, the rond-point once named after a rather famous Belgium painter, Eugène Verboeckhoven, and was nicknamed otherwise during a rather heated race between the incumbent mayor of Schaerbeek and his political foe. The paintings shown are by Eugène Verboeckhoven; no, Dumbo is not to be found anywhere in the work.
novembre 14, 2006
The Death of Contemporary Art
While awaiting the opening of a new space for the exhibition of American and European artists, after just moving to Paris in 1994 and the closure of my gallery in Chicago (the Abel Joseph Gallery), I started a transatlantic journal of art - sort of like your modern day blog - that would allow me to continue to work with and expose the artists I had been working with in Chicago, and to find new ones in France and Europe.The name of the journal was La Lettre d'Abel - litterally "Abel's Letter" which was entirely typed, designed and photocopied by hand with each issue featuring a guest artist cover. Each issue was limited to 50 copies. It was an enormous amount of work, a true labor of love, that produced some interesting results. La Lettre d'Abel is no longer in production, perhaps it will someday see another edition run, but for the time being here is a sample of an essay written by Ron DeLegge - formally of Skokie, Illinois who now lives in my neck of the woods in Carlsbad, CA. The essay was written in 1998 as an insert to the fifth edition of La Lettre d'Abel (cover by Illinois artist Susie Brandt), modeled after the popular "Series Noires" of crime novels, mysteries and who dunnits in France. I will from time to time, post excerpts from the various letters for you're reading and visual pleasure.
juin 12, 2006
The Designated Voyeur
Richard Gleaves joins the editorial staff at Art as Authority. This is his first essay. We wish him "bon vent" and many articles to come. KF
The following images are commercial advertisements from recent mainstream publications (both print and online). The three exceptions - a 16th-century painting, vintage comic strip panel, and contemporary pornograph - are from art/performance web sites and John Berger's classic book Ways of Seeing.
The images share a common image schema, and the schema itself begs several questions regarding its apparent absurd meaning, its function, and above all its cultural persistence. For lack of a better term, the schema is called The Designated Voyeur.
mai 30, 2006
Masturbation is an Acceptable Virgin Activity
by Kevin Freitas
Michael Arata presents new work in the Chapel of Mary's Parents, San Bernardino CA from May 25 - July 29, 2006. Opening/Vernissage Thursday, June 15, 5 to 7pm
California State University, San Bernardino
Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum
5500 University Parkway
San Bernardino, CA 92407
Tel. 909.537.7373
For the occasion, Michael Arata has published a 24 page catalog of the works presented entitled "Virgin T's". Michael asked me to write the essay to accompany the publication which I glady accepted. You will find it below in its entirety with several excerpts from the catalog. Copies are available for purchase by contacting artasauthority@artasauthority.com Many thanks and gratitude to Michael for allowing me this opportunity.
FAITH FASHION
You shouldn’t believe that the T-Shirt you’re likely wearing right now is a modern invention. By today’s standards, a T-Shirt is a walking bulletin board with your favourite designer label silk-screened onto it. Michael Arata knows this already because ancient history taught him that the boys in marketing around the time that Jesus was dining on his last bit of foie gras, commonly referred to as the Last Supper, had an enlightening idea for Jesus’ resurrection. On the third day, Jesus rose with a T-Shirt made out of distressed cotton painted purple that said in Times New Roman: “I went to Mount Golgotha and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt”.
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mars 21, 2006
WAR, Part II
by Kevin Freitas
year anniversary of the war in Iraq, some prefer to see it as the three year anniversary of the Liberation of the Iraqi peuple, others still would prefer not to have seen it all – war that is. A civil war now in the making?, this apparently remains to be seen or announced officially, by the US government. With 30,000 Iraqi civilians (dead) since the liberation started in March of 2003 and 2,500 coalition forces (killed), it is indeed difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel and not the end of a long barrel pointed in your direction. Alas, this is war we’ve been told and lives we’ll be lost and sacrifices made. The President has promised to protect Americans at home and abroad [against terrorism], his number #1 priority and the thing that keeps him up at night. He has a plan and a strategy he says, otherwise he wouldn’t have put the troops in harms way. And so do we as artists, here at home and abroad, have a strategy? a plan of attack? to counter, to protest the spread of a Trojan Horse Democracy, put upon other foreign nations for the good and the ills of each country in the hopes of global peace and the end to terrorism?
mars 13, 2006
WAR, what is it good for? Absolutely NOTHING!
by Kevin Freitas
After 300 pages of gallery ads and publicity in a 324 page art revue, it left enough pages for 4 articles of which one was about the “Peace Tower” of 1966. If you haven’t guessed yet which art magazine I’m referring to, I’ll give you a hint: ARTFORUM. $8.00 for an art magazine that is the size and weight of a year end fashion roundup by Vogue. The following is a resume of the article in the March 2006 issue of ARTFORUM entitled Peace Tower - Irving Petlin, Mark di Suvero, and Rirkrit Tiravanija revist The Artists' Tower of Protest, 1966 Introduction by Jeffrey Kastner Photo collage - Charles Brittin, Dan Budnik, Newsweek Magazine
In 1966 “The Artists’ Tower of Protest” – or commonly referred to then as the “Peace Tower” – was erected in a West Hollywood neighbourhood lot at the corner of La Cienega and Sunset Boulevard. According to its founding member, Irving Petlin and the subsequent activist coalition he formed – Artists’ Protest Committee (APC) – the tower was erected as a
galvanizing symbol of dissent aimed at a government whose constant use of force and irresponsible tactics, as an APC broadside charged, undermined the role of international bodies the US had itself helped create, while acting to weaken and make hypocritical our struggle for freedom at home. Jeffrey Kastner, ARTFORUM
The Peace Tower’s builder was Mark di Suvero, the time is the war in Vietnam.
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