Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

Americans Coming Together’s art auction is online here. It’s worth a look (and of course, it’s worth your money). More on this on MAN next week.

Celebs in art. Kinda.

I’m back. MAN will have lots from Texas and New Mexico in the next week or two (including some news tidbits that you’ll read nowhere else… take that Carol Vogel!), including a Q-and-A with Fort Worth Modern chief curator Michael Auping and a couple of reviews. But first, here are some highlights from around the southwest. We’ll start in New Mexico.

(Admin note: Do I know why this is the only post on the page? Uh, no. But if you click on archives you can find the rest of August, etc.)

Best surprise: Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe. I know nothing about folk art, but I love looking at inventive, well-made art objects. This museum has lots of them, thoughtfully presented.

Best group show: SITE Santa Fe’s grotesque show. Curator Rob Storr’s exhibit is tight, never varies from its focus, and includes lots of strong work from artists I enjoy.

Worst biennial: SITE Santa Fe’s biennial, which included few new or commissioned works and lots and lots of work more than two years old. Let’s call it a sorta-ennial.

Best indication that a show is curated by a New Yorker: Rats on the outside of SITE Santa Fe’s building (a former beer distributor’s warehouse).

Favorite museum idea: Taos’ Harwood Museum provides folding stools for visitors to take with them through the museum and thus encourages visitors to find a few favorite artworks and to camp out in front of them.

Favorite museum idea, retro version: There are four Donald Judd-designed stools in the Harwood’s Agnes Martin gallery. The idea was Martin’s – she specifically requested Judd stools.

Favorite museum idea, lightbulb version: Each of the Harwood’s Martin paitings is lit with a single 40-watt bulb. Just that and some natural light.

Favorite work by an artist I’d never heard of: In the Harwood, a Charles Ross installation of 137 yellow, sun-scorched panels brings together the environment, a work of art, and natural processes.

Best reason to rethink an artist: Inka Essenhigh’s Chainlink Fence, 2004, at the SITE Santa Fe sorta-ennial. Essenhigh’s painting addresses a central issue of our time – who is free and who is a captive – and does it with a painting that is both flowing and tense. A smart, big-deal museum should snap this one up and get it on display as soon as the sorta-ennial goes down.

Favorite Peter Schjeldahl quote (from a talk in Santa Fe): “I distrust any work where the first thing I think about is how well it’s done.”

Favorite rejoinder by me: “Peter, what then is your first thought about John Currin?”

Favorite quick reply from Schjeldahl: “How astoundingly vulgar it is… [I see it hanging on a wall and I think] can you do that?”

Peter Schjeldahl’s Ten Commandments for Artists: “Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, don’t whine.”

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2004/08/27/magazine/20040829STYLE_SLIDESHOW_1.html

http://www.memefirst.com/000688.html

I enjoyed the Corcoran’s Sally Mann show. My thoughts are here.

Even a vacationing man cannot avoid the New York Times. (Or chooses not to.) So when I saw this, I knew I would blog about it when I got back. (Remember, MAN loves art theft stories.)

Quick intro: Munch paintings stolen in Oslo. New York museums react. Here’s the great quote from the NYT:

“At the end of the day, it’s just art, and you would not want someone to take a bullet for it,” one New York gallery official said. “There’s only so much you can do.”

Uh… it’s just art? Forgive my stupidity and perhaps I’ve spent too much time at altitude recently, but aren’t art museums all about preserving art for future generations? I thought it went without saying that a museum’s first responsibility is to its art, to its collections… and that they should do everything possible (short of taking a bullet) to keep art from being stolen.

Our guess: Something is about to happen in Barnes-land. When the president of the board of trustees places an op-ed in a major metro daily, it’s not usually because he’s feeling like joining the civic dialogue, it’s because something’s about to go down. (Of course we are talking about the Barnes here, where nothing the institution does makes much sense, so I’m probably over-reading this. Presidents of boards usually don’t bother with August op-eds either.)

My most favoritest paragraph is this one, which precisely zero percent of MAN readers will believe:

The Barnes is proposing to relocate its art collection to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for one overriding reason: to enrich the lives of tens of thousands of students from Philadelphia, the suburbs and beyond. At the same time, the Lower Merion campus will remain our home for research and horticultural programs – a “win-win” for all.

Right. And the millions of dollars and creating a tourist draw on the Parkway have not so much to do with it.

Also in Philly: The Calder Museum, on life support as recently as last week, appears to be in line for a major cash infusion from the state.

It’s vacation time. I’ll be back blogging on Aug. 31.

At the moment, the guest blogger plan is dead… but check back every once and a while. If the chap gets the institutional go-ahead, he’ll be here….

Cultural plundering is big business in Iraq. So big that it’s worth kidnapping over.

Had to do an Around the Blogosphere before I left! But first, for those of you who emailed me about yesterday’s post, no, Grace Glueck is incorrect. None of you non-Glueck guessers were right either. Hah! (I’ll try to catch up on email today.)

• At Ionarts, contemporary forest art. And it looks much better than it sounds;
• Towleroad, one of my favorite daily reads, discusses how classical statuary turned human turned TV censorship.
• Two of my favorite art-heavy blogs are Barry Hoggard’s bloggy and jameswagner.com. The two men, partners, are progressive activists as well as art collectors. Both are also just back from LA. Read the main pages and click through a few screens of archives, too.
• Dangerous Chunky has a lot of good stuff too, none of it permalinkable. (You should read her daily anyway.) Her first two posts, on slide projectors, are great fun.
• Iconoduel has been discussing the role a big art fair plays in a big city (in his case, Chicago). Would you believe budding scholars have written theses about art fairs? Are you paying attention Miami?
• Erik’s Rants and Recipes discusses Diebenkorn and his relationship to California and why he thinks NY’ers don’t get RD.
• Blake Gopnik’s Sunday proposal is being widely discussed around the blogosphere. (The soon-to-launch DCist here, Erik’s Rants here, Greg.org here, Anna Conti here, to name but a few) I wonder if Gopnik knows… I know a number of national and regional art critics keep a close eye on the blogosphere and love to watch what people say about them…
• From the Floor has three posts about the journey to Spiral Jetty. This makes Todd Gibson well-prepared for MOCA’s upcoming retro.
• Photography blogged at Coincidences. I can’t summarize the top couple posts quickly, but go take a look.
• A Leon Golub linkfest, at NEWSgrist.

MAN hears that this magazine (no, really, click on the link…) will soon have a story on the joys of taking your canine companion to art galleries.

Naw… we’re just kidding.

But we do hear that they’re profiling a major newspaper’s art critic and his pooch, a former Westminster Kennel Club best of breed (at left).

Whoops! Kidding again! (When we’re this punchy, it’s time for a vacation…)