Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

If Judith Miller finds a Museum of Atomic Testing, does that necessarily mean it exists? (I mean, we remember what Judi said about WMD in Iraq�)

That’s one of the very few questions raised by Wednesday’s NYT Museums advertorial section. (Moreso than past editions, this one is an advertising section with puff pieces written by the editorial staff.) Most notoriously, as I pointed out yesterday, is a preposterous story in which the MFA Boston’s rental of paintings to a commercial gallery in a Las Vegas casino is termed a “loan.” That story alone is proof that editors of the NYT are completely arts-clueless these days.

There isn’t a single hard-hitting story in the entire section. There are hints of newsy items �- notably a story that quotes Getty boss Barry Munitz saying, “We’re asking ourselves, does that pattern [of expanding and building satellite institutions] make any sense for us?” Do we want other sites? Do we want other partners?”

If one of the world’s richest museums is considering expanding beyond LA, that’s real news that should be explored beyond a pithy quote. But as befits a puff piece in a section full of puffery and art-is-good-for-you-and-don’t-you-challenge-it puffery what else would you expect?

An unquestioning Carol Vogel piece equates attendance at museum special exhibits with successful execution of mission. Museums should not exist to pack-’em-in as densely as possible. Museums, among other things, are havens for contemplation and enjoyment. Attendance should not be the only indicator of success.

SITE NOTE: Something’s gone a little screwy here, obviously. The post below this one is from November and five posts have disappeared. But here’s the re-created LACMA post:

LACMA is buzzing. MAN hears that the LACMA trustees just held an “emergency” meeting somewhere off-site. We also hear that it doesn’t look too good for LACMA boss Andrea Rich, but nothing has happened yet…

(And why should it? We also hear that LACMA posted this ad in The Art Newspaper without telling Broad. And we love, just love, that Peter Norton heads the search committee for the Broad Contemporary.)

UPDATE: I had the wrong prominent board member flying in from out-of-state. It wasn’t Broad.

As plainly as I can put it: The New York Times is completely, totally, 100% wrong when it refers to the rental of Boston MFA Monets to a PaceWildenstein outlet in a Las Vegas casino as a “loan.” It is not a loan, it is a rental. The Boston Globe calls it a rental, the LAT calls it a rental — among the biggies only the arts-smart-editor-lacking NYT still gets it wrong. We hear the NYT will name an arts editor any day now — hopefully it’s someone with a background in the arts (finally).

RELATED: Me on the rental and Boston’s ethical cluelessness, Christopher Knight on the rental (a semi-excerpt/something-or-other), questions for Malcolm Rogers.

UNRELATED: Google celebrates Van Gogh’s birthday. (He’d be 152, except he’s no longer alive.)

Artnet has the morning reads: Walter Robinson’s newsy Weekend Update and Jerry Saltz’ review of “Lesser New York.”

Artist Christina Ray is a MANfave going way back. She’s in residence at cherrydelosreyes in LA right now (literally — she’s sleeping in the gallery) and is blogging about it.

And speaking of artists who are showing in LA and who have websites, Katharina Grosse’s site is messy cool. Carol Es has a blog (and is new to the blogroll), too.

My Arbus posting last week drew so much post-reviews-more email (to my utter shock) that I decided to do it again. This is an excerpt from my Tim Hawkinson review, which ran on Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago.

When a visitor first enters “Tim Hawkinson,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, they are greeted by a room-sized sculpture. It features men, built out of polyurethane foam, apparently standing on the limbs of a tree made out of cardboard. Each of the figures appear to be holding some type of tube to various parts of their bodies. Only when someone walks into the sculpture and continues to move around it does an electric eye activate the art. Then the figures come to life, tapping hollowed out tubes to play a syncopated rhythm.

How often do you come upon an art exhibit and discover – in the first room – that if you walk into the art that it will respond to you? And that if you stop moving and stop interacting with the art, that it will hold still and stop interacting with you?

Such is the appeal of Hawkinson’s art, wonderfully presented by the Whitney and adjunct curator Lawrence Rinder. This exhibit has something for everyone, from young people receiving their first exposure to art to serious professionals who are usually above gawking and laughing in a museum. “Hawkinson” is a bit uneven in spots – in general the sculptures are fantastical and works that hang flat on walls are a bit inert – but I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun in a New York museum.

Hawkinson, 44, makes art that looks like a collaboration between a high school shop class and a conceptual art professor. His work is simple, handmade, and almost primitive. An inch-high sculpture of a bird is made from Hawkinson’s fingernails. A spider web is made from Hawkinson’s hair. The art critic in me wants to say that Hawkinson’s work exists at the intersection between one man’s examination of his own body and his love of mechanical gadgets. But that kind of language comes so close to sucking the fun out of the show that it’s best to mention it and move on.

***

It’s a credit to Hawkinson that these types of discoveries don’t have a smarter-than-thou ‘gotcha’ feel. I think that’s because discovery works on many levels. Art history buffs will appreciate the way Hawkinson’s work relates to Vito Acconci, the performance artist who turned his body into an obsessively documented sculpture. An even clearer influence is L.A. sculptor George Stone, with whom Hawkinson briefly studied at UCLA. (Hawkinson still lives in Los Angeles.) Stone was a pioneer in using mechanical objects and multimedia to involve the viewer in works of art.

From Reuters, Damien Hirst on making art out of bad ideas:

Not all his bad ideas have come to fruition. “I was toying with the idea of putting vibrators all over a pig and I was going to call it pork you pine,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

And the rest of the piece is even better.

Last week I promised a few other Diane Arbus posts and here’s one. (Memo to Sarah Boxer: It’s not exactly a list, more a pre-chronicle of possibility. Please don’t accuse me of being a part of a NYTBR-threatening void or whatever it was you wrote about this morning.) I’ll try to find some images to which I can link, but so far no luck.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Diane Arbus over the last 18 months, seeing the show in many venues, reading Patricia Bosworth’s with-no-help-from-the-family biography of Arbus, and going through a number of Arbus catalogues, etc. So with the first retrospective in 30 years (and accompanying hagiography, as both Kimmelman and Schjeldahl pointed out) out of the way, here are some Arbus shows I’d like to see:

Arbus Without People: My favorite Arbus is her photos that not only aren’t portraits, but that are completely free of people. She took a number of photos of landscape, both real and artificial, especially when she traveled to California. Two of my favorite Arbus photos are from California, a mistitled photo said to be in Disneyland (actually at Universal Studios, I think) and one of a giant, propped-up Hollywood set in a field, a kind of Hopperesque/Wyeth-esque photo.

Arbus the Social Progressive: I referred to this in my review. Arbus was one of the first photographers to include gays, lesbians, and interracial couples in her documentary portrait of what New York City was. In the years after she took photographs of those people/couples, Stonewall started gay liberation in New York (California Hall had already happened in San Francisco, in 1965, kicking off gay lib in the West), and interracial couplehood became no big deal. In 1970, while on a fashion shoot for the NYT Mag, Arbus took a number of photos of interracial children, frolicking on a Carribean beach in a pre-Bennetton arcadia. The NYT refused to run the images. In 1970.

The Arbus Studio: Allan and Diane together, and their impact on fashion photography. Maybe throw Richard Avedon into the mix somewhere and we’d see the emergence of post-war fashion photography. (Immediately after the war fashion ads didn’t feature photography, just sketches.)

From the LAT, Oscar Niemeyer. I’ve always wanted to go see a Niemeyer in person. Never have. Seen a retrospective in Paris, but never the real deal.

Last week we mentioned Richard Serra and his hometown of San Francisco. As if on cue, the SF Chronicle updates us on the installation of a Serra in UCSF’s Mission Bay development (with photos).

And there’s no related story, but MAN hears that later this year MASS MoCA will open a 10-year presentation of 50 of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings. The installation will be semi-timed to coincide with the publishing of a catalogue raisonne of LeWitt’s wall drawings.