Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

It would really tick me off that Ed Winkleman is so often correct except that I think he bought me a martini last time I saw him.

I’ll add this: Name all the post-9/11 shows about Islamic art at American museums. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is this NGA show, a muddled, meandering survey of stuff from another museum’s collection. The season’s great hope is MoMA’s Without Boundary, which has, for some reason that may become clearer once the show opens and I’ve actually seen it, added Mike Kelley and Bill Viola to the roster.

Related: The last time an American museum tried to do a vaguely (very, very, very vaugely) controversial show from the Muslim world, the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University found itself in the middle of a completely bizarre controversy.

I’m convinced my blogroll is Brian Sholis’ personal revolving door. He’s back and his blog looks better than ever. 

Even before MOCA’s Ecstasy is about the art in the show, it is a really good example of an arts institution doing lots of things right — and a show that could really only happen in LA. I’m going to do two posts on Ecstasy today. This first one is about the idea of the show and not the art. The second post will be about the art.

Ecstasy asserts the role of the contemporary art curator, positioning him somewhere between exhibitor and evangelist. Too many contemporary art curators make shows for each other, exploring narrow concerns within obscure sub-categories. MOCA chief curator Paul Schimmel’s Ecstasy is an exhibit intended to share contemporary art with people who want to go to a contemporary art museum but are afraid they won’t understand what they’re looking at. It’s also a show smart enough that everyone this side of the New Criterion will enjoy the heck out of it.

Ecstasy could never happen in New York or Washington, mostly because those cities don’t have a sprawling, single-floor space in which a seemingly random show could be installed. Maybe one of the reasons New York (and Washington) don’t offer interesting group shows is because much contemporary art is tuck-proof and can’t be shoehorned into square, vertical spaces built to conform to the urban grid. MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary is somewhere between a parking lot, Little Tokyo, a masturbating Dov Charney, and LA’s City Hall. (When I walked out of Ecstasy and looked up at City Hall, made famous around the world as the phallic visual lynchpin of the TV series Dragnet, I laughed myself into an altered state as I remembered Dragnet’s moralizing anti-drug preachiness.)

Finally (for this post), this show is a wicked argument against government funding of arts institutions. Can you imagine how politicians would use this show if MOCA received substantial public funding? (Nevermind that there’s plenty of plausible deniability built into the exhibit.) Fortunately for the artists, the curator and for us, only one percent of MOCA’s FY 2004 revenue came from government grants (that’s pretty close to its recent norm, too). The result is an institution free to welcome visitors into an exhibit with an allegedly drug-laced fountain, an immediate challenge to the viewer. Do you believe? Or are you at least willing to suspend belief? Can you imagine this show at the National Gallery of Art? (The NGA version of this show is here.)

Related: I Get My Show on the Road.

As soon as I fix a glitch: MOCA’s Ecstasy show.

Longtime readers know I love Marfa. So I dig this news: Marfa now has a public radio station — and Willie Nelson is doing a benefit concert for the station next month. (via Glasstire.) And the station’s t-shirts are in keeping with the long-line of super-cool Marfa-related tees. (Think Ballroom Marfa, Marfa Book Co., Chinati…)

I enjoyed LATer Christopher Hawthorne on the difficulties of re-creating LACMA without flattening the site. Renzo Piano is having a hard time with this one. And it sure looks like whatever director LACMA hires is going to have to live with (and promote) decisions s/he didn’t make. (See: Cleveland.)

This is completely funny. I mean, there are, I’m sure, serious questions about how that happened, but I’m too busy laughing to care.

This could be a big week or three for art-world news:

• With the Getty Villa opening out of the way, will LACMA (finally) introduce a new director?
• Will the eye-popping compensation package that LACMA is offering make it into print? (And does the blogosphere count as ‘print?’ Because if it does, the answer is ‘probably.’)
• The Met and the Getty have been in discussions with Italian officials about allegedly looted antiquities. Officials from both museums should be back in the US this week. Will objects go back to Italy? Or will a standoff create an ongoing story?
• Will anyone else notice that this Chaim Soutine, which will be offered at Christie’s on Feb. 6, has an eye-popping provenance? (Gee, what was going on in France in February, 1943…)
• Will Disney, having bought Pixar, make an offer for MoMA?
• Will the NGA’s Cezanne show break attendance records?
• Will AICA respond to Todd Gibson? (Disclosure: I’m a member.)
• Will the non-regional press pick up on forthcoming annoucnements by the Clyfford Still Museum and the Vancouver Art Gallery on building plans? (They should, and thanks AJ.)

It’s been Getty Villa week in the international arts media. It’s not just me here or on a radio gig — all the big media outlets have been abuzz about the Villa. The LA Times did a big package on the Villa opening. The New York Times sent an art critic who produced a glowing review. Newsweek wrote — hold on, wait a second…

Uh… wow, don’t I feel lame. Actually: No NYT art critic has reviewed the Villa. That’s gotta be embarrassing. I think someone had better tell the New York Times that there are non-stops between JFK and LAX…

The news, from his own site.