In the NYT, Ken Johnson surveys several Fluxus exhibits in New York and finds the work at least as relevant as ever. In the Voice, Martha Schwendener does too — and looks at some other sociopolitically-tinged work as well.- MOCA is renting out one of its galleries to an auction house. That’s pretty obviously improper, isn’t it? Not to Jeffrey Deitch, reports Jori Finkel.
- Douglas Britt reports that the Menil Collection and Walter De Maria took a chance with a new exhibition. The anchor of the show is this significant early De Maria, the acquisition of which was first reported on MAN. Britt has more on that early painting too.
- Carol Vogel heaps a cringeworthy amount of admiration on a prominent collector, so much so that it’s downright hard to read. If someone in the business section gushed about, say, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in that manner, s/he’d be laughed out of the section.
- Meanwhile, in the Observer, Laura Gilbert takes advantage of Vogel’s preoccupation to break the news that the Met will keep a significant, contested Cezanne.
- In SF Weekly, Jonathan Curiel says that a new Charles Gatewood exhibition shows Gatewood to be one of America’s most underrated photographers. [Image: Gatewood, Abbie Hoffmann, NYC, 1969, printed 2009. Tat Gallery.]
- The Boston Globe’s Sebastian Smee issues his verdict on the MFA Boston’s deaccessioning-for-Caillebotte.
- Robert Adams tells the Denver Post’s Kyle MacMillan that he thought he was taking pictures of something he hated, but then… A new retrospective of Adams’ work at the Denver Art Museum opened yesterday.
- It’s time for LA Weekly’s big Pacific Standard Time preview, which is good. (And also bad: The paper long ago ran off Doug Harvey.) First up: Ed Schad visits sites that were important to artists, such as James Turrell’s studio, where Schad has a Frappucino (or could have.) Catherine Wagley asks today’s LA-based artists which PST-era artists still inspire them and Andrew Berardini has the stage-setter which includes links to more. Click liberally.
- In The Stranger, Jen Graves looks at the games artists create/play/make work about as demonstrated at the Cornish College of the Arts. Fun stuff!
- The other best read of the weekend: Peter Plagens finds his own (inadvertent) landmark book “Sunshine Muse” to be overrated. Another reason Plagens should be known for lots more than “Sunshine Muse”: He’s a damn good painter whose last New York solo show will be a serious contender for upcoming, year-end top-10 lists. My failure to review it here still bothers me.
September 26, 2011, 8:03 am
Yes, I disagree. With both your definitions/comparisons and with your conclusion.
RE: Deitch and MOCA – I think this is kind of a non-issue. One one hand I know Deitch is a favorite whipping boy but this kind of thing is done by museums all the time. if it’s not space rental it’s using auditoriums for presentations, or buying ad space inside of exhibitions via a sponsorship (Target and Jasper Johns at the NGA comes to mind).
At least this one has a but of public interest to it and it does seem to show a collection before it will be scattered. I realize that it’s not a masterful collection nor was it developed with a particularly critical eye – but I will admit Elizabeth Taylor has captured the imagination of the masses for decades. So lets just say it’s going to be a crowd pleaser and be done with it.
I think Deitch has a slightly larger microscope over him with a lot of these kind of things – basically because of his position as a former dealer (and a very successful one at that). While I”m sure you disagree with my position on this, I don’t think this is a terribly large transgression – if one at all.
So, I think it’s safe to say we disagree on this. (I think we can agree on that)