- Best piece on the new Barnes Foundation: The journalist who has covered the story more intensely than anyone else, Christopher Knight.
- Most puzzling piece on the new Barnes Foundation: Roberta Smith. So many oddities, including the bizarre notion that art’s greatness or a collection’s greatness is determined by its geographic location or its proximity to an urban core. Art at the Louisiana, the Huntington, the Norton Simon, and the van Buuren is great because it’s great art, period. (And despite using the painting as a key part of her argument, Smith gets wrong the name of what might be the greatest painting in the collection, Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre.)
- The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Mary Louise Schumacher thinks the Milwaukee Art Museum’s loss of photo curator Lisa Hostetler is a coup for the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
- John Yau writes and JPEGs his way through Dana Schutz at Hyperallergic.
- In the Boston Globe, Sebastian Smee writes of a significant-sounding American moderns gift to the MFA Boston.
- The Philly Inky has rarely written with investigative vigor or wisdom on the Barnes Foundation move. (Instead it has championed the viewpoints of the city’s in$titutional cla$$.) Exception: Classical music critic Peter Dobrin.
- Speaking of the Barnes, Blake Gopnik rightly steps back from the xeroxed thing and considers some bigger-picture issues.
It’s a great week for art history on The Modern Art Notes Podcast! Curator James Rondeau tells us about his big, new Roy Lichtenstein retrospective, which opens to the public tomorrow at the Art Institute of Chicago. Then ace Nelson-Atkins photo curator Keith Davis tells us about the pictures Timothy O’Sullivan took for 19thC geologic expedition-leader Clarence King. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and view images of art discussed on the show.
Archive for the ‘Weekend roundup’ Category
May 21, 2012, 11:58 am
Weekend roundup
May 14, 2012, 12:43 pm
Weekend roundup
- Christopher Knight, apparently benefiting from his distance from the trading floor, has the big-picture, what-you’ll-be-tweeting-today, absolute must-read on what New York’s auction/fairs mania means. (Hint: It means not a lot for art, it means a lot for our nation.)
- The only New Yorker worth reading on NYC’s obsession with art business > art is Blake Gopnik (who also has a new website).
- From the El Paso Times’ David Burge, the El Paso Museum of Art (a Kress depository!) teams up with the local library to make the museum’s library more available to the public. Great idea.
- Ken Johnson takes to the NYT to suggest that Vuillard’s later work, presented at The Jewish Museum and in a commercial gallery show, are work a fresh look. Anyone who saw the 2003 Vuillard retrospective at the National Gallery of Art or at one of these venues will find that hard to believe, but who knows…
- In the SF Chronicle, Jesse Hamlin looks at the Asian Art Museum’s venture into contemporary art.
- The LAT’s Christopher Hawthorne slams the new Williams-and-Tsien Barnes Foundation.
- The LAT’s Christopher Hawthorne slams the new Williams-and-Tsien Barnes Foundation.
- (See what I did there?)
- In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Steven Litt finds multiple pleasures in an exhibition of Rembrandt prints at the Cleveland Museum of Art. (And there?)
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Martha Rosler, taped live at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and view images of art discussed on the show.
May 7, 2012, 7:52 am
Weekend roundup
If you think art critics are little more than low-cost art consultants whose job it is to tell you how to spend a spare $107 million, I have the critic/piece for you: Holland Cotter, who offers up this shopping list. For me, a critic’s role is to consider why the great rises above the good, to note what’s important and to suggest why it is so, to offer a voice that engages more than the pursuit of red dots (or the hope therefore). The commercial sector obviously dominates the New York art scene now more than ever; but isn’t that exactly when you want prominent art critics to assert their independence, to provide something other than market-oriented examination? Evidently the NYT thinks an art critic’s job is to provide shopping lists to the surrounding trading floor. Sad, and a blow to the field.- Also, there is not much dumber than assigning a critic to review an art fair. I mean, no one reviews Barnes & Noble.
- Christopher Knight reviews a very odd, Jeffrey Deitch-organized, nearly pop-up exhibition of post-Warholian abstraction at MOCA. You can practically hear Knight screaming, “WTF?!” (Also, what happened to the intellectual and historicizing rigor of that museum’s exhibition-and-scholarship program? A Mercedes-Benz ad-cum-exhibition made possible by the Deitch’s delaying of a serious Jeremy Strick-era exhibition, and now… Oye.)
- In the NYT, Carol Kino looks at ’70s Buffalo. The legacy of the artists in “Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-Garde in the 1970s,” the Albright-Knox show about which Kino writes, is evident in the work of Buffalo native Cory Arcangel. On last week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast, Arcangel talked at length about how important Buffalo artists were (and are) to him.
- In the NYT, Sylviane Gold looks at a Wadsworth Atheneum exhibition built around three Andrew Wyeths in the museum’s collection.
- In ARTnews, Roger Atwood profiles Ernesto Neto.
- I’m not the only one noting the resurgence of trompe l’oeil: Hilarie M. Sheets takes to ARTnews to note similar.
- The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott reviews Joan Miro at the National Gallery.
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features one of our greatest living artists: Robert Irwin. An exhibition of Irwin’s newest work is on view now at Pace Gallery in New York. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and/or view images of art discussed on the show.
April 30, 2012, 8:09 am
Weekend roundup
First off: I’m disappointed by the changes the Los Angeles Times has made to its once best-in-class “Culture Monster” blog. It has shortened posts and removed bylines, occasionally making it difficult to see what posts are about. While the LAT’s arts reporting is not what it was when the paper was at its powerhouse peak, the paper still usually covers the arts in a meaningful, less-PR-driven way than other major newspapers. (Though that’s changing too, alas.) The tweaks the LAT has made to Culture Monster are the latest in a series of unfortunate cutbacks and missteps.- In the LAT, Leah Ollman features “Meticulosity” at the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis.
- Speaking of PR-seeded: The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch has the first look at the ICA Steven Holl is designing for the highly-ranked art school at Virginia Commonwealth University.
- Odd and narcissistically gimmicky: The Stranger had seven people write very short reviews of this Gary Hill show at the Henry.
- The Toledo Museum of Art has announced that it and London’s Royal Academy will launch a significant Manet portraiture show this October. Toledo’s Lawrence W. Nichols and the RA’s MaryAnne Stevens are the co-curators. An excellent Manet portrait of childhood friend Antonin Proust (1880, above) is in the TMA’s collection.
- Scientific American’s Glendon Mellow takes a look at the remarkable “Closer to Van Eyck” website that I spotlighted on The Modern Art Notes Podcast a while back.
- E.A. Carmean, Jr. takes to the WSJ to expound upon something art historians and journalists have grappled with for eons: Artists often fib.
On this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast: Artist/trickster Cory Arcangel talks about the origins of his techno-tweaks and explains why he embraces failure, such as in Masters (2011), which is now on view in “The Sports Show” at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and/or view images of art discussed on the show.
April 23, 2012, 11:58 am
Weekend roundup
In the LAT, Jori Finkel profiles Mickalene Thomas on the occasion of an exhibition of Thomas’s new work at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. [Image: Thomas, Landscape with Tree, 2012.]- In the NYT, Karen Rosenberg considers Instagram.
- Also in the NYT, Jeffrey Deitch wants you to consider his house, his friends and, of course, his conversations with Andy Warhol. When a museum director gets more or better publicity than ‘his’ museum does, he’s doing it wrong.
- Whenever Jan Tichy pops up in the U.S., I’m impressed. On the occasion of his ‘Matrix’ show at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Susan Dunne chats with him in the Hartford Courant.
- For Dallas’ D Magazine, Tim Rogers tells the weird, rather dreadful story of the Auric Goldfinger-esque laser that is focused on the Nasher Sculpture Center.
- Modern Painters editor Daniel Kunitz chats with Martha Rosler.
- If you prefer the art world to art, you and New York magazine deserve each other.
- In Gallerist NY, Andrew Russeth recounts the Guggenheim’s John Chamberlain memorial service.
On this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast: I talk with Andrea Zittel about her work, how she came to love the desert and what the post-Zittel future of A-Z West might be. In the second segment, Katherine Ball tells us about the summer she spent living on Indy Island (2010, in the banner), Zittel’s contribution to the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s 100 Acres sculpture park. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and/or view images of art discussed on the show.
April 16, 2012, 6:53 am
Weekend roundup
- Holland Cotter goes to Africa.
- The Miami Herald’s Anne Tschida profiles Hernan Bas.
- Christopher Knight reviews part one of Christopher Simon Sykes’s planned two-volume biography of David Hockney.
- The Bugle podcast — that’s John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman’s weekly news-satire program – analyzes the spring auctions. It’s about 28 minutes in.
On this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast: We celebrate the intersection of art and architecture. Vanity Fair contributing editor and former New Yorker and New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger talks about the best American art museums, and artist Sarah Morris discusses her film installation Points on a Line (2010), which closed Sunday at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS, see images of art and architecture discussed on the show.
April 9, 2012, 11:57 am
Weekend roundup
- In the LAT, Leah Ollman does a nice job of differentiating between early and late Cindy Sherman.
- Over at Gallerist NY, Andrew Russeth has a neat post rounding up recent art moves. In includes links to the moving of Jackson Pollock’s massive and iconic Mural.
- LACMA director Michael Govan talks to James Turrell for Interview magazine. [via]
- The Stranger’s Jen Graves visits “Hide/Seek” with two generations worth of artists who are gay.
On this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast: If you love New York City, you’ll love hearing Mitch Epstein talking about how he explored the city through its most magnificent trees. The second segment features Denver Art Museum curator Eric Paddock discussing Epstein’s teacher, Garry Winogrand, and his “Women are Beautiful” series. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and/or view images of art discussed on the show.
April 2, 2012, 7:38 am
Weekend roundup
MOCA is getting itself a rock that’s bigger and heavier than anyone else’s rock, LA Weekly reported yesterday. The project is a “collaboration” with a corporate entity which is handling the selection of the rock and all of the details around the presentation of the rock. MOCA’s involvement is limited to a James Franco performance on the rock. There is no word on whether the bigger, heavier rock is resulting in further delays to MOCA’s earth art show, but a MOCA spokesman told MAN yesterday that if the earth art show was postponed again, it would have nothing to do with the bigger, heavier rock, no, nothing at all.- Sebastian Smee is the latest critic to gush over the Orange County Museum of Art-organized “Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series.” Some background on some of Smee’s references: Diebenkorn, Notre Dame and Ocean Park No. 38 (and its related drawing); the somewhat-enabling impact of air travel over Bureau of Reclamation projects in the West on the Ocean Park series and the influence of Willem de Kooning.
- Side note: It’s no longer extraordinary for major exhibitions to not travel to New York or the northeast, but that this one isn’t is… really, really odd.
- MoMA’s show on the manufactured or deconstructed figure needs, er, re-figuring writes Karen Rosenberg in the NYT. Fortunately for you, she avoids similarly atrocious puns.
- From Frieze, ten remembrances of Mike Kelley.
- In the NYT’s Sunday opinion section, Mary Ellen Mark on prom night.
- In the LAT, David Pagel loves Frederick Hammersley at LA Louver. I bet I would too. [Image above: Hammersley, Expand upon #11, 1987.]
- At the Met, a minor exhibition on the nude in photography. In the New York Times, Roberta Smith responds with a smart and major write-up.
On this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast: Lari Pittman discusses politics, violence, biography and how they all feed into his remarkable paintings. In the second segment, Crown Point Press founder Kathan Brown tells us about working with Richard Diebenkorn. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and/or view images of art discussed on the show.
March 26, 2012, 7:29 am
Weekend roundup
SONG1, Doug Aitken’s latest projection,debuted on Gordon Bunshaft’s Hirshhorn building last week. The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott reviewed it here (and added this note on his own website.) Kriston Capps’s Washington CityPaper coverage was more news-driven: The Hirshhorn promoted an Aitken lecture as a public event, but restricted the huge majority of seats for VIPs. Nice. And if the Hirshhorn bubble is ever built/inflated, it will be officially called the Bloomberg Balloon. (Of course unofficially it’s still Koshalek’s Folly.) The Aitken is on view every night through May 13, which means that allergy sufferers will be able to see it after the pollen is gone.- Curious about what SONG1 actually looks like (and not how photographers with extra-$$ equipment can make it look)? The Hirshhorn’s Twitterers are re-tweeting out visitor pix like mad. [Image: Aitken, SONG1 (detail), 2012 with Alexander Calder, Two Discs, 1965 in the foreground. Image via Flickr user Tericee.]
- On the occasion of its presentation at the Tacoma Art Museum, NPG historian/curator David Ward explains how “Hide/Seek” happened.
- Martha Schwendener takes to the NYT with a super take on Kehinde Wiley at The Jewish Museum.
- Sebastian Smee loves Charline von Heyl at the ICA Boston, wishes Petzel-sized show was larger. (And yeah, is 10 paintings really a museum-level show?)
- The Akron Art Museum has decided that owning quality and depth in Cindy Sherman is a bad thing, apparently. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer’s Steven Litt reports on the museum’s deaccessioning of a major Sherman.
- Enough with the hoopla over the journey of a rock, says Catherine Wagley in LA Weekly.
- In Modern Painters, Doug Harvey reviews the Richard Diebenkorn Ocean Park show at the Orange County Museum of Art. I reviewed it here. Short version: We both think that it shows the Ocean Park paintings as a pinnacle of 20thC abstract art.
- In the NYT, Sylviane Gold offers a short write-up of “Colts & Quills” at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The show is essentially an art + Civil War show. I’m surprised — really surprised — that more art museums haven’t presented Civil War-anniversary-related exhibitions/collection installations.
On this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast: Jan van Eyck. Art historian Craig Harbison joins me to talk about the revision and expansion of his important “Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism,” and technical specialist Ron Spronk tells us about the remarkable new “Closer to van Eyck” web resource he coordinated. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and/or view images of art discussed on the show.
March 19, 2012, 7:38 am
Weekend roundup
- For the NYT, Hilarie M. Sheets profiles Rineke Dijkstra.
- At Philadelphia magazine’s website, Victor Fiorillo gives a lot of pixels to what might be the silliest photographer-claims-plagiarism charge ever.
- That’s all I got. Thin week.
On this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast, I talk with Mark Bradford, whose mid-career survey has (finally) arrived at its last stop: SFMOMA. This is also the first MAN Podcast with a soundprint! Artist Steve Roden created it; he tells us about it in the program’s second segment. Download the program, subscribe via iTunes, subscribe via RSS and/or view images from the show.
