The Future of Art, an immediated autodocumentary

Great thoughts on the output of art in this information driven time.  What is the right tool for the job?  Do traditional arts fall by the wayside because of so many new tools?  Making art within a group?  How does one find a voice in the cacophony of voices already singing?  Great video.  Enjoy. -M



The Future of Art from KS12 on Vimeo.

The Future of Art
an immediated autodocumentary

What are the defining aesthetics of art in the networked era? How is mass collaboration changing notions of ownership in art? How does micropatronage change the way artists produce and distribute artwork? The Future of Art begins a conversation on these topics and invites your participation.

This video was shot, edited and screened at the Transmediale festival 2011 in Berlin, Germany.

Conceived and Edited by Gabriel Shalom
Produced by KS12 / Emergence Collective
Executive Producer: Patrizia Kommerell
Assistant Editor: Clare Molloy
Production Assistant: Annika Bauer

An artless redefinition of adequate - NashuaTelegraph.com

CONCORD – It’s not every day you get a Grammy-nominated artist testifying against proposed legislation in the state capital. But when Goffstown singer-songwriter Judy Pancoast heard about a bill that would make music education optional in the state’s public schools, she wanted her voice to be heard.

Pancoast, nominated this year for her children’s album, told members of the House Education Committee on Tuesday that music was the only thing that saved her from a childhood filled with torment from other students because of her weight. Thanks to the support of a music teacher, she gained the confidence to sing a solo in the spring concert, sparking her career in music.

“To me, music was not just a core curriculum subject; it was the core curriculum subject,” Pancoast said.

Pancoast was one of dozens of education leaders, current and former teachers, and arts advocates who expressed fierce opposition to a local state representative’s proposal to strip subjects such as art, world languages and technology from the state’s definition of an adequate education.

About 150 people turned out for the Education Committee’s hearing on HB39, sponsored by Rep. Ralph Boehm, R-Litchfield. The crowd was so large that committee Chairman Rep. Michael Balboni had to move the hearing midway in, from a small meeting room in the Legislative Office Building to Representatives Hall in the Statehouse. Before it was moved to the larger room, people were sitting on the floor and a long line of those hoping to get in wrapped through the hallway.

The bill, filed earlier this month, would strike arts, world languages, health, technology education and information and communication technologies from the list of subjects defined as an adequate education by the state. That would leave English language arts, math, science, social studies and physical education as the only state-mandated subjects. The state established the current definition of an adequate education in 2008.

While recognizing the value of the subjects he proposes to remove, Boehm, vice chairman of the Education Committee, said the total cost goes beyond what the state is providing in funding. Keeping them in the definition would continue to force unfunded mandates upon local school districts, he said.

“The state pays $3,430 or so per student for a so-called adequate education. But we all know that the school districts’ cost per student is more than $10,000,” Boehm said. “It looks like this was another downshifting from the state.”

Boehm said his legislation intends to be more realistic about what the state is actually paying. If local taxpayers are going to pick up the tab for additional subjects, they should get to decide what is taught, he said.

In a conference call Tuesday, House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli blasted Boehm’s proposal. She argued an education without critical subjects such as art and world languages is anything but adequate. Removing them would downshift millions of dollars to local taxpayers and would undoubtedly send the education debate back to court, she said.

“This irresponsible legislation would tear at the fabric of what makes our education system the envy of other states in the nation,” Norelli said. “If these subject matters are not part of an adequate education, then the next generation and our generation will suffer greatly.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, speakers railed against the proposal, arguing that lifting the requirement to teach critical subjects would give local school boards the opportunity to remove them from the curriculum, putting students in those communities at a disadvantage. Boehm stayed to listen for part of the testimony, smiling while opponents spoke.

Representatives from many of the state’s education associations and organizations spoke out against the bill. Mark Joyce, executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, said while it’s clear the cost of teaching all subjects included in the definition exceeds the state’s contribution, simply eliminating them does not solve the problem.

“While we respect the notion of resisting unfunded mandates, we support the continued inclusion of art, music, technology and world languages as essential basics that compose the foundation of adequacy,” Joyce said.

Dean Mitchner, director of governmental affairs for the New Hampshire School Boards Association, also testified against the bill, as did Rick Trombley, director of public affairs for the New Hampshire National Education Association. Trombley pointed out that Republican leadership has recognized arts as an essential part of an education.

“The education of our future professionals begins somewhere, and that’s in the classroom,” Trombley said. “We run a tragic risk if the only thing we understand is the cost of some things, but the value of nothing.”

Maryanne Irish, president of the New Hampshire Music Educators Association, said while the legislation doesn’t prohibit schools from teaching the arts, removing them from the list of mandated subjects “would make the reduction of arts an easy and quick fix” for school boards looking for places to cut back.

“It makes education the scapegoat for a larger financial problem,” Irish said. “It is a wrong and disproportionate response.”

Applause broke out several times after speakers argued against the bill. Several times at the hearing, Balboni had to ask the audience to hold its applause.

Boehm’s bill would also require the Legislature to approve the state’s adoption of the Common Core Standards. Last year, the state Board of Education approved adopting the set of national standards in principle, but Boehm argues the board did not have the authority. Full implementation of the new standards is not expected for several years.

Kathleen Murphy, director of the division of instruction for the state Department of Education, said adopting the new standards would be in the best interest of New Hampshire students and teachers. Murphy said the department does not have a position about Boehm’s proposal on subjects included in an adequate education.

No action was taken by the committee Tuesday. Because of the financial implications about state funding of adequate education, the House needs an initial vote on the legislation by Feb. 17. That would mean the committee needs its recommendation by Feb. 10 at the latest. It would also need Senate approval, as well as the support of Gov. John Lynch.

Michael Brindley can be reached at 594-6426 or mbrindley@nashuatelegraph.com.

New Hampshire native George Condo at New Museum, New York

Concord, New Hampshire native and UMass Lowell alum., George Condo is now showing at the New Museum in New York City in a solo exhibition titled Mental States.  Known for his portraiture of invented characters that often depict as he says, "composites of various psychological states painted in different ways."  

George Condo, “Jean Louis’ Mind,” 2005. Oil on canvas 45×38 inches. Courtesy of Luhring Augustine Gallery.

My first experience in seeing Condo's work was at a Pace/Wildenstein exhibit in January of 2000 when the gallery was still in SoHo.  The show was titled 'Jazz Paintings' and included large square formatted paintings of what seemed to me to be 'interpretations' of various musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Jimi Hendrix to name a few.  At first approach, my impression was that it seemed an easy endeavor, but on second glance and in conceptualizing the notion of each artist's music, I saw and felt each of the paintings' lyrical qualities that encapsulated the music beautifully.  At the time I had fallen in love with Miles Davis' classic album Kind of Blue, listening to it and letting it ease our late night car rides back to New Hampshire from New York with my newborn son and wife quietly sleeping.  So I was keenly aware of the smooth sounds of Davis' trumpet of which Condo eloquently managed to capture. 

Kind of Blue album cover.

Cheers to a New Hampshire son for a bountiful career, painting with his heart on his sleeve.

Frank Stella, Irregular Polygons, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Chocorua IV
1966
Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paints on canvas, 120 x 128 x 4 in.
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College: Purchased through the Miriam and Sidney Stoneman Acquisition Fund, a gift from Judson and Carol Bemis, Class of 1976, and gifts from the Lathrop Fellows, in honor of Brian Kennedy, Director of the Hood Museum of Art, 2005-2010
© 2010 Frank Stella/ Artists Rights Socety (ARS), New York. Photo by Steven Sloman.

     In December, I visited Hanover to see the Frank Stella exhibit at the Hood.  The exhibition, Irregular Polygons, is a fantastic display of minimalist painting, or 'hard edge painting' at its finest and yet this internationally known artist's works, in this series, also has a unique connection to New Hampshire.  
     First, a little background.  Stella was born in 1936, raised in Malden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and attended Phillips Academy in Andover.  During his summers he would vacation in New Hampshire, with his father, a wealthy gynocologist,  climbing Mount Chocorua, or fishing in a favorite stream just east of Conway.  
     Stella attended Princeton University, graduating in 1958, hitting the New York art scene like a rocket.  He befriended Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, married art critic and then Columbia University student, Barbara Rose, and within a year was one of several artists featured at the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition, Sixteen Americans.  This exhibition is thought to have launched the Minimalist movement and really signaled the final blow to the end of Abstract Expressionism.  Stella's first acclaimed pieces were his 'Black Paintings', which once sold for 75 dollars per painting and now garner around 5 million.
     After his 'Black Paintings', Stella started experimenting in a number of different directions that echoed some of the work Rauschenberg was doing with his combines, but it wasn't until he started his shaped canvases, large fields of color and play with illusion that he really hit his stride.  The Hood's, 'Irregular Polygons' exhibition really documents his thinking during this time period (1965-66) in a wonderfully curated show of the series, of which have never before been seen all together.
     For us Granite Staters, this show is unique in that all of the titles in this series are of New Hampshire locations.  Chocorua, Conway, Effingham, Moutonboro, Ossipee to name just a few.  It was his first of the series, Chocorua that inspired him to title the rest of the series after locations he visited while vacationing as a child here.  It was the upright triangle emerging from the square below that made him think of the mountain in Albany.  
     This show could not have come closer to home for me on many levels.  Having painted abstract/non-objective pieces for a number of years, I have always appreciated Stella's work.  This series as well as his Moby Dick series I feel are his best.  So to see the breadth of the Irregular Polygons series all together in one location is a special treat for me and any viewer.  But I also feel, having admired many of the locations cited in his titles, especially Mount Chocorua (we used to meet my grandparents at White Lake State Park, where when sitting on the beach, one can see Mount Chocorua across the lake, a beautiful sight), that this work strikes another nerve in me.  

Ellis, my son, sitting in front of one of Stella's Moby Dick paintings at the Metropolitan Museum in NY.

     Formally, I find the paintings play with spacial illusion.  Harkening to a time of Hans Hoffman's notions of push and pull in the way some of the paint's brilliance is juxtaposed with darker or less intense colors, making those high chroma shapes emerge off of the canvas.  I also find these paintings have an object-like quality about them, as they are not rectangular windows into which the viewer finds illusionistic space but that the space is created by the shaped object/painting itself.  Also lending to its object-like quality is the massiveness of the paintings themselves, with a depth that borders 4-6 inches and height and widths around 120 inches.   
     If you find yourself in the Hanover area or want to make a day trip, I highly recommend heading to the Hood.  The exhibition is up until March 13.  You will not be disappointed.  While you're there check out my favorite burrito place, Gusanos Taqueria (this is not a paid advertisement, I just like the place), directly behind the museum.  However do not order the habinero sauce with the description that says, 'barely edible' thinking like I did, 'yeah, yeah, I've heard that before', as you will find yourself drinking more than your bladder can hold and sweating profusely from the intense heat the sauce holds.  


Cheers!
 

On the Apartheid between "art" and "craft". By Jerry Saltz

Jerry Saltz just posted this today.  I consistently hear from our young students/artists this notion that the medium they work in is better than another medium, usually not outright but in a subtle, 'higher than thou' kind of way.  As Mr. Saltz puts it, it is 'what you make- no matter how you make it.  It just has to work.'

-M

Here is his entire posting from Facebook:

 - The differences between what is called “art” and what is called “craft” are 100% totally bogus. They are maintained to keep things simple, stupid, and limited.

There is no distinction between the two. None.

I only care about what you make - no matter how you make. It just has to work.

Painting is no better or worse than ceramics is no better or worse than photography is no better or worse than woodworking … all the way down.

It’s all part of the same Ball of Wax.

However, in this regard, the art world may be the most limiting sphere on earth.

Artists are terrified of the word craft; so-called “craft-people” crave the title “artist.” It is all absurd. Who’s asking who’s permission for what here, my Huckleberry friends?

This just closes things down, keeps them neat, simple, and known.

It is absolutely pathetic. And, at its deepest roots, sexist.

It’s the way men didn’t want women reading novels in the 19th century. As if women would get nasty thoughts about sex, life, romance, or other things. Of course this is precisely what novels did. The same as they did for men.

Either way, today craft is considered “girly.” Why people still believe this is a sick mystery. But it’s time for it to end. It was never really true in the first place.

But wait. This is the art world. We only like mainly Painting and Sculpture and Photography. I'm sorry. For a second I thought we were all free to do what our demons demand us to do.

I never care if an artist has someone else make his/her work. You can have all the people you want help you make it; they can make it entirely without you ever touching it; or only you can touch it yourself. It is all absolutely unimportant to me. As I am sure it is to everyone. All we care about is can this object create an opening for us, can it take us to another dimension, go deep, create a new set of ordinances and coordinates?  I could give a crap if one or fifty people worked on something.

Yet, people still enforce these old idiotic clichéd barriers between mediums and processes. Yet, Duchamp was as much as "artisan" as an artist. Ditto Rubens, Morandi, Eva Hesse, George Ohr. A lathe is no less 'important' a tool as a paint brush. A potter’s wheel is no less ‘important’ or useful than a camera. If you have a vision I don’t care what path you take to the vision. Be it painting, embroidery, sewing, sculpture, weaving, knitting, quilting, glassblowing, ivory carving, cut-out silhouettes, ceramics, photography, scrapbooking, metalwork, or adding glitter and/or sequins to a pair of pumps.

Then again, I’m the same person who believes that his Second Self can create openings and schisms in a medium as odd as ‘Facebook.’ The same person who thought going on a reality TV game show about art might also create avenues to otherness to some who might otherwise just think art is a bunch of junk.

Either way, it’s time to set aside this insipid separation between art and craft.

Don't do it for anyone else

This letter comes from a fascinating website titled Letters of Note that features letters from or to, famous or infamous people.  Hours of fodder here.  Enjoy.

Palmer Hayden, Born January 15,1890

Palmer Hayden, African-American artist, b. Jan. 15, 1890 (d. 1973):

The Janitor Who Paints, ca. 1930 - oil on canvas (Smithsonian)

“I decided to paint to support my love of art, rather than have art support me.” — Palmer Hayden quoted in Nora Holt, “Painter Palmer Hayden Symbolizes John Henry,” New York Times, 1 Feb. 1947.

“By 1940 Palmer Hayden was known for his narrative scenes of New York’s urban life and the rural South. Like a photographer taking snapshots, he depicted black subjects during unguarded moments in their daily routine. His characterizations-sometimes humorous, sometimes unflattering-are nonetheless caring and proud. Described by Hayden’s compelling use of line, they possess the immediacy of popular illustrations.

Although the artist’s studio is a time-honored theme, Hayden’s intention in The Janitor Who Paints is more provocative than usual because he described it as a “protest painting” in a 1969 interview. An easel, palette, and brushes share space with a bed, nightstand, feather duster, and broom. Is Hayden’s subject an amateur, painting portraits of his family and friends in his spare time at home? Or is he a professional artist, forced to support himself in a modest occupation and to combine his creative and domestic spheres in one setting? Having taken odd jobs including housecleaning to support himself, Hayden experienced the economic hardships of many black artists, and the painting has often been interpreted as both a self-portrait and a statement on adversity.

The most immediate source for the element of protest that Hayden associated with the work, however, was his friendship with Cloyd Boykin, an older African-American painter who supported himself as a janitor:”I painted it because no one called Boykin the artist. They called him the janitor.” Hayden incorporated details such as the beret and the subject of mother and child to reinforce the sense of artistic identity, while the clock alludes to the workman’s schedule.

Initially self-taught, Hayden sought training in New York and Paris, yet his style has frequently been described as primitive. In The Janitor Who Paints, the figures’ oversized hands and intense, cartoonlike expressions, as well as the freely treated space in which shapes are outlined as relatively flat areas of color, recall the simplified forms of American folk art. Actually, these elements owe as much to the broader influences of African and modern art that Hayden encountered in Paris as to his highly personal approach to interpreting the vitality and challenges of African-American life.” - Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. African-American Art: 19th and 20th-Century Selections (brochure. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art).

MoMA Purchases Censored Wojnarowicz

For those of you following the recent scandal at the Smithsonian Museum's National Portrait Gallery of the David Wojnarowicz piece "A Fire in My Belly", that was removed/censored from their exhibition Hide/Seek- Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, there is welcome news as reported by the NY Times.  MoMA has purchased both the artist's cut (7 min) and the full version (13 min).  While the video has been shown at a number of locations Transformer gallery in D.C. and at the New Museum in New York, the MoMA is the first to announce the purchase of the work.

From the Times article written by Kate Taylor, "Mr. Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992, made the video in the late 1980s in response to the AIDS crisis. It was included in a show at the National Portrait Gallery, a Smithsonian museum, examining gay themes in American portraiture but was removed after it was attacked by Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, and several Republican congressmen who objected to an image in the video of ants crawling on a crucifix.

The video’s removal has in turn led to an outcry from the art world. The curators of the show have been sharply critical of the decision to remove the video, which was made by the Smithsonian’s top executive, G. Wayne Clough. An artist, AA Bronson, has asked for his own piece to be removed from the show in protest, and on Monday his lawyer sent a letter to Mr. Clough and the director of the National Portrait Gallery, Martin E. Sullivan, threatening legal action if the museum does not comply."

Here is the full version of the video:

As with all controversies surrounding art, this piece, which in its own right is excellent, will now be reduced to 'the video that caused a scandal'.  Remember Chris Ofili's, The Holy Virgin Mary painting from the Saatchi exhibition titled Sensation at the Brooklyn Museum in late '99 to early '00 that caused quite a stir?  The scandal reached national prominence when the then Mayor Giuliani jumped on the band wagon to say what an outrage it was that there was elephant dung on an image of the Virgin Mary and that city funding of the museum should be halted.  Because of the controversy, that piece is now relegated to being known now as 'an art scandal piece' and not a fine work of art.

Welcome!

Welcome to a blog that I have been thinking about for a long time.  I always thought New Hampshire art should be lifted out of the granite quarries of regionalism and so here is my attempt to shed some light on the fantastic art being created by so many talented artists that call New Hampshire their home.  I will attempt to highlight galleries, museums and artists' studios from around the state as well as keep us Granite Staters informed on what the rest of the art world is thinking with links and other tidbits that I may come across.
As an artist myself, I will, from time to time, share with you my thoughts, trials and mis-steps in art, show you some of the work I am making and keep you abreast of some of my travels.  For instance, this June I will be traveling with my family to London and Paris, so expect lots of pictures and lots of thoughts on the state of art in these two great cities.  Then, as I have for the past two summers, I will be living in Beckett, Massachusetts, in the heart of the Berkshires, working as the art director at a summer camp.  While there, I will share with you the joys of creating art in this joyous atmosphere.
So, without further adieu, here it is.  I hope you enjoy it and please drop me a note to let me know about an opening, a must see artist, or just to say hi.