Author Archives: Linnea

do it: Taking the Global Local

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Let s Do It UGA doit_productshot

I’m excited to get the ball rolling on a few projects for Fall, one of which is an exhibition that art history PhD student Brooke Leeton and I will be curating at the Lamar Dodd School of Art entitled Let’s do it UGA. We recently created a website for the project at www.letsdoituga.wordpress.com.

do it is a curatorial project begun by Hans Ulrich Obrist based on a simple proposition: “Create an instruction that someone else can use to make an artwork.” (More about that on e-flux’s project website.) In “Let’s do it UGA,” graduate students select different sets of do it instructions that form the basis of works of art. Instruction-based art privileges themes of variation, copy and authenticity, and play and experimentation, resulting in a work of art unconcerned with ownership or style. Instead, what drives the exhibition is the act of interpretation.

Brooke and I have enjoyed preparing the framework for the exhibition, but most of all we are excited to see what it will look like when it opens October 17. Because the artists are working from different sets of instructions that changes how they normally work, rather than us selecting objects or artist’s who work we are familiar with, the end result is a surprise. The only performance we can predict is one we will do ourselves, on the opening night of the reception. Following Amalia Pica’s instructions Throw A Party (2012), Brooke and I will end our night sweeping confetti evenly against one wall.

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Truth is Better than Fiction: Story of a Stolen Rembrandt

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_73727275_rembrandtafp2 Rembrandt’s Child with Soap Bubble, above, was recently apprehended in France after a 15-year disappearance. Originally taken from two con-men with links to the backroom art world trade, the story of this painting’s disappearance is actual much more fantastic and less ordinary. As ARTNews reports, Frenchmen Patrick Vialaneix was compelled to steal it: 

He first saw the Rembrandt, L’enfant à la bulle de savon (Child with soap bubble), at age 13 on a visit with his mother to the municipal museum in Draguignan, France. It reminded him of himself so much that viewing it was “like looking in a mirror,” he said. He became obsessed with the painting, returning over and over to behold its charms.

His fixation escalated until finally, at the age of 28, he decided he had to steal it.

Read the rest of the story on ARTNews to learn how the alarm technician managed to steal it, and how the secret of the stolen painting then poisoned his relationships until he decided to sell it to the two middlemen who the French authorities finally caught. I absolutely understand the urge to want a work of art, perhaps a Rembrandt or a Vermeer for your very own, and if that means hiding a painting under my bed for 15 years, so be it.

But why we would invest any singular painting with such significance is perhaps a strange thing. Copyists were common before the age of mechanical reproduction, and today especially copying has never been easier. But the aura of the original remains intact, even though rationally we might realize that any object is just one of many objects whose physical properties can be reproduced. The latest Radiolab podcast, appropriately titled Things, is worth a listen for an exploration of why we sometimes place intense emotional value on objects. The Radiolab story discusses things in general, not art, and the crux of the discussion on whether its not better to let go, as Patrick Vialaneix finally did, or to hold on as tightly as possible.

Guest Post, Taking Flight: A Conversation with Chantal Bruchez-Hall

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Mary McGrail, a writer based in New York City, contributed today’s post on painter Chantal Bruchez-Hall. Mary’s writing has appeared in Melic Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Portland Review, and Community College Moment, and she is co-editor of the anthology Too Darn Hot: Writing About Sex Since Kinsey (Persea). She works in communications at a nonprofit in New York City. Find her on Twitter at @therealmfm.

Chantal Bruchez Hall

Chantal Bruchez-Hall in her studio

Chantal Bruchez-Hall is an emerging Swiss-American artist whose work has been shown in alternatives spaces around New York City. Influenced by her years of practice as a psychologist, Chantal’s paintings explore “the internal pathways and emotional maps that lead us to the heart of darkness and back.” I spoke with her about how she came to identify as an artist, and her recent decision to give up psychotherapy in order to paint full-time. Talking with Chantal reminded me of a quote by Ray Bradbury: “You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

Early experiences For years I convinced myself that I was not an artist. I remember in elementary school, a teacher telling me I had absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever, after I drew a pot of flowers all in purple. As an adult, I was practical; when I had a child I went back to do my PhD. I felt unable to do art, so looked at it from the other side, with awe. It was my son who first told me, ‘Why don’t you take a drawing class?’ I said, ‘Oh Matthew you know I can’t draw.’ He wouldn’t let go and we took a class together at Cooper Union, for beginners. This was about fifteen years ago. I learned that I could draw, and that freed me. It was as if the sky had opened, and I wasn’t on the other side looking in anymore.

Process I wake up sometimes, thinking of paintings. It could be a shape, or a color. I go inside my head for a while, then back to sleep, and it comes back, dreamlike. I don’t turn the light on.

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Chantal Bruchez-Hall, Poles Melting, 2014

I often use mixed media: a broken corkscrew, a discarded piece of metal, a torn fabric. Giving trash a new life is my way of refusing to let the refuse swallow us. I loved oil, it’s so sensual, but now I like acrylic and it allows me to do a lot of work with different textures, and to build surfaces. It can be so messy and big, disgustingly thick, or light and transparent. There’s often a phase in the process where a painting becomes “pretty.” When that happens I know I have to destroy it. You want something powerful, it can be ugly, beautiful maybe, but not pretty. The paintings start having their own personality, and I can yell at them: get out of my sight! I stack them in a corner, face against the wall.

Taking risks There’s a wonderful work by Goya, of two old women looking at themselves in the mirror. Old, bejeweled witches. It’s very harsh, but Goya perceived something about women’s terror of aging, of not being visible anymore. Nothing has changed! [she laughs]

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Francisco de Goya, Les Vieilles, or Time and the Old Women, 1810-12

The culture in which we live wants to keep us scared, because when you are scared you can be controlled. But it’s never too late to say no to fear. What’s difficult is getting over the fear of not being good enough, and fear of change. When I am scared, I tell my son, ‘You take care of that.’ My son died more than ten years ago, and it’s not that I believe he is there like a ghost, or an angel or something like that. But I do think he is part of that vast energy field that some people call god, black holes, whatever. I don’t know what to call it. I think the creative process links us to that energy. It’s hard to create. But it’s pleasure too. It’s joy.

Chantal, Exit, 2013

Chantal Bruchez-Hall, Exit, 2013