Category Archives: art

General arts and culture posts

Change Comes in November

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The American presidential elections are coming up, and both candidates have promised change. However, I’ve been sniffing out more change in the air, and I think it’s going to make itself clear when people begin voting with their dollars at the auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s this month.

November is typically a month of big auctions for these two art houses. Look at Christie’s calendar, and in upcoming days they are covering Impressionism, Modernism, Post-War and Contemporary Art. These are some big guns, and the Old Masters are still to come. Sotheby’s in New York is also covering Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art. The high expectations that have usually been blown through the roof will be harder to fulfil this year.

Why? Aside from people having less discretionary capital, art itself isn’t the stable investment it once was. As I pointed out in a previous post, art and housing prices might prove to be quite similar. Growth in art prices has beat the S&P for the past few years, and prices have skyrocketed. This kind of growth would be hard to support at any time, and prices are no longer buoyed by a growing economy. While prices going down might seem like bad news to the artists and galleries, it’s an opportunity for people who collect because of passion. So as other people are watching the polls, I’m going to be watching the auction sale results in the upcoming days. I feel confident promising you citizens that change is coming.

Review: theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenhiem

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I groaned along with a few other people when the black and white film we were watching on beanbag chairs stopped in the middle, apparently on a continuous loop that never finishes. Since I had finished my free espresso, I got up and someone else jetted into my seat. The espresso bar’s line had died down, and people mingled up and down the white ramp. Where was I?

–the not-so-stuffy Guggenheim. The Guggenheim in New York has taken on a playful approach this fall, with an “invitation to a core group of these artists—Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija—to collectively formulate a scenario for an exhibition,” according to its press release for theanyspacewhatever.

‘Relational aesthetics’ makes an intimidating phrase. However, these artists, who take the exhibition as a medium, have turned the Guggenheim into a humanized and fun space where suddenly everything starts to look like art. The museum has been transformed into one sprawling art playground, where the whole experience becomes a user-friendly and interrelated series of experiences as one ascends the circular ramp. It starts with the marquee of flashing lights at the entrance, but this theatrical experience is one where the viewer is the star. The bare white spiral of the interior is punctuated with a plethora of details that humanize the space. On walking in, one looks up to see a glittering starry sky and down to see a Pinocchio submerged face down in the museum’s small pool. What’s the connection between these works? Only that they share the space with each other, created to work together to draw the viewer into the space, and make them more aware of their surroundings.

It works on you subtly at first, but becomes more and more interesting. I took my shoes off to watch part of a documentary on some cushions next to one of the TVs on the first level, thereby making myself part of the exhibition as I discovered when girls took photos of the scene, and me, from the balcony above. Associative chains of black words seemed randomly typed both in placement and meaning at first. They never take a structured narrative, but one becomes more in tune with a generalized significance. The sound of falling water immerses the viewer as he walks through a bare white tunnel, then he is lost in a brown cardboard maze with holes that you can peep through and art embedded where you are least likely to look. After a set of hotel bedroom furniture on a round glass platform, you arrive at my favorite part, the Illy espresso bar next to the beanbag movie theatre. Eventually, you reach a sign at the top telling you you have reached the end, and it really feels like a you have completed a journey.
This process-oriented way of experiencing the exhibit made me feel like a child, uninhibited. This is the kind of space where you can touch the art, drink the art, and walking through it makes you a part of the art. These ordinary objects, beds or words like half-formed thoughts, could be found outside the Guggenheim’s walls. The New York Times reported that, “For a price and with a reservation, up to two people can spend the night. (Like so many must-dos in New York, it is sold out.)” Does it get more interactive than that?

It will be up until January 7, 2009, and in conjunction with the Catherine Opie retrospective also being exhibited, makes for a fun day at the museum. Instead of being boxed into to rectangular room and seeing things in gilt frames, you see Frank Gehry’s design fully exploited in this spiral-patterned fun house. Instead of being told where to look and how, you are let loose to participate and peek where you like. How refreshing.

ARTnews Bores Me

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From the November issue of the venerable ARTnews comes a revelation: “Street art—including stickers, posters, murals, graffiti, and even 3-D sculptures—is making its way into mainstream galleries and museums.” No shit, Sherlock. Is the air under your rock stifling you?

This is why I don’t really read ARTnews: it bores me. You?

It bores me because the content is exactly what I could have surmised myself. In this leading article “Two way street,” writer Carolina Miranda addresses street art’s entry into mainstream channels of consumption. After Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, London’s Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum in New York have each ‘covered’ the genre– then ARTnews document it. Musuem have been paying attention, as have galleries and collectors. ARTnews is even falling behind the mainstream. Tsk tsk….

ARTnews tags itself as “The oldest, most-widely read fine arts magazine in the world.” Congratulations! Now step up your act before you become “The oldest, most-atavistic art history magazine in the world.”
More discussion of the effects of street art going mainstream would have been welcome. Their work has gone from the street to the inner sanctums, and artists no longer face the same resistance and challenges to spreading or selling their work. It’s been made legitimate. This safe, generic article doesn’t touch on these issues, but it does continue to erode the charm of illictness street art once possesed. To its (small) credit, it does mention Shepard Fairey, of Andre the Giant fame, Lazarides, whose show on Bowery I loved a few weeks ago, and also to my hometown. On the other hand, they work with and talk to all the right people, and there’s something to be said for that.