Limits of My World: Words and Maps

"Hemispheriu," 1593

"The limits of my language are the limits of my world" runs a paraphrase of Wittgenstein, and never has this seemed more true than when I came across a collection of fantastic old maps as I was in the midst of reading The Secret Life of Words, a history of the English language. I'm on the Powwow chapter, and guess what? The English language is adapting to the discovery of the New World.

"Universale," 1546

As further reaches of the new world were explored, a much more detailed coastline appears, even while the interior remained blank (or filled with fanciful pictures of native people and animals).

"The North part of America Conteyning Newfoundland, new England, Virginia, Florida, new Spaine, and Nova Francia," 1625

The Western coastline protrayed (more or less) correctly in the first two maps has changed strangely here--California is an island! A misinformed Spanish letter came into the hands of the Dutch, and Dutch and English cartographers subsequently replicated this mistake for a hundred plus years. At this point the Spanish were settling all along the California coast so it seems astounding such a mistake was maitained for so long. It also suggests the large amount of imagination mapmakers of the time used to fill in blank areas. The cartographer was imagining a coastline that fit in with the scant information he had.

Right above Virginia you can see "James Citie," or Jamestown, which became the first permanent settlement of the English in 1607. After 1607, English settlers were adapting to their new enviornment and dealing with the natives of "New India." As horizons expanded geographically, English appropriated new words to describe it. Here are some words that entered the English language in the 16th and 17th c. as England began to explore and colonize the new world:

potato
tobacco
nicotine
to smoke
cannibal
maize
cassava
canoe
moose
tomahawk
awning
adrift
roomy
firewater
wigwam
skunk
woodchuk
squash
mugwump

I don't know if you can read the place names listed, but this detail includes Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. English maps gradually filled the blank spaces with names we recognize even today. The Native Americans' presence in the English language was simularly reduced, to a handful of words and geographical names. Considering maps and words as signs of how the English concieved of the New World suggests a place of vast possibilities and exotic plants and animals with origins more in the imagination than in reality.

Detail of map header, labelling it "The North part of America."

Your newly-humbled blogger

I am a writer. Often, when I'm in a group of artists and I identify myself that way, they tell me that makes me an artist. I can be in the club. And it's not that I don't agree. But I realized that I really have no idea how you guys do what you do, and I went out and bought some acrylic paints and brushes.

This is a long-delayed gratification. I've always wanted to try painting, but it's an expensive thing to try. So I bought red, yellow, blue, raw umber, and white and came home to try painting on cardboard. I thought it wasn't such an expensive thing. Until I tried to paint and realized that a) I had no idea what I was doing and b) what I was doing absolutely sucked. That is when it seemed like a waste of money.

I'm not throwing in the paint just yet. Quite the contrary. I instead bought gel medium and better brushes and a pad of canvas. I also borrowed a book on acrylics from a friend. I'm not hopeful that anything great will come of it; I enjoy just messing around with the colors.

But I have gained something: greater respect for artists and a dose of personal humility. The respect thing clearly comes from the experience of how hard it is to apply paint to canvas (or cardboard) in the most basic way. As to the second quality, I've never been that person to walk around a museum muttering "I could do that." Yet I do basically saunter around judging the art I see to be good or bad, and--god help me--I couldn't do the worst of it. Well, maybe I could do the worst of it if I tried really, really hard.

So there you have it, a newly-humbled art blogger. Writer.

Art Under the Bridge, the Video

It's been a while since I made a video, so I was really excited to capture some of the projects at the Art Under the Bridge Festival this past weekend. It was a sunny Fall day, and a lot of people came out to stroll around. There was so much to see and do I'm afraid I don't give much information about individual projects. You can see a list of all the projects on the Dumbo Arts Center website. There was a lot of creativity and fun in the air, so I hope you get a sense of what it was like in this Ravels in Motion production.

A SparkNotes Hamlet, with a (hopefully) more colorful review

I was not the only person in the darkened theater to breathe an inward sigh of relief when Jude Law took the stage. His daughter had been born the night before, so there had been some uncertainty as to whether the star of Hamlet would indeed be playing Hamlet. He was, and the show went on at the Broadhurst Theater, which is hosting a limited run of this successful London production, to general applause and more than a few chuckles. Chuckles and Hamlet might not seem to go together, and please do not be led to think that director Michael Grandage is exploring the humorous side of Shakespeare's tragedy.

Continued here on Blogcritics.

Dumbo Art Festival

Starting today, the DUMBO Arts Under the Bridge Festival is kicking off in--you guessed it--DUMBO. Artists contribute temporary site specific installations and transform the area. Many artists also open their studios to the public. Normally I would just wander around and see what their is to see, but I'm doing something a little bit more tomorrow afternoon.

I agreed to help lead an art walk. Unlike a place like Chelsea, here we'll just have to see what there is to see. But that should be a lot of fun. It supposed to be wonderful weather all weekend so, if you feel like some serendipitous artsy wandering, come out.

Coming up Roses: Will Ryman at Marlborough Gallery

Ah, the purity of roses in the sunlight! I can almost smell the scent wafting over me. But is that a cigarette butt I see at the bottom of the stem? Oh yes, it is. It seems things are not all peachy keen in Will Ryman's oversized hyperbolic rose garden. Up at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea through October 10, these sculptures by Ryman are well worth a wander through this quasi-fairy tale world, if only for the fun of it.

Some signs of garbage and bugs might about, but all the same the rose garden strikes a happily note. How can you argue with ballet pink and Venetian red? The bugs are kind of cute, even the bag of Wise potato chips and the crushed Starbucks cup seem colorful and cheery.

The artist was trying to create a rodent's perspective on a NYC rose garden, which I have to say makes the experience almost too literal to be interesting. Walking through the clusters of roses makes you aware of their overwhelming stature and it increases your sense of being in some kind of wonderland. One can only think the black aphids and cigarette butts are meant to disturb that experience. It misses that mark, but maybe it is supposed to be more ambiguous than that. Entitled A New Beginning, perhaps this installation is meant to be hopeful.

What do you think?

Mark Bradford, Artist and (ahem) Genius

Winners of the MacArthur "genius" grants were announced yesterday. Having recently been very impressed by one winner's work, I'll refrain from my usual curmudgeony response to these newly minted geniuses. Mark Bradford won one of the $500,000 prizes. He is a mixed-media artist who is sharing a show with Kara Walker (a former MacArthur grant winner) at Sikkema Jenkins in Chelsea now.

Red Painting, above, is kinda genius. It's a real show stopper right by the door. This jpeg doesn't at all do it justice. That and the one below, Orbit, are both large with a lot of small detail you can't appreciate like this. Easy solution? Go to Sikkema Jenkins and see some genius.

Milking the Maid, One More Time

The first room of the new exhibition Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid at the Metropolitan Museum of Art reminds you how precious this masterpiece is with a simple device: the wall is covered with a grid of 36 images of paintings. They represent all that has survived of 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's oeuvre of 40 or so paintings. Of those 36, The Milkmaid stands out like a jewel. The Metropolitan has The Milkmaid on loan from the Rijksmusem through November 29, and has created a small exhibition around it.

Continued here on Blogcritics.

It is a great painting, and the rest aren't bad either. Just look at NYC's wealth of Vermeers. And if all this is just too much sweetness and color and light for you, get a load of this guy's codpiece:

The Archer and the Milkmaid, Andries Stock, ca. 1610

This is one of the drawing's being shown at the Met that makes an argument for the milkmaid as sex object in 17th C. Dutch culture.

Self-Portraits from James Turrell's show at PaceWilderstein

Art Ravel's 2009 Prize for Best Artwork to Take Self-Portraits With goes to...
James Turrell at PaceWildenstein

Remember holograms? They were big in the 80s. Anyhow, these seemingly 3D depictions of color by James Turrell make awesome backdrops for photographs. Awesome.

I actually saw quite a lot of abstract color when I went to Chelsea on Saturday, and this might be in a sense the purest form of it. Or it might be the transference of abstract Minamalist principles to a new medium (which seems not nearly as high-tech as it did in the 80s).

This jpeg on the left doesn't really do the work justice either; the shifting work creates a experiential process of looking that is hard to capture. In case you are really into holograms, the show is up at Pace's 25th St location through October 17th. It could potentially be a soul searching experience in which you touch the miraculous essence of color and exit a changed being, but most likely any reveries you have will be interrupted by inspired photographers like myself whipping out their camera phones. Maybe try to go when the gallery is less busy. : )

NYC's Wealth of Vermeers

The Milkmaid, 1657, Rijksmuseum, On loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The economy may be dismal, but New York is still rich in some things: people, MTA delays, and- thanks to a generous loan from the Rijksmusem- Vermeers. The Met exhibition Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid is open until November 29, and rarely has an exhibition been so well devoted to one picture. It provides a context and education for Vermeer's masterpiece with a slew of exceptional Dutch paintings. The Milkmaid itself is more beautiful than I knew to expect. I saw the exhibition last night and was blown away by it. I'm going back, and I suggest that you see it and take a detour to the Frick as well.

The exhibition at the Met boasts 6 Vermeers. In addition, the Frick Collection, which was unable to loan its paintings for the Met's exhibition, has another 3 paintings by Vermeer. Currently in an afternoon on the Upper East Side a person can give themselves an education on Vermeer with 9 of his 36 existing paintings. Not bad for a recession.

The nine paintings below are even lovelier in person (except the Study of a Young Woman--would love to hear what you think of that one). They are arranged in chronological order, the first having been painted a year before The Milkmaid.

A Maid Asleep, 1656, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Officer and Laughing Girl, 1657, Frick Collection

Girl Interrupted at her Music, 1658, Frick Collection

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, 1662, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Girl with a Lute, 1662, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Study of a Young Woman, 1665, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mistress and Maid, 1666, Frick Collection

Allegory of the Catholic Faith, 1670, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Outside In at LaViolaBank Gallery: Walkin' On Broken Glass

You enter Outside In, the group show at LaViolaBank gallery, by stepping up on a raised platform covered in cracked glass. People, understandably, paused hesitantly before crossing over it when I went to the opening Wednesday night. Under the chatter of the crowd, you could hear (and feel) the glass shattering beneath your feet. This makes for quite an introduction to the exhibition, which explores the personal/dreamy/unreal side of landscape. (LaViolaBank happens to be a block from my apartment, so not even lobster night could keep me away from the opening.)

Mira O'Brien's aptly titled Glass Floor is laminated glass over photographs whose spreading geometric patterns mirror [get it, to mirror/on a mirror? no?] the cracking patterns of the glass. I enjoyed walking on the art, to see the art, while participating in the destruction of the art, in a visceral sense. The seascape beneath seemed a little insipid, like a stock nature scene. Maybe I was too distracted by the people to contemplate it. Either way, I enjoyed it overall. More on the project and her work on her website.

I also liked the charcoal drawings of Marina Berio. It probably looks like a photographic negative, which it was based on, in the jpeg below. The charcoal's softer edges and matteness transformed the atmosphere of the piece. In a sense, these were the most literal pieces in this rather dreamy show, but by changing medium I thought they gained a greater atmospheric value. If you're in the neighborhood before October 18, have a look.

Lobster: It's What's For Dinner

Dali, 1936

Surrealists seemed to dig this red crustacean. It's one of those natural objects that look like a dream. Especially creepy when they are alive and brown with their antennae poking about your living room as you urge them to race.

Yes, tonight is the night of the great lobster race. We're upping the ante tonight, as my boyfriend and I will be having company for dinner. So instead of just two lobsters, we'll have six lobsters. You line them up and then urge them to move forward. It sounds slightly more exciting than it is, given that these are not fast land animals. In an ideal world, the winner of the race would avoid the pot and become a cherished household pet. However, life is short and brutish. All the lobsters are going in the pot tonight. [Insert evil grin]

As much as I enjoy these events, live lobsters creep me out Annie Hall style. So what I'm wondering is--did Dali use a real deccissitated lobster for his ridiculous, iconic telephone? I'm going to assume it is plastic for my own sanity.

Barbara Kruger at the Lever House

This is what I saw coming to work this morning. The Lever House has a series of rotating contemporary art exhibitions in the glass ground floor lobby and they switched out a Tara Donovan piece for this. The glass is covered in bold white on black slogans. "Believe" seemed a little much for me, especially before I'd had my tea.

Courtyard with Tom Sach's Hello Kitty figures.

Another Dollar, Another Day entrance.

But then I got sucked into the lobby. The slogans crowding the walls weren't saccharine exhortations after all, as I realized when I saw the doors. "Another Dollar, Another Day" and "If it screams, shove it" are good examples of that. I'm guessing this is Barbara Kruger's work, although the Lever House website doesn't say as much yet.

Especially inside the lobby, the slogans are overwhelming. They cover every surface, transforming the space. Midtown Manhattan is certainly a big enough target for Krugar's commentary and, unlike some other exhibition at the Lever House, Midtown won't be able to ignore it. I certainly couldn't.

"Another Life, Another Love" doorway.

Gagosian opens not a gallery, but a store.

The Gagosian empire has spread across Chelsea and the rest of the world, most recently to Rome, Italy. But this incredibly successful venture is taking on a new aspect--retail. Coolhunting reports that the store "focuses primarily on the publications, posters and accessible artist editions that the powerhouse gallery creates from its many shows at its galleries around the world."

My first reaction was along the lines of "ugh, how commercial." Unlike museum shops, this seems like a drive to squeeze the last penny out of an already profitable machine in a way that may or may not help the artist. But then I started daydreaming about the cool stuff that I might actually be able to afford....this is clearly designed to reach out to a whole new audience of people like me...I like that.

Light on Water: Monet at MoMA

Monets are pretty. I'm sure those who go to see MoMA's small exhibition devoted to his water lilies series will agree. You might go on to say he anticipates abstract expressionism, that he left his canvasses radically unfinished, etc. All good points, ones that this exhibition will remind you of. Roberta Smith in her NYTimes article also informs you that he was influenced by Japanese screens. I like Monet's Water Lilies, BUT

perhaps because they are so iconic
or perhaps because they're just so pretty...
[insert shoulder shrug] they don't excite me.

I am mildly interested looking at them. I like to trace the bare canvas at the edges and notice how he layered color. I was pleased the colors in my Labor day photos and his paintings tied in nicely. But Monet hardly demands a strong reaction--he's a more contemplative sort. The kind who was entranced by watching sunsets. And that's fair enough.

Light on water is quite pretty.

Quick Impressions: Kara Walker, Juergen Teller, Et. Al.

Last night was one of those great nights in New York city when the whole world seems to be trawling its blocks, wearing every conceivable item of clothing and heading every which way. The people watching was great, the art was much and varied, and the wine was scant. (Recession much?) I started at Sikkema Jenkins, where new work from Kara Walker (above) and Mark Bradford was up. Mark Bradford, who I wasn't familiar with, has a stunning large piece just in the entrance.

The image above doesn't really do it justice, I recommend checking it out. Magnus Plessen at Gladstone is also worth a look.

I wandered further up, to Juergen Teller at Lehman Maupin. Unfortunately, I don't have an image of his crops of nude statues that coldly toy with sexuality and artificiality. I think I enjoyed some of those more than the juxtaposition of his muses in the galleries.


Maybe it was the show, or maybe it was the time of night--about 7:30, but the crowds really started to kick in. And a very good looking crowd it was. I had a slightly awkward moment when a middle-aged WASPy women, who had asked me what gallery we were in, got the mistaken impression that we were going off together in search of wine...but never mind that.


I lost her at the heads. This photo doesn't quite do justice to Jaune Plensa's massive illuminated sculptures at Galerie Lelong. I only wish he hadn't taken to inscribing words accross them. "Anxiety," "Wrath," etc felt overly didactic, if didactic is ever a good thing in art. By this time things were kicking, I had lost the people I was with, and I headed down to Zwirner and the Kitchen on 19th St. Both had great, fun, crowded openings (perhaps because they had booze : ). As for the art...I'll have to check it out under other circumstances.

I tried to squeeze another opening into my night by going down to SoHo, but there was a line halfway down the block to get into this exhibition! The people in front told me they had waited for an hour, and I decided to walk myself home. Somewhere along this walk I realized it was also Fashion's Night Out , with lingerie stores offering cookies and boutiques with bands.

Was anybody else out last night? Any recommendations?

A Little Happiness and Death

Happy Thursday...of course you'll be happy, knowing that The Confidance Man was the most fun and engaging theater experience I ever had. I highly reccomend you hustle down to Pier 40 one night this September to check it out for yourselves.

But more to the point for today, or rather tonight, artist and fellow blogger Bill Evertson provides a nice write up of the exhibition A Book About Death, including his contribution, opening tonight at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery at 7:30. Check out his blog and the show!

Autumn in New York: Plays and Galleries, Oh My

Despite lamenting the shortening days, autumn in New York is lovely...and busy! 'Tis the season, and now there are a hundred and one things cultural offerings on the agenda. This leads to some tough choices. I have to skip a few gallery opening tonight...but I will be seeing the Woodshed Collective's The Confidence Man.

The Woodshed Collective, this genius, only in New York kind of organization, is putting on a free play. All you have to do is reserve a ticket in advance. Last summer they did a really nice job with Twelve Ophelias, a backcountry spin off of Hamlet, at McCarren Pool Park. The group focuses on site-specific installations of original new work. The Confidence Man is being performed on the Decommissioned U.S.C.G. Lilac at Pier 40 on the Hudson. As a spin off of Herman Melville's story about a 19th c. con man on a riverboat, this is more than appropriate.

Here's the kicker: the audience chooses how the performance will go. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure book. To wit:

"The audience will choose what to see and which character’s story to follow just as one selects which newspaper stories to read, which YouTube videos to screen, or which online links to click. By allowing audience members to immerse themselves in the experience, the production seeks to blur the line between performer and patron..."

They warn you not to wear heels--you'll be running all over the old ship. It's all very exciting, and a fun way to kick off a new fall season. Up tomorrow: Johnny Madsen at Denise Bibro, Carla Klein and Rita Lundqvist at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Juergen Teller at Lehman Maupin, Chris Ofili at David Zwirner, a group show at White Columns and the Kitchen and general wandering about Chelsea to see what's happening. 'Tis the season.