Little Boats Sinking

For a great discussion of what is or should be happening in the art world according to Jerry Saltz, check out Hrag Vartanian's coverage of the lecture he delivered entitled "This is the End; The Rising Tide that Floated All Boats has Gone Out and All Boats are in Danger of Sinking."

Louise Fishman's Accomplished Abstractions

If a mark of success is survival, then Louise Fishman, at 70, is in prime form to make her mark in the annals of American abstraction as well as on canvas. Her show at Cheim and Reed, on through May 2, is a great chance to see the accomplished paintings of an artist who has matured over a long career.

As the press release for the exhibition states, "Now seventy years old, Fishman is from a generation of artists that includes Brice Marden (age 70), Mary Heilmann (age 68), Robert Mangold (age 71), Lynda Benglis (age 67), Bill Jensen (age 63), Pat Steir (age 68) and Robert Ryman (age 78)." All of whom just missed the beginnings of Abstract Expressionism and form a second generation who took abstraction different ways.

It's old hat, if still well-warranted, to point out that Abstract Expressionism's started out as a boys club that excluded some able female painters who were very much a part of the 1940s American art scene. Talented women were part of the Abstract Expressionism during its first years, but their careers differ from that of their male counterparts. Exemplia gratis: Elaine de Kooning. However, to understand Fishman's current paintings as important because she is a female who does abstract paintings would take credit from the work itself and ignores the story of how she came to the gestural abstraction she is known for now.

Fishman was not always an abstract painter. An active feminist, her works in the 60s (grid paintings) and early 70s (traditional women's work, like knitting) eventually led her to embrace a style of painting that was traditionally 'masculine.'

Fishman's style of painting is noted for its energy and textures, a process of mark making and layering that creates a densely-worked canvas. The paintings in this show are large and physical. These abstract canvases create a layered world that suggests something lurking underneath. I thought the show a Cheim and Reed was impressive and well-worth a visit.

ArtPrize: A 'Radically Open' Taste Test

If you didn't follow the link to ArtPrize at the end of my post yesterday, don't worry. Because if high-handed art-ad warfare deserves a post, so does a 'radically-open' art competition with the biggest prize in the world ($25,000 for first place) whose fate will be decided this coming October 1.

I've mentioned before how American taste and critical opinion can go separate ways (for example, see post on Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell)--I can't wait to see if that proves to be the case with Artprize.

Will some hot shot of the Whitney Biennial, an art fair that "characterizes the state of American art today," win? Or perhaps an older, half-forgotten artist? Will it be a traditional oil painting, or a minamalist poly-resin casting containing nothingness? I feel like this is a litmus test for what America considers beautiful. What will it say about American's ideas of beauty? When I consider the opinions of the various people I know, I'm really not sure how to answer that question. (The New York Times mockingly called it 'Art Idol.' )

ArtPrize is as much a social experiment as an art contest. Venues are provided by volunteers and matched with entrants. Entrants are encouraged to stay for the duration of the fair to promote their work. Voting can be done only by people who visit the fair, which is being hosted in Grand Rapids, MI. (The prize is funded by a Michigan politician) Grand Rapids might seem out of the way, but that $25,000 prize speaks pretty loudly. In fact, it screams "Pay Attention To Me."

But what will the ArtPrize and its voting methods reflect about the state of populist American taste? I think the winner could be as follows:

1. appeals to the lowest common denominator
2. the prettiest
3. the best social networker
4. the next Leonardo da Vinci, who has been hiding inside a cave in Grand Rapids
5. a perfectly reputable, established good artist with credentials*

*That would be the most unintersting result.

Guerilla Warfare: New York Street Advertising Takeover

Kenmare St. and Elizabeth St., NYC

An ambitious project took place this past weekend, and only a scattered handful of passers by took note. If you look, however, you might begin to notice it on your morning commute or across from your apartment. The Wooster Collective, a street art blog, describes the escapade thus:

"Jordan Seiler's incredibly ambitious New York Street Advertising Takeover became a reality yesterday [April 25], when over 120 illegal billboards throughout the city were white washed by dozens of volunteers.

NYSAT was organized as a reaction to the hundreds of billboards that are not registered with the city, and therefore are illegal. While illegal, these violations are not being prosecuted by the City of New York, allowing the billboard companies to garner huge profits by cluttering our outdoor space with intrusive and ugly ads.

After the illegal spots were white washed, late in the day yesterday over eight artists transformed these spaces into personal pieces of art."

It's a guerilla beautification campaign! Artist Jordan Sieler's Public Ad Campaign organizes and documents artists who work against the advertising that has spread in traditionally non-commercial spaces. Now if only all New Yorkers would get so motivated and pick up litter and work in their community gardens. While it's a cool project with beautiful results, it raises some questions.

Is that what the public wants done on their advertising space?

Sieler states that 'By commodifying public space, outdoor advertising has monopolized the surfaces that shape our shared space. Private property laws protect the communications made by outdoor advertising while systematically preventing public usage of that space,' but the public isn't deciding what to do with these artist's buildboards, the illegal artists are.

Is there a difference between street art and advertising? Or art and advertising?

Art has literally taken the place of advertising in this case, and if anything it erases that line in the sand between the two a little bit more. Contemporary art is an inclusive practice and more street artists are crossing over to advertising (ahem, Shepard Fairy) and no end of graphic designers are also artists use a similar visual vocabulary whether they are creating art or advertising.

Why is promoting art (and one's work) better than promoting a Coca-Cola?

Advertising serves a specific function, to sell something. Art, especially the guerrilla street art that makes up the Public Ad Campaign, often has an ideology and purpose behind it too. So is the difference really the type of thing it's promoting, Coca-Cola or ideas? A coke might have a specific dollar value, but either way it's propaganda.

Bowery and 4th St., NYC

That being said, I like the results. I, as an individual, find the donkey's head on the wall more interesting and beautiful than most advertising. But this campaign makes it seem like guerilla warfare is going on against the big advertisers, and the public doesn't get a say on either side of things, despite the fact that it is obstensibly for the benefit of the public. I guess it's like most wars in that sense.

Not like ArtPrize, where anyone who visits the fair in Grand Rapids gets to vote on the winning artwork. But that's another story for another day.

For more billboard pictures, see here or here.

You Know It's Almost Summer When...

• you arrive to work sweating
• your eyes are glued shut by allergies
• suddenly on the subway arms and toes are bared
• people seem happy
• even the glaring sunlight can't entice you out of bed because the longer days somehow make you stay up much later than you intended

Based on the above signs, I'm guessing it's summer. While this is a much anticipated change, my head seems stuffed with cotton balls. I will try to blog properly at some point over the next six months. Honest.

In the meantime, check out these very cool video effects and play 'guess the famous painting' game. I'm going to try to find a tissue and caffeine.

Human Carriage Gets Applause

Ann Hamilton created the site-specific Human Carriage for the recently closed Third Mind exhibition at the Guggenheim, and I wanted to share it with you because it was absolutely delightful. Her formal description of human carriage reads “Installation of cloth, wire, bells, books, string, pipe, pulleys, pages, cable, gravity, air, and sound.”



It was a playful and fun installation. It was also affecting: viewers clapped every time the book finally dropped. Every time. Once it got stuck, and I stopped in my tracks. What would happen now? (A museum worker with a pole pushed it along.)

The Guggenheim Museum described its working thus: “Hamilton devises a mechanism that traverses the entire Guggenheim balustrade, taking the form of a white silk ‘bell carriage’ with Tibetan bells attached inside. As the cage spirals down along the balustrade, the purifying bells ring, awakening viewers. The mechanism is hoisted back up to a post at the uppermost Rotunda Level 6, where an attendant exchanges weights composed of thousands of cut-up books that counter the pulley system that propels the mechanism itself."

Picasso at Gagosian: Go now!

As you know, if you read yesterday's or the day before's post, I had a great list of galleries in Chelsea that I wanted to go see. Yesterday was beautiful outside, so I biked up to 20th Street. Overall, I had a mixed reaction, but one thing stands out as being an incredible show and opportunity for any art lover:

The Picasso exhibition at Gagosian

It's amazing to see Picasso in a smaller, intimate gallery setting. This is Gagosian's new space at 522 W. 21st St, and it's beautifully lit. The sheer number of works in the 4 large spaces is dauntingly fun, and it really helps you make sense of Picasso's late period during the 60s and 70s, from which all the works were drawn. Called Mosqueteros, due to an abundance musketeers, cavaliers and prostitutes in these later works, the show comes mostly from private collections that are not accessible to the public. So Gagosian's exhibition is an unprecedented chance to see this grouping.

The artist in 1971

Gagosian's business acumen is amazing: rather than focusing on lower-priced works in these economic times, he is marshalingl his resources to create shows like the Pierro Manzoni retrospective and this one to generate buzz and excitement at a time when it's hard to generate sales. The exhibitions themselves have been wonderful.

I felt within the Mosqueteros, there was certainly an uneven quality to the grouping. Some paintings were great, others very great. The paintings themselves were jarring, ruthlessly honest, and aggressive with haunting eyes. If the exhibition shows you anything, it's that Picasso remains fresh and relevant today. It's on view until June 6, so go see it while you can.

Ravels in Review Friday

You'll be happy to know that dinner last night was delicious: tilapia, brussel sprouts, and potatoes; and a good time was had be all. (I know you were anxious about my entertaining abilities.)

As it is finally Friday, it's time for a Ravels in Review post. I think the week certainly started out on a good note with a long-overdue introduction.

• So if you had any lingering questions about yours truly, check out the video post in which I formally introduce myself.
  
• In another video post, I give you a glimpse into Nearly Ninety at BAM, at which Merce Cunningham, Sonic Youth, and John Paul Jones created an interesting collaboration.
  
• The performance inspired me to learn more about experimental composer John Cage.
  
• I discussed the Pulitzer Prize process (say that 3 times fast..) and Holland Cotter's win for Criticism.
  
• I shared some of my recent reading with a poem by Emiliy Dickinson.
  
• Yesterday, I left you with a To Do list of great gallery openings.

If anybody had a chance to check things out in Chelsea, let us know. Hopefully I'll follow that gallery list myself! Today is 70 degrees and sunny--what could be better?

Happy Friday all!

Q: What is Thursday in the art world?

A: A night of gallery hopping; i.e. openings, wine, people watching, mingling and more.

I have a great list of exciting openings for tonight. I have a great new raincoat and umbrella just in case. Great, right? Except I'll be hosting my boyfriend's dad for dinner, which is, of course, lovely, but does not leave time for gallery hopping.

There's no reason that the list should go to waste though. Enjoy and report back if you can. If not, hopefully I'll be out there on Friday. Also, if you ever want to check out some openings and aren't sure where to go, check out Artcards for a great and wide-ranging list of exhibitions. Openings are from 6 to 8 p.m.

• Maja Lisa Engelhardt, image right, at Elizabeth Harris Gallery , 529 W. 20th St., Through May 30
  
  


• Alex Katz at Pace Wilderstein, 545 W. 22nd St., Through June 13
  
  


• Hannah Starkey and Phil Collins at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery , 521 W. 21st St., Through June 20

This is my short list of things to see tonight. The long list occurs as you're strolling through Chelsea and spot a crowd or a work that catches you're eye. Hopefully, I'll catch those shows and the ones listed below tomorrow.

The shows listed below are not to be missed, at least so I suspect/heard through the grapevine. Except for the last one, an installation, this list provides a very painterly tour of Chelsea. There are galleries outside of Chelsea (and I do want to write about them soon) but you can only fit so much into a day, right?

• Pablo Picasso, image right, at Gagosian Gallery, 522 W 21 street, Through June 26




• Kaye Donachie at Marianne Boesky Gallery, 509 W. 24 St., Through April 25
  
  


• Graham Gillmore at Mike Weiss Gallery, 520 W 24 St., Through May 2
  
  


• Louise Fishman at Cheim & Read, 547 W 25 St., Through May 2




• Michael Wetzel at John Connelly Presents, 625 W 27 St.,Through May 16
  
  


• Penny Hes Yassour at Stux Gallery, 530 West 25th St., Through May 2

Am I missing a good show? Is something cool coming up? Tell me!

Poetry ala Emily Dickinson for your Wednesday

I cannot live with you by Emily Dickinson (1830–86)

I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf

The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup

Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer Sèvres pleases,
Old ones crack.

I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other’s gaze down,—
You could not.

And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus’,
That new grace

Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.

They ’d judge us—how?
For you served Heaven, you know,
Or sought to;
I could not,

Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.


And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.


And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.

So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!

And the Pulitzer goes to...

Holland Cotter of The New York Times for Criticism.

The Pulitzer prize announced the winners yesterday and Cotter was distinguished "for his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling." He was competing against Inga Saffron of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who I am not familiar with, and Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe "for his fresh, accessible and energetic reviews on the New England art scene, creating for readers a sense of discovery even as he provides discerning analysis."

I'd lean toward Smee over Cotter on mostly everything. Smee is a real joy to read, and his work has been truly "fresh" and "energetic."

Ah well. Cotter can enter the illustrious annals of Roger Ebert for Criticism, along with Robert Frost (four times) for Poetry; Eugene O'Neill (four times) and August Wilson (twice) for Drama; and William Faulkner (twice), Norman Mailer (twice), and John Updike (twice) for Fiction.

Did you know you had to enter to win the Pulitzer? To be considered, people must go to the Pulitzer's website and print out and submit a form along with a $50 entrance fee. Then the winner gets a cash prize of $10,000. For such a prestigious competition, it seems a little grubby.

Do you think Holland Cotter sat at his desk anxiously filling out the form last year, or do you think he has applied every year for the past 10? What about John Updike? And maybe it wasn't fair of Robert Frost to keep nominating himself; 4 Pulitzers should be enough for anybody.

I'm assuming these individuals are motivated by the glory, rather than the money, especiallly as $10,000 is going to make or break any of them. Still, what makes you wake up one morning and think 'Today I must apply for the Pulitzer. I am the top critic/playwright/_____ this year. Where's that $50 check?"

What I mean to say is, perhaps a selections committee would be more dignified.

Connections: John Cage

When an unfamiliar name pops up, I may or may not pay attention, unless it happens twice in a day. John Cage was big at the Guggenheim's The Third Mind and then at Merce Cunningham's Nearly Ninety at BAM, where the program noted that the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was partly founded by John Cage. I started to pay attention.

John Cage, Where R = Ryoanji (3R/17), 1992

John Cage with Pianist David Tudor

Yes, the same man is connected with the circle drawings above at the Guggenheim, the photo on the left, the Fluxus movement, Merce Cunningham, and silent music. I was surprised by the collaboration of Sonic Youth and Merce Cunningham, but apparently Sonic Youth, the experimental rock band, are fans of Cage who included 3 of his pieces on their album SYR4.

John Cage (1912-1992) was primarily a composer, albeit one more fascinated by sounds in themselves than creating structure. His most (in)famous piece, 4'33, consists of three movements of silence, signaled by the pianist opening and shutting the piano. The idea behind it is to open you the the noises in the room, the rustling, the whispers, sounds from the street. Many people at the original performance did not appreciate this.

Cage is now a well-established cutural influence, whose Bhuddist-inspired work left a huge-impression on American art. As the Guggenheim describes it, "Cage staunchly refused to create art in keeping with expectations, and all his creative endeavors, including dance, music, and visual art, were revolutionary. His Lecture on Nothing began with his statement, “I am here and there is nothing to say.” His concerts were even more challenging."

John Cage, Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, 1969

John Cage's Experimental Composition classes in the 1950s have become legendary as an American source of Fluxus, the international network of artists, composers, and designers. In addition to music, Cage created works of visual art, like the one above referring to his old chess partner Marcel Duchamp, and writings. Cage was also a life-long mushroom collector.

Merce Cunningham's Nearly Ninety at BAM

So this is your very dance-uniformed reviewer thanking her lucky stars that she brought her camera with her last night. I wouldn't know how to describe what I saw properly. I caught the sold-out production of Nearly Ninety arranged by legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham. Cunningham is a legend, but not one I had heard of when I bought these tickets months ago--I came for Sonic Youth.



As you can see in this short video, this was no Sonic Youth concert, but it was a interesting and exciting collaboration. I enjoyed it, but let me say that the experimental music did not strive to be harmonious and the dance was at times slow. The glittery spaceship-like set that the musicians played on and the black and white costumes were great. But check out some snippets for yourself and see what you think. And don't hesitate to enlighten me!

Finally, a Formal Introduction

So I'm afraid I may have been rude, dear reader. All these posts, and we've never been formally introduced. So please, accept my apologies and watch this video:



It's been a pleasure to meet you. Leave a comment and introduce yourself.

Ravels in Review Friday

It's been a long time since I did a Ravels in Review post between my trip to Costa Rica and skipping last week because there was very little that needed to be summed up. It's so nice to be swinging these art ravels in full force, you won't even here me rail on the weather. Especially as it is supposed to be a fantastic 71 degrees in NYC today.

But as to these past ravels, you'll see we have some interesting debates raised as to beauty, what it is and whether society values it, tales of rapscallions both old and new, a review of MoMA's photography exhibition Into the Sunset, and we even poked our nose across the pond to check out happenings at the Louvre and the situation for art recovery in L'Aquila.
Whew--time to take a breath. I also am excited by the idea of a public cafe cum art studio. So read, enjoy, comment: I always like to hear from people.

If you're wondering why I've said so little about Costa Rica, it's not that it was a cultural black hole per se. Watching a soccer match between Costa Rica and Mexico proved to be quite the cultural experience, and Costa Rica possesses great natural beauty. Not to mention surfing, zip lining, sloths (like the cute one above), toucans and tons of monkeys. It makes for a wonderful vacation, just not so artsy.



I surfed! (the smallest waves). Anyhow, happy Friday to you all! Enjoy the warm weekend!

Raw Canvas

It's rare, even unheard of, that I offer you business advice. If you have any sense of this blog at all, you know my thoughts do not that way tend. However, I do follow a super fun and interesting trend-spotting site, Springwise, and I want to share a trend that I wish would spread to NYC:

Hoping to unleash everyone's inner artist, Vancouver-based Raw Canvas is a creative hybrid: bustling café and full-service art studio.

Besides offering the usual café fare—organic coffee and tea, snacks, comfy couches and wifi, as well as wine, beer and tapas at night—Raw Canvas encourages customers to pick up painting. They can drop in at any time, buy a canvas and just get started in the open studio space that's connected to the café. Raw Canvas provides paints, brushes and all other supplies, and staff members and resident artists are on hand to offer encouragement and tips.

Inspired by popular art jams in Hong Kong, Raw Canvas aims to provide a low-threshold venue where people can come in for a few hours and explore their artistic impulses without committing time or money to a series of classes. With, of course, the added pleasure of a latte or glass of wine. Canvas pricing varies by size, ranging from CDN 40 to CDN 80. If you're a café owner looking to add a new source of revenue to your business, be inspired and get creative!

Now I don't think it's just me: the appeal of going to a cafe, maybe having a glass of wine with a friend, and then doing increasingly goofy portraits of said friend is universal. In fact, I might start throwing art parties as the weather in New York gets warmer and we can paint en plein air.

Anybody up for a painting party?

The Louvre Gets Wild

As the raindrops hit the grey pavement of the city, let's imagine ourselves in another, greyer city across the pond, one the has its fair share of black umbrellas out every spring: Paris. Say after a croissant and a cafe au lait you stare out the window and dread the thought of joining the dreary sea of umbrellas. Suddenly you shout "Eureka!", startling the waitress.

You will go to the Louvre. What better museum to get lost in than the Louvre, with its enormous collection and long galleries? Imagine your surprise when you find that the staid old home of the Mona Lisa is having a face lift.

It recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of it's first facelift, the infamous glass pyramid designed by I.M. Pei. For the pyramid's 20th birthday, the Louvre has created muse trek, a way of exploring the Louvre's collection and creating your own guide to the works displayed. Muse treks are available as an interactive guide on the web and on your own iPhone or iPod Touch at the museum. The treks people create give a uniquely personal view of connections between the artworks. (Unfortunately, many works from the museum's collection are not available...)

Interactive use of technoology is a good step forward into the 21st C. for the Louvre, but it gets wilder yet. The Louvre has commissioned Cy Twombly (who I promise I will quit writing about some day) to paint a ceiling for the Salle de Bronzes. As Grant Rosenberg points out in his article in The American Scholar, "for the first time since Georges Braque in 1953, a living artist’s work will adorn a ceiling of the iconic museum." This is a huge project for the octogenarian Twombly, literally: the ceiling is 33 meters long!

Ooh la la!

Art Intrusion at the New Museum

When a banner appears on the New Museum downtown on Bowery from an unnamed artist begging for his work to be shown, there's going to be some talk. Especially when it is unveiled at a press preview for a new exhibition of young artists. James Kalm has a short video of April 10 detailing the mystery:

Yesterday Hrag Vartanian's blog posted the supposed identity of the theif, a French artist Marc-Antoine Léval who calls himself The immaterial art emperor and has created such art "intrusions" in the past. As the post explains, Léval claims not to have put the painting there, only the banner. So I have the obvious question: whose painting is it? and another one, has Leval succeeded in his objective? That is, was the intrusion itself art? The New Museum has not commented on the banner, nor have they offered to show the artist's work.

Salvaging Art in L'Aquila

Italy conjures up images of rolling vineyards and piazzas full of cafes. Yet as the tragic recent volcanic eruption in Aquila reminds us, Italy has a history of disasters that have destroyed cities. From the flooding of Florence in 1966 to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that fossified Pompeii and Herculaneum, Italians are not strangers to natural disasters, or the havoc they wreak on people and their cultural heritage.
After the most pressing needs of survival are taken care of, L'Aquila and the surronding area now have a situation similar to Florence after it's flooding had stabilized: how to recover its artistic heritage. This is not the high-tech process you would imagine. I am still suprised by how simple the process is:

• Bring a flashlight, two way radio, and camera.
• Climb into the rubble and start digging with your bare (or gloved) hands.
• Hope you see something that resembles art. (Although it is unlikely you will have much idea what you are looking for, since archives tend to be housed with their artworks)
• Stabalize the work, e.g. wipe the mud off of paper or remove the tapestry from water.
• Try to find all the pieces and take them somewhere safe.

Among other works, a Della Robbia's altarpiece, which is still somewhere inside Church of San Bernardino di Siena with its crumpled bell tower, is missing. Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, has pledged about $40 million toward art relief, and teams are starting works at the most damaged sites today. While I have just spoken of art objects, architects will also be called in to restore ancient facades and rebuild domes. They have a big project ahead of them.

For more information, see the New York Times and Wall Street Journal's articles on that topic.

Easter!

Happy Spring!

For or Against: Britain's beauty

Britain recently hosted a debate that has gotten a lot of airtime across the pond, debating the statement 'Britain has become indifferent to beauty.' With the exception of multiple references to the (British) National Trust and some purely English rhetoric, it's a debate that would feel equally at home on these shores. If Americans were to have a national debate on the topic of beauty, that is...

The Guardian lays out the respective positions with 4 short essays from some avid, diametrically opposed bastions of culture. That's my kind of journalism: argumentative, honestly biased, and a tad mocking. Stephen Bailey goes right for the jugular in the opening article with an ad hominen attack, "Bereft of optimism or enthusiasm, bloated with sly and knowing cynicism, [my opponents] see no value in contemporary life. Nothing to them is so howlingly funny as poor people going shopping in Tesco." And it gets better from there.

Check it out, and find out the similarities between Botticelli's Venus and a Kate Moss ad. Oh, and the coldly intellectual beauty of Roger Scruton makes an appearance as well.

Cowboys, Migrants, and Signs at MoMA's Into the Sunset exhibition

Chevron, Stephen Shore

Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West, on at MoMA through June 8, has been called an 'unprecedented look at more than a century of changing myths and cultural attitudes about the American West, with over 120 photographs, from 1850 to the present, by photographers including Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Cindy Sherman, and Stephen Shore.' At least, this is how MoMA describes it. The statement is more or less true, but it disguises the insidious fact that the exhibition is (as you might have wondered from the photographers listed) rather an odd agglomeration of images.

Untitled Film Still #43, Cindy Sherman

The curators wished to use the simultaneous exploration of the West and the development of photography to make a point. I find that it offers little illumination other than photographs have been taken of the West. The exhibition is organized thematically. After attending a lecture at MoMA yesterday, I can now inform you that that the exhibition is meant to take you through different facets of the mythic West such as landscape (unspoiled potential), people (seeking destiny, identified by trade such as cowboy or Indian, individuals), transportation (railroad, Manifest Destiny, highways signage). If anything, the exhibition suggests the plethora of 'West's we Americans cherish: rugged plains being settled and immigrants, cowboys and Indians, Yosemite natural park and Hollywood. There was an undertone of falsity and disillusionment with these ideals, especially in the latter part of the exhibition.

The exhibition might not suggest a unified concept of photography in the West and it might not impress upon you the development of photography itself, but it does prove to be an evocative experience. From Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath in Dorthea Lange's photos to Jack Kerouac's On the Road Again in the highway and signage images of the 1950s and 60s, I was reminded of the lone individual going mobile to follow his manifest destiny under the enormous setting sun. However, like that last sentence, the exhibition never gelled into more than a pastiche of cliches.

That Intellectual Kind of Beauty

Beauty is instantly recognizable. What is a little more difficult is to pin down exactly what beauty is. Even is you missed the debate regarding Theodore Dalrymple's Beauty and the Best, you still have a chance to get into the latest aesthetic theories by checking out the prolific writer and philosopher Roger Scruton in a book entitled, properly, Beauty.

Beauty as Scruton means it is of a specifically mental rather than visceral nature. Along with Sebastian Smee of The Guardian, I rather think Scruton does an injustice when he relegates beauty to an act of rational contemplation. Like every other book on beauty, it deals with whether we can make value judgements about art, i.e. can something be better or more beautiful, than another. He also considers whether art can be moral, rather an old-fashioned question but then so is the question of beauty.

sd

What kills me about books like this is they tackle a huge and general subject, and then meander bombastically about for 100 pages. Dalrymple's article made his argument precisely, even without him repositing Kant.

sd

The best primer for any discussion of beauty, as far as I'm concerned, remains Umberto Eco's On Beauty, which, with it's thickly illustrated pages, is a thing of beauty itself. Scruton either ripped off Eco's jacket cover, or Renaissance woman remain the ideal of beauty...

http://aphainventions.com www.condron.us

Can you spot a forgery?

Most people can't, probably because art forgers can be damnably clever and bold. I've been reading The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick, a book full of intrigue and intriguing personalities, over part of my vacation.

In addition to tales of Hitler and his second-in-command Hermann Goering's race to collect a Vermeer while ravaging Europe, Dolnick includes the fascinating story of Abraham Kuffner. Kuffner was a painter in the early 19th C. who realized the importance of using old materials when creating a fake as well as maintaining a impressive provenance. In 1799, the city of Nuremberg graciously (foolishly...) agreed to lend him it's prized Albrecht Durer self portrait for the artist to copy.

Kuffner did more than copy the work. This painting was done on a wood panel an inch thick, and the back of it was spangled with seals and marks of past owners. Kuffner simply sawed it into two halves; one half contains Durer's self-portrait and the other half the seals. He produces his copy onto the original wood panel, and sends his fake back to the city on the original board it came. Nobody noticed the difference, and Kuffner had his very own Durer.

Nuremberg did eventually find out that it's famous Durer was simultaneously on display in Munich--6 years later Kuffner had sold the real Durer.

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