New Online, and Physical, Location

Changes. That is what is up, and I'm not just referring to the seasons. This is my last post at artsravel.blogspot.com, as I move Art Ravels over to Wordpress. I'm trying to set up a redirect, but in case that fails please click here: www.linneawest.com/blog. I hope you'll follow me over! This will stay up as an archive as long as Blogger doesn't change, but I've migrated the old posts over.

I am writing this from Budapest, where I will be living for the upcoming year. I was awarded a grant to research contemporary Hungarian art. I am beyond excited and, as you can imagine, this means I'll be writing more about art in Hungary and Europe and less about New York City. I also have started a personal blog about the experience here: www.ayearinbudapest.wordpress.com.

I've lived in New York since 2006 (except for one long hiatus) and have blogged here since 2008, so these are big changes, but definitely ones I feel good about.

Thanks to all you who have read, commented, and followed me! It's been a pleasure reading your blogs and following your thoughts and life changes as well.

Photographer Eva Besnyö at the Jeu de Paume

There is a great article on Hyperallergic about the Eva Besnyö exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris right now. Besnyö was a Hungarian photographer who worked from the 1930s onward and died in 2003. This exhibition is the first to bring together her work from her early years in Berlin, her later years in the Netherlands, and her continued trips back to Hungary.

Although she come of age with other famous Hungarian emigre artists such as Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, György Kepes, and Robert Capa, she has not gotten the same amount of recognition. Eva Besnyö (1910–2003): The Sensuous Image is up at the Jeu de Paume through September 23.

Note: I am not dead...

nor have I been quite as productive as I had imagined when I got the idea to take a blog break. My novel isn't finished--but I'm really excited to have a complete draft. Now I just need to mold it into something coherent and staggeringly genius.

I'm almost finished with my application for a grant to research emerging artists in Hungary. Keep your fingers crossed on that front, and perhaps yours intrepidly will be corresponding from Budapest in a year's time.

Also, I finally got to harvest my urban garden! The four tomatoes are scrawny and ugly. However, let me brag about my amazing hot peppers. My herbs are growing like weeds, and I can't make enough mojitos to keep up with my mint plant.

Despite having been away almost a month, this is not the resumption of your regularly scheduled blog. I'll be back in full force after a long Labor day weekend. And my god!, the art world is exploding with awesomeness at that time. I would need to take a vacation just to see it all (but I won't : ). Jerry Saltz's pick for the upcoming season here. Mine to come!

Ravels in Review: 4th of July Weekend!

Thank god it's finally here. I mean, aside from some techincal snafoos, it's been a good week-- but I rather be off on a long weekend. Jasper John's Three Flags, above, is as close to patriotic as I get. I've been on a mental vacation everywhere but NYC USA this week.

There was a video post about the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, and then there was Hungarian art past (Tamas St. Auby) and present (Peter Forgacs) plus the current cool festivities at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.

There was a crazy sky last weekend, which led to some good sailing weather, and hopefully there'll be more of it for this upcoming weekend: we're sailing over to Fire Island. It'll be nice to have some good ol' Americana in my life. Enjoy the long weekend!

Where I Want to Be: Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary

Budapest is looking lovely this time of year, despite the Danube rising over its banks and causing minor flooding in the city. My 4th of July plans don't really have room for a trip to Budapest, but if they did, I'd go to the Ludwig Museum. The Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art will be open until midnight on July 3 and 4. A night at the museum is always fun, and a night at the museum in Budapest during a warm summer sounds especially pleasant.

On these late nights, the Ludwig Museum will be showing films by Anton Corbijn to complement the photography exhibition of his work that focuses on rock and roll idols, documenting them, and in a later series trying to become them, rather like Cindy Sherman's transformations.
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I have been- ahem- slightly focused on Hungarian art of late, and it just so happens the Ludwig Museum is displaying the largest amount of its permanent collection since its inception in 1991. How the collection came to be is an interesting story in itself: collector Peter Ludwig was a German tycoon with a passion for collecting art. In an obituary, The Independent described him as "either the most selfless and discriminating art collector of the late 20th century or a self- aggrandising amasser of objects which he regarded as bargaining counters in a relentless pursuit of honours and distinction in his native Germany and abroad."

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Hommage à Dezső Korniss by Nadler, left, and Faces from the Square by Feher, right

Either way, Peter Ludwig created one of the largest collections in private hands, and turned over much of it to found museums in Cologne and Budapest, among other things. Because of his extraordinary donation, 200 excellent works of the 20th C. out of 300 in the Ludwig Museum's show are from Ludwig's original collection. The Warhols, Lichtensteins and Oldenbergs are complemented by works by Hungarian artists such as Keserü, Nádler and Feher.

Doesn't it just look like fun? A night at the museum, a little rock and roll, a solid permanent collection of Hungarian and International art, and the story of an eccentric collector...

Hungarian Art: Tamas St. Auby's Portable Intelligence Increase Museum

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Q: What is a "Portable Intelligence Increase Museum"?
A: A laptop.

No, this isn't material from a dated Sci-Fi novel. Nor is it part of some absurdist imaginary critique of Communism that the main record of Hungarian 'unofficial' art had to be gathered and held surreptitiously on one man's laptop. It might be absurd, but it is true. The main historical record of Pop art/Conceptual art/Actionism in the 1960s came from non-artist Tamas St. Auby's laptop.
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Tomas St. Auby was born in 1944 and has lived in Budapest, save for a 20 year expulsion by the Communist government. He 'quit' his art career early and begin to establish himself as a non-art artist, arranging the first Fluxus happening in Hungary (which the secret police came to and actively detailed in their notes). In 1968 he established IPUT, the International Parallel Union Of Telecommunications, a fake organization in which he has held and still holds a series of positions. His confrontational approach did not go down well with the communist authorities and St. Auby was forced to leave Hungary in the mid-70s.

He returned to Budapest in 1991 and joined the newly-founded Intermedia Department of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. In 2003, he established the Portable Intelligence Increase Museum, an interactive computer-based exhibition that expose the gaps in official accounts of Hungarian art of the 1960s and 70s which he had documented. Over 1100 works by about 70 Hungarian artists have since been shown throughout Europe.

St. Auby holds a key position in the history of Hungarian art not only for the influence he continues to have on a younger generation of artists, especially through his teaching position, or his role in disseminating Fluxus happenings throughout Hungary, but for his documentation of art that would otherwise be forgotten.

As Culturebase puts it:

"St. Auby has recently been doing what Hungarian and international art historians might have yet to do. In 2002, St. Auby founded the Global Front of Anti-Art History Falsifiers of the Neo-Social Realist IPUT (NETRAF), in whose name he presents the Portable Intelligence Increase Museum. This interactive object makes the Hungarian avant-garde (from 1956 to 1976) accessible for the first time through objects, photos, films and documents."

Ravels in Review

...huff...puff...sigh--repeat--huff...puff

Oh, is it time for Ravels in Review again? Great, well, in my disordered placement of life's task I'll put this on the top of the heap while simultaneously making coffee with one hand and juggling oranges with the other. Priorities are amazing things, no?

But to the ravels we're reviewing:

Things were junking up the floor of MoMA's atrium, ala Song Dong this time, and I started rethinking my Conceptual art prejudice.

Richard Misrach's large-format photographs are either either calming or unsettling, and I rather think the latter.

Words straight from the art dealer Betty Parson's mouth.

Vanished poet Rosemary Tonks is one of the most exciting things I've come across in a while. She's on my reading list for the weekend.

And then, of course, there was the beautifully-titled OUCH. My hand is fine, by the way. To sum up my thoughts on the newest film version of Easy Virtue--something went wrong when they tried to make it into a movie and Jessica Beil is only the obvious thing.

Stuff happened in other places, and yet no one had any suggestions for me about contemporary Hungarian art? Any links or vague, unformed thoughts?

I'll get the ball rolling: these images are from Peter Forgacs multimedia installation Col Tempo at the Hungarian Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennial.

Stuff Happening in Other Places

Yes really--stuff happens in other places. It's very distracting. So some stuff I've come across on the web:

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• Via Cultural Snow, the street art of anonymous graffiti artist in Tehran (image above) who considers his art social, not political, and separately National Art Hate week in Britain.
  
• Early photos of Barack Obama at a gallery in LA from Lisa's History Room.
  
• An amazing collection of artist's sketchbooks online. There's so much to check out. Thanks JafaBrit!
  
• LG tipped me off to lost princesses, photographs of Disney princesses who have grown up and entered the real world. Rather depressing really.

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As for myself, I've been doing some research on Hungarian art, specifically Tamas St. Auby and his Portable Intelligence Increase Museum. So the question is: Is anyone up on the current art scene there? Or street art after the Double-tailed Dog Party?

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