links and announcements for a sunday afternoon in november

* Mr. Schjeldahl and Mrs. Smith on the Seurat drawing show at MoMA.

*"The Twelve Devices of Peanuts." (via)

*A hand-drawn map depicting most of the traversable terrain in the classic computer game Zork.

*MIT is suing Frank Gehry. They are alleging negligence in the design of their 300 million dollar Stata Center, which opened back in 2004. (via)

*Mark Steyn on Allan Bloom on rock'n' roll. (via)

*The Great Pumpkin.

*From this weekend's Ithaca Journal: Carol Kammen on blogs as popular history.

*Nancy Geyer on the big video art extravaganza currently taking up most of the Johnson Museum's temporary exhibition space. I need to get up there and see it myself.

*Local artist Jay Hart is showing examples of his "terrain art" at Cornell's Mann Library Gallery. The show will be up through January 10 with a reception taking place this coming Tuesday from 5 to 6 in the evening. I do fetishize aerial perspective in art and there seem to be at least a handful of local artists working (with various levels of abstraction) in this vein. More on this sometime, I think.

*Speaking of which, my hero, the Queens painter Josh Dorman has taken part in a television documentary, There is a Bridge. The show, narrated by Mr. Robert Pinsky, deals with some of the social and humanistic aspects of Alzheimer's disease. From their website:

Josh Dorman, a nationally recognized artist living in New York, came to Alden Town Manor Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Cicero, Ill., in August 2005 to create five paintings based on the imaginative and emotional landscapes of five people with advanced dementia. Assisted by Michael Verde of Memory Bridge and two social workers from Northwestern University, Josh spent six hours a day with five residents of Alden Town Manor. The thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, and whatever else residents chose to share with Josh provided him the imaginative material from which he created his paintings. Josh earned a B.A from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from Queens College.

You can see the paintings here. They incorporate literal portraiture, something I don't thing I've seen before in Dorman's work. (There is an interesting parallel here with some of Barbara Mink's recent work.)

The show is airing on various public tv stations at different times; depending on where you live, you may have missed it. Locally, it can be seen on WCNY on the 18th of this month, at 11 in the morning. I hardly watch television, but I will be making an exception.

*I Am Sitting in a Room (more), a classic sound piece by experimental composer Alvin Lucier:

I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.

korf links

*"Art of Reflection" by Nancy Geyer (particularly recommended)

*"Multiple Talents on Display in Gallery" by Anthony Hall (.pdf, scroll down one third of the way)

The Main Street Gallery show is up through the 21st of October.

pasticcio

Here's what happens when I don't get out enough (or when I do get out, but fail to see any art that grabs my attention).

*More on Syau-Cheng Lai: A review of her recent concert performance and more incessant recycling on my part. Some interesting comments on the latter.

*I've been browsing through the Johnson Museum's 1998 collection handbook. The introductory essay is online, along with a selection of pictures (with accompanying text). Many exciting and familiar images; this one, by George Inness, is among my favorites. (I don't know what the deal is with the overall greenish tint on the online version.) The linked essay gives a interesting if brief history of the museum and of art at Cornell in general. The tone is optimistic and self-congratulatory, which is entirely understandable. But it makes me want to know some of the dirty details. In particular, I'd imagine that their commitment to modernist art (since at least the early fifties) has generated its fair share of controversy. The same goes, of course, for the starkly contemporary look of the building itself—one of I.M. Pei's earliest museum designs. Another essay, by Pei employee John L. Sullivan III, details the building process. The inclusion of diagrams—floor plans in particular—would have helped elucidate the often technical discussion.

*On art criticism and the art criticism debate: Charles Giuliano and Kriston Capps.

*Three online samples from Umberto Eco's endlessly entertaining book of short satirical essays, How to Travel With A Salmon: the title essay (scroll down through the Chinese), "How to Eat in Flight", "How to Use the Coffepot from Hell".

I'll be at the museum on Saturday, doing volunteer work for their Chinese New Year festivities. Hopefully I'll get to see some art as well.

happening

*On language and human color perception (via 3 Quarks Daily)

*The Johnson museum has a promising-looking list of spring exhibitions and some upcoming events. I'll be reviewing a pair of installations by Chinese expat artist Wenda Gu for the Times (look for it the first week of February). Natasha Pickowicz has a feature on Gu in the current edition; you can also find it here, along with an interview.

*I'll also be writing a round-up type review of local art shows associated with this year's Light in Winter. One of the shows, "Questioning The Great Divide: Me and Not-Me", has an interesting press-release/manifesto. We'll see if the art is any good, and if it lives up to the metaphysics.

*Buzz Spector's controversial book installation. I haven't seen the piece, but I've worked in a bookstore before and consider book stacking to a potential art-form. But perhaps I'm just decadent.

*GIANTmicrobes: While I normally refrain from posting anything here that reinforces our society's culture of consumerist hegemony, these are both cheeky and adorable. I've got myself a Dust Mite. One up for the culture industy.

reading and looking

Saul Steinberg, View of the World From 9th Avenue, 1976

*Jerry Saltz on the current Brice Marden retro at MoMA.

*Tully Rector interviews Arthur Danto "On Art and Philosophy" in the latest Naked Punch. In addition to rehashing some themes from After the End of Art, he discusses some of his philosophical influences and has some provocative things to say about (relatively) young artists.

*Mark Stevens reviews the current Saul Steinberg shows at the Morgan Library and Museum and the Museum of the City of New York. Also see this smart little essay, once again by Danto.

*Ithaca's major cultural event of January is probably the annual Light in Winter Festival, running during the final weekend of the month. According to festival director (and local painter) Barbara Mink:

Our 2007 festival features "connections" between us and the world we live in: music and art, engineering and sound, the smallest components of matter and the visible world, physics and movement, our actions and their effect on our planet, the brain and the senses, and animal whispers and film sound.

The website features the program for this years festival, as well as an archive of material from past years. There is also the by now obligatory blog, which is worth a quick look. It looks to be an exciting event; no doubt I'll have more to say.

*Aaron Arm at the Ithacan covers sculptor Itty Neuhaus' recent local exhibition, "Common Ground".

*Art and Perception, a group blog to which I've contributed posts and where I comment frequently. Many of the writers there are smarter and/or more interesting than I've been recently here. Although the thought of another art blog to read is probably more than most can bear, A&P is well worth checking out.

art around town

I'm not a die-hard follower of the avant-garde, but I tend to like art that takes some chances, formally and conceptually. Here are some current Ithaca area shows that have caught my attention. Go see them if you can.

*Itty Neuhaus' Common Ground at IC's Handwerker Gallery features a video installation, paper sculptures, and works on paper. I didn't get a good look at the video (at the opening, too noisy) but the paper sculptures are exquisite, abstractions of geological strata and plant life. The show is up through December 22nd. There was an artist's talk this past Thursday (the 9th), part of a "Light Fantastic" lecture series. I was there and will have more to say.

*Garden: Delights and Detritus, by IC professor Susan Weisend, is at the Ink Shop through January 16th. She will be giving a talk on November 30th at 7:00 p.m. The prints and drawings are well-done, although perhaps with too much delight and not enough detritus.

*At the State of the Art, sculptors Ann Welles and Eva Capobianco have a neat two woman show, entitled Adaptive Re-use (sounds eco-friendly). A plaster baby bust, machine parts, boxes, references to the passing of time--Ann's work is a contemporary relative to that of the Surrealists. Eva's work combines natural and man-made forms--mostly wood--with political text related to recent gay-rights controversies. I'm not sure if I buy this juxtaposition (or marriage, if you will), but she gets points for ambition. She will be gallery-sitting on Saturday's this month. Re-use will be up through the 29th of this month.

*Out of Line, at the Johnson gathers contemporary drawings from the collection of Sherry and Joel Mallin. The working definition of "drawing" is generous, and the selection of artists is weighted towards those born in the sixties and seventies. I've looked at the show only casually (I was at the opening). Some of the work looked sub-par (a Tracy Emin drawing, anybody?) , but other things were interesting. Matt Bryans' enormous Untitled newspaper collage dissolves the original imagery and text into painterly smears, sometimes forming ghostly faces. Anyway, I'm a big fan of drawings and "works on paper", and some of the directions these things are being taken by young artists. Artist Alexis Rockman will speak on Novemeber 28th, at 5:15 p.m. The show itself is up through December 17th.

*This goes without saying, but check out (or take another look at) the Johnson's other shows as well, including A Private Eye, which is up through Christmas Eve.

These are all shows that I've seen (if only briefly) in the last week or so. I'm sure there's more out there.

what goes on

I'm writing my Private Eye review for the Times right now (due tommorow morning, but hey, the show just opened yesterday!), so the big, thoughtful essay-like posts I know I have in me will have to wait a while. Thanks for understanding.

(The above image is of Man Ray's Cadeau, aversion of which appears in "Eye". This image is "courtesy" The Ontological Museum.

Much of what I posted under my "echo" series merits further elaboration; let me know if you have any ideas or just want to express enthusiasm for a topic. The "long zoom" topic is of particular interest to me, my scientific ignorance notwithstanding (hi Barbara!). It seems like some bridges need to be made between the (pop) scientific discourse and the contemporary art discourse. Someone else out there is no doubt much more qualified than (The Thinking) I. Barbara? Steven?

Over the last two weekends, I've been doing volunteer work at Ithaca's famous Friends of the Library Booksale, which is "one of the three largest" in the nation, according to their website. I've been sorting and straightening out books, a great passion of mine (believe it or not). Sections such as "Art", "Communications", and "Sociology" were relatively neat last time I checked. Alas, sections such as "Military History" and "Thrillers" are probably doomed.

I'm going try to see all the Ithaca art I can this week. John Hartell, who designed my parent's house--where I'm currently doing time and where Vladimir Nabokov did so in the past (really!)--has a show of painting and other work at the Upstairs Gallery. Gimme Coffee on Cayuga has--along with some really tasty espresso--a show of gelantinous looking sculpture and other work based on some kind of esoteric philosophy-theology involving the notion of "zoltophy" (anybody know about this?). Ernst Schoen-Rene is the artist's name. My caffeine addiction will be driving me back shortly. The Johnson has a Polaroid show and a show of Daoist art that I've barely glanced at and the Ink Shop has a print exchange with works from Toronto. I'm sure there is more out there.

I'm also planning a trip out to Boston early next week. As I've mentioned in various places, I'll be reviewing the work of Gerry Bergstein, my former SMFA instructor. Did anybody go to the opening or the talk? What else is going on in town? More on my plans later in the week.

I'm going to try blogging every day this week.

more echoes

Barbara Mink, Untitled (2006/8)

I'm trying to catch up with some things that have interested me while on blog hiatus.

*Pop science writer Steven Berlin Johnson writes on the forthcoming computer game Spore, and what he calls "the long zoom". The later is his proposal for a new visual paradigm based on the ability to see and imagine things at vastly different scales--from the global to the microscopic and beyond. I'm no scientist, but this appears extremely relevant to artists, including those working in "traditional media". Johnson develops many of these ideas in his new book, The Ghost Map, a disease thriller.

*Barbara Mink is an Ithaca artist who is grasping her way into this domain. Her half of a two-person show back in August contained rich, painterly abstractions that move away from her earlier, more recognizably landscape inspired work. An included statement cited the influences of natural diasters and Hubble space telescope imagery. (Regretably, I don't have a copy of the statement right now; if Barbara or anybody else wants to send it to me, I'll consider posting it here.) I think the work isn't quite living up to the concept yet; nevetheless, they are beautiful paintings. I review an earlier show of hers here.

*Other artists working within "the long zoom" occupy a disproportionate number of slots under the heading "Artists" in my sidebar. They are representatives of what I consider to be one of the most promising developments in recent art. Check them out.

*Natasha Pickowicz (my boss!) has a short essay on a recent local performance by (the) Small Sails. I was there myself, and was mesmerized by their spacey, electro-acoustic sounds and backing video projections. The theatre (one of Cornell's cinematheques) was almost completely dark; at times I would forget that there were actual live musicians performing onstage. I still don't know what the performers look like.

*Local artist Steve Poleskie's blog is among my favorites. He has done everything from realistic portraiture to "aerial theatre". In the early to mid sixties, he lived in New York City, where he founded and ran the screenprinting studio Chiron Press. He worked there with a broad cross-section of the New York artworld. Needless to say, he knows some interesting characters. He came to Ithaca to teach at Cornell in 1968 and has mostly lived here since. He also has a new historical novel, The Balloonist, to be published soon. His blog revolves around his long and fascinating life, as well as new projects of his.

*Warren Craghead's a map's little spell is an innovative combination of hand drawing, collage, and web interactivity. It explores some of the weirder aspects of the familiar suburban landscape. It is strangely reminiscent of the "computer games" I used to write as a child on some primitive Mac.

*I've been enjoying Matt Madden's sweet, playful meta-comic 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, which you can preview here. Based on the format of French writer Raymond Queneau's own classic Exercises (also highly recommended), he repeats nearly one-hundred times the banal incident of a man getting up from his work to go to the refrigerator. Each reiteration is done a different way. Formal elements are rearranged and various popular comics genres (daily strip, fantasy, horror, superhero, etc.) are pastisched. Its tremendously entertaining.

a game called echo

Some things that I've enjoyed recently or plan upon enjoying in the near future:

*A Cornell lecture by Albright-Knox director Louis Grachos, who co-curated last year's intriguing if unfortunately titled Extreme Abstraction.

*Cornell art department head, Buzz Spector is doing a book installation in downtown NYC next January. With luck, it will be recreated here in Ithaca come spring. The sculpture, to be shaped as an enormous "C", will compile work by university faculty in the arts and humanities.

*The Ithaca Times (which I write for) has an new arts editor, Natasha Pickowicz. I recently had the pleasure of meeting her. I have two upcoming reviews there. One--to appear this coming Wednesday--will be on Patrick Dougherty's outdoor installation. Appearing later in the month will be a review of the Johnson museum's upcoming exhibiton of Dada and Surrealist art. I'm particularly looking forward to reacquainting myself with the work of the great Kurt Schwitters. A wall of his paper collages--hung salon style--was the personal highlight of my visit to MoMA's Dada blockbuster back in August. Ms. Pickowicz has also started a Times arts blog, which I hope to contribute to soon. UPDATE: The Times blog linked to above is defunct; a new one will be launched into orbit in the coming weeks.

*My other major pilgrimage on my August trip was to the Jewish Museum's small show of Eva Hesse sculptures. (I unfortunately missed the accompanying show of her drawings.) Seeing them was a rare treat, due the fragility of the experimental materials that she used (latex, resin, fibreglass...). More about the two shows here...

*Up right now in NYC is Personal Geographies: Contemporary Artists Make Maps. The exhibit, which aims to show "work that relates to charting or mapping in a personal, non-empirical manner" includes work by Josh Dorman, whom I've written about glowingly in the past. More...

*Gerry Bergstein, with whom I've studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, will be showing his work at Boston's Gallery NAGA. This is Your Brain on Art will open this coming Friday (the 13th). There will be a talk on the 21st. Following up my DeCordova piece, I'll be covering the show for Big Red & Shiny.

*Karl Zipser, of Art & Perception, recently interviewed me on art, blogging and number of related topics. While I don't expect it to surface for another week or two, you can find some other exchanges between the two of us here.

More to come...

Mixed Nuts

The following paragraphs don't relate to each other too well. Many apologies.

I don't normally like to discuss my personal life here, except to the extent that it enters into the world of art. Likewise, I realize that it's painfully cliche to apologize for not updating your blog more often. I'd hate to do that. But I do want to say that I've been suffering from chronic insomnia, which makes it difficult to to write, think, experience art or to do much of anything else. If anybody has any unworkable folk remedies, by all means let me know. The more colorful (and ridculous), the better.

On a slightly less self indulgent note, if I'm not feeling too lousy, I'd like to follow-through on my long simmering plans to visit Boston later to this week. Among other things, I'd like to see (and write about) some art. Things that seem of particular interest include the Decordova Annual and Linda Price-Sneddon's "The Trees Have No Tongues", currently up at the Hallspace gallery. I like Linda's kind of work and don't get to see any around here. Wandering around the MFA would be nice, for old times sake. Saturday, Mobius is organizing a day of performance art and other oddities in front of city hall. Finally, Eva Hesse in NYC, if I can make it there. She's neat. If anybody has any tips, let me know.

I spent a few hours this afternoon at the Johnson, most of them with Willie Cole's travelling "Afterburn", which features work made in the past decade. (The title is a joking reference to his signature motif, the iron.) You might have read about it in the last Art in America. I took notes and will write substantially about it, although probably not in the next few days. I'll give you some idea of what I'm thinking. I want to discuss the work throught the filter of two concepts: primitivism and pastiche. I touched on the former in my last post, conveying my dissatisfaction with work which (naively, I think), attempts to recreate an idealized "primitive" condition within the modern world. Cole's work escapes this trap. My working hypothesis is that it does so by being contemporary (in its references and materials) while maintaining an anthropomorphic, animistic quality which links it to the past. As for the latter, it is difficult to write about his work without citing his numerous quotations from modern and contemporary art. And while recognzing these is part of the pleasure of his work, its important to go beyond simple name-dropping. Anyway, all of this is less tediously academic than it sounds, so of course I'll discuss individual pieces. The show is a lot of fun!

Not Fade Away

I've been sick—so I don't want to go overboard with the apologizing—but I know I haven't been posting as much as I'd like to. So, to emphasze to you all that I still exist, let me put out some small trifles. More substantial posting will return soon, I hope. (At least I don't take three and half months off like some people do.)

*Thanks in large part to this blog, I've got a paid writing gig at the local alt-weekly. My first piece, a review of the show INTER ACT ION, will appear on May 10th (Wednesday of next week, that is). I'll link to the online version here. A preview: while the show has some interesting art in it, it's also uneven and diffuse, and the theme of interactivity isn't as well realized as it could have been.

* The new edition of the Boston-based Big RED & Shiny has a list of "Our Favorite Blogs", which happily includes The Thinking Eye. The blurb states that I am "quite eloquent with (my) theory" and that I produce "smart and provocative writing." Thanks. The rest of the list combines seemingly obvious choices with the seemingly idiosyncratic ones (much like my own blogroll, I suppose).

*The Johnson Museum has a fascinating exhibit entitled "The Novel Picture: Interactions Between Text and Image". It was curated by Cornell's History of Art Majors’ Society and will be up through June 11.
Ilana Papir has an awkwardly (over)written review in the Daily Sun. It isn't exactly her best work, and seeing Cornell students write so uncritically about the work of their classmates feels a bit insular and smug to me. I hope to offer my own outsider perspective soon. More information about the show here.

My favorite pieces from the eclectic show were extracts (I believe they were lithographs) from Tom Phillips' classic altered-book A HUMUMENT. You can see the whole thing online here, but of course it isn't the same. I love his graphic sensibility.

Local Art Media Links

*An Ithacan article describes an installation piece by artist Mary Zebell, literally tallying the costs in human life taken by various wars and natural distasters. I can't from the article how long its supposed to be up (permanently?), but apparently "its going to be constantly growing".

*In other Ithaca College art news, on April 13, there will be an opening reception for the "Senior Student Show". It will take place at IC's Handwerker Gallery. More information and events here.

*Ilana Papir, of the Cornell Daily Sun, has fairly straightforward review of the ParkeHarrison's "The Architects Brother". She stresses the ecological aspects of their work, which I think are a bit overplayed. Indeed, when I heard them talk about a week ago, they were pretty vague about the concrete political and ecological issues supposedly addressed in their work. The photographs are more on the order of fantasy and absurdist drama (which are all right by me). I hope to write more about all of this in the next few days.

Pretty slim pickings; can't more people around here write about the visual arts? Or if you do, and (you think) I don't know about it, let me know. Thanks.

Local Art Happenings and Links

Let me mention a menagerie of things going on around here, and some linked commentary on things past. I think I'm going to make this a regular (perhaps weekly) feature. If anybody wants to send me links or notices similar to these, I'll consider posting them here.

*I missed Ithaca's March 3rd Gallery Night, but Ezra of the blog Ithaca Sucks apparently didn't. He has a funny, intemperate rant about it (and the local art scene more generally) here. Needless to say, I don't endorse all he has to say, but his comments about the local waterfall painters and their "Yankee aesthetic" are right on. See also my own comments on landscape painting here.

*"Okinawa Soul", an exhibition of work by the Japanese documentary photographer Ishikawa Mao is on display at Cornell's Hartell Gallery through the end of this week (either Friday or Saturday, according to the source). Mao focuses on the life of her native prefacture of Okinawa, a chain of islands south of mainland Japan. In particular, she focuses on the impact of militarization—both American and Japanese—on the local culture. I thought the show—which was co-curated by the Cornell grad students Kelly Dietz and Nakamori Yasufumi—was uneven, judged by the aesthetic standards of gallery art, but still interesting and informative. I am writing a longer piece about the show, which I'll try to post it here in the next few days.

*At the reception for the Mao show, I had the good fortune to meet fellow art-blogger Stacy Oborn, who writes and photographs the space in between. Unfortunately, it looks like her blog hasn't been updated since last November, but she tells me she does plan to update some time, so who knows.

*In other Cornell photography news, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison will be lecturing at the Johnson on the 30th at 5:15 p.m. Their travelling show, "The Architect's Brother" opens there on the 25th and stays up until the 11th of June. It features elaborate constructed landscapes with mythic themes. Modern Kicks, who saw the show at the DeCordova museum in Massachusetts, has a piece about it here. The Johnson is also holding a related symposium entitled "Shared Visions: Collaboration and Process in Contemporary Photography" on the first of April. It is free and open to the public, but the registration deadline is this Friday. More information is available at the museum's calendar page.

*Nancy Geyer interviewed my favorite local printmaker Craig Mains for the Ithaca Times last October. See some of my own thoughts about Mains here.

*I met local painter-collagist Syau-Cheng Lai at the Main Street Gallery opening last Saturday (she wasn't in the show). While I hesitate to endorse work that I've seen only in reproduction, the intricate, archeological images on her website certainly make me want to seek out the originals (she tells me, however, that her new work is different). Luckily, her work can be seen in the current two person show "Optical/Lyrical", up at the Cedar Arts Center in Corning, NY. There will be an artists' talk on the last day of the show, April 1.