created and edited by Valeria Varas and Raul Rispa, first published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name organised by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid 2004.

I tend to feel dubious about a book that starts out with the words “this book takes an innovative organizational approach”. If it’s that innovative surely they don’t need to tell me. Although they make the mistake of bringing my attention to it, it is innovative; it is organised so that it interconnects, like a system.

One organising principle is the use of colours as theme, black, red, blue, gold and white. I like that the cover is reminiscent of Yves Klein’s famous International Klein Blue.

Barbara Rose credits Klein with the discovery of the power of the monochrome to displace attention from the art object to the exhibition space, emphasising the interdependence of artwork and context. This is one of the ways in which the monochrome could be thought of as systemic. Also, artists who make or have made them often employ a systems approach to producing the work.

Many years ago, for possibly a whole year (and painting every day) I painted little else but monochromes. I was young, and some people would criticise me for ‘painting like an old man’ (“this is the kind of painting I would expect someone to do at the end of their artistic career “).

Way back then, I thought I was making ‘content free’ paintings. What became interesting in the long series of monochromes were the subtle differences between each one. The paintings were best seen together (as a system) and those subtle differences started to look less and less subtle after all. The patterns that connected them were as much to do with the differences as they were the similarities. I got into the habit of always showing them in pairs, I can’t believe now that I had overlooked the autobiographical content: being an identical twin myself, I experienced first hand that what becomes more interesting than the similarities between twins are the differences, much more easily noticed when they are together than when they are apart.

New University. Vol. 4/No. 11. November 5, 1971. page 7.

Dates: 1938-

Nationality: American

Barbara Rose is an American art historian and art critic. She was educated at Smith College, Barnard College and Columbia University. She was married to artist Frank Stella between 1961 and 1969. In 1965 she published ABC Art in which she described the characteristics of minimal art.

In her essay, ABC Art, Rose considers the diverse roots of minimalism in the work of Malevich and Duchamp as well as the choreography of Merce Cunningham, the art criticism of Greenberg, the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the novels of Robbe-Grillet. In examining the historical roots of minimal art in 1960s America, Rose draws a distinction between Kasimir Malevich’s “search for the transcendental, universal, absolute” and Marcel Duchamp’s “blanket denial of the existence of absolute values.”

Rose grouped some 1960′s artists as closer to Malevich, some as closer to Duchamp, and some as between the two. Closer to Malevich are Walter Darby Bannard, Larry Zox, Robert Huot, Lyman Kipp, Richard Tuttle, Jan Evans, Ronald Bladen, Anne Truitt. Closer to Duchamp are Richard Artschwager and Andy Warhol. Between Malevich and Duchamp she places Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Dan Flavin. Her conclusion is that minimal art is both transcendental and negative:

“The art I have been talking about is obviously a negative art of denial and renunciation. Such protracted asceticism is normally the activity of contemplatives or mystics…Like the mystic, in their work these artists deny the ego and the individual personality, seeking to evoke, it would seem, the semihypnotic state of blank unconsciousness.”

She also contrasts minimal art with Pop Art:

“…if Pop Art is the reflection of our environment, perhaps the art I have been describing is its antidote, even if it is a hard one to swallow.”

Wikipedia contributors, ‘Barbara Rose’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 18 October 2010, 15:18 UTC, <en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barbara_Rose&oldid=391456786>

Our group in Los Angeles was a great mix of agents (CAA, Agency Group, WMA), promoters (AEG/Goldenvoice, Live Nation, Nederlander), a lawyer (Gene Salomon), insurance guys (Peter Tempkins & his partner), Internet entrepreneurs (Scott Perry), managers (Nettwerk, Bill Silva), and even a record company (Marc Friedenberg from Interscope).  Other than a crazy restaurant manager who complained to me twice that we ”took-up his entire dinning room” (why anyone would complain about something like that in these times is just beyond me), the energy was electric.  Maybe you didn’t come out with a way of doubling your bottom line this year, but I bet you did walk away with two or three new contacts and at least one idea you didn’t have before.  And that’s the concept behind the club.  It will just keep growing.

For those of you who attended our first meeting, please try and bring at least one new member to the next.  Know that dinner club members don’t have to be from the Music or Live Entertainment businesses.  We welcome anyone from any business.  The concept is to network, share ideas, meet new people, innovate, and grow your business.  For example, I met Landon Sorgenstein from AEG.  He is their interactive and new media guru…and he knows his shit.  After asking him a few questions he had me up to speed.  That’s what I’m talking about!

Don’t miss out…join the Aspen Dinner Club.  Our next meeting is Thursday, April 2nd.  For more details, please keep reading our newsletter…and spreading the word.

Also wanted to let you know that our friend Barbara Rose has started-up her own management firm and bringing Natalie Cole on as her first client.  Barbara can be reached at: 

Speak with you soon…

Jim

Beautiful Qashqa'i women of Iran in their colorful traditional dresses. The Qashqa'i are one of Iran's many ethnic minority groups (See below for more information about them and other ethnic groups).

Greetings Everyone!

I don’t know how to thank you for all your kind messages, for forwarding these windows to others, and for recommending it. Over thirty names have been added to the list in the past two days alone. All I can say is I am delighted these windows have so many onlookers. Welcome to window number eight!

Current Issues

* On the last day of House legislative business, Iran sanctions advocates pushed through legislation ( HR 6198 ) strengthening sanctions and promoting a policy of regime-change in Iran.
Managing the bill on the House floor, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen made the
case that IFSA’s policies complemented US diplomatic activity.
“Sanctions target the Iranian regime where it is most vulnerable:
its energy sector,” said Ros-Lehtinen in her opening remarks.
Leading a bipartisan corps of members who spoke in opposition to
the measure, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) characterized the latest
version of the Iran Freedom Support Act (IFSA) as a “cruise
missile” and stated that, “the timing for this legislation could
not be worse.” Right he is. The most immediate impact of this
“cruise missile” — besides hurting ordinary people not the regime
– is weakening the moderates within the Iranian political sphere.
The hard-liners will loose no time in using this legislation to
remind the country that America is indeed Iran’s enemy.

Nothing heals like a good poem! In response to this aggressive move,
let’s read together a stanza from a great classic of twentieth century
Persian poetry by Ahmad Shamlu (b.1925), Shamlu, known as the “Poet of
Liberty,” faced hostility by the Shah’s regime and remained out of favor
with the Islamic Republic. He wrote some of the most poignant
revolutionary, as well as lyrical, poems of modern Persian language.
Here is an excerpt from a poem he dedicated to his wife Aida called
“Aida in the Mirror” translated by my good friend Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak
(University of Maryland):

Tempests play magnificently a tiny flute
in your grand dance
And the singing of your veins makes the sun of always rise
(Let me rise from sleep so that the lanes of the city
perceive my presence).

Your hands are reconciliation
and friends helping that hostilities may be forgotten

Suggested Reading: An Anthology of Modern Persian Poetry, selected and
translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak ( Westview Press, 1978 ) Still is
available through Amazon Books.

Science

* On a much happier note, Iran’s cloned sheep born yesterday is
alive and kicking, reported Iranian doctors in the Royan
research center in Isfahan. More significantly, a combination of
the cloning methods and the new progress made by Iranian
physicians in the field of spinal injuries has created
possibilities of curing those suffering from spinal damages,
Nasr-Esfahani said. Iranian specialists recently announced a
breakthrough in curing spinal injuries with the culture of Schwann
cells enabling those suffering from paralysis to move. For cute
pictures of the newly born cloned sheep click on the first link
below (here the text is Persian)
http://www.isna.ir/Main/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-799766&Lang=P

For more reading on the subject, click on this link:
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-16/0610015225123117.htm and
http://www.payvand.com/news/06/oct/1015.html

Social

* This is the Children’s week in Iran. Each day is devoted to a
topic such as “Children and Health”, “Children and Equal
Opportunities,” etc. The United Nations International Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) will participate in the events. Activists such as
Shirin Ebadi have been instrumental in drawing attention to
children’s rights in Iran. More needs to be done, particularly in
relation to minority children such as abandoned children of
Afghani fathers who have returned to Afghanistan after the
collapse of the Taliban regime.

* Many of you have been asking questions about ethnic minorities in
Iran. I will keep an eye open for material. Iran’s ethnic
diversity is truly amazing. Of course, like everywhere else, all
kinds of jokes and stereotypes are attached to each group. In
general, however, people are fairly used to hearing different
languages and seeing different costumes on the street. The nomadic
Qashqa’is, for example, still wear their very colorful dresses.
Click on this link to see a beautiful young Qashqai girl in
festive outfit (center of the page):
http://www.11iran.com/Z2INDEX.HTM . To get a general idea of
Iranian ethnic diversity and its geographical distribution click
on:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_Iran

Prominent Iranian Americans:

* This week’s personality is Google’s senior vice president for
global sales Mr. Omid Kordestani, 42. He joined  the company a
year after its establishment as its “business founder” and is
viewed as a force behind Google’s success. Here is the link if you
like to read more (courtesy of my friend Bahar Bastani):
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187475,00.html
Also, I must apologize for sending the wrong link on the Harvard
Scientist Nima Arkani in the last window. Instead of just a
picture, I meant to send this brief description of his impressive
work:
http://www.physics.harvard.edu/people/facpages/arkani-hamed.html

Art and Culture

* If you are off to France, don’t miss the exhibition of more than
200 items from the last major pre-Islamic Persian empire the
Sassanians on view at the Cernuschi Museum Paris (15th September
to 30th December 2006). By the way, art historians would tell you
that these pre-Islamic objects — and many more — survived
because Muslim conquerors of Iran did not destroy them. Click on
this link to get a brief preview:
http://www.irandokht.com/editorial/index4.php?area=pro&sectionID=9&editorialID=2143

Suggested Reading:  Mostly Miniatures: An Introduction to Persian
Painting by Oleg Grabar. A more general art history, The Golden Age of
Persian Art 1501-1722 by Sheila Canby both available through Amazon.
And Western art is exhibited in Iran. Check this one out:

* Last summer Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art held a major
exhibit (June-October 2005) called “Modern Art Movements,”
bringing together a historic number of contemporary world
masterpieces owned by Iranian Museums.  Barbara Rose who writes
about the exhibit for “The Wall Street Journal on Line” observes:
“The unprecedented show was a huge success.”  “The first gallery”
she says ” was filled with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist
paintings. There was a Gauguin still life, a rare Léger from 1913
and Picasso’s synthetic cubist masterpiece, “Fenêtre Ouverte sur
la Rue de Penthièvre,” as well as his late cast bronze of a baboon
cradling her baby, which is also in the Picasso Museum in Paris.
There were circus performers by Georges Rouault as well as a
daring watercolor by the German Dadaist George Grosz. Other
European and American modern masters were on view with a special
section devoted to Pop artists Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol,
David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine.
Also in the collection are sculptures by Magritte, Henry Moore and
Giacometti; paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Georges
Braque; and three important Toulouse-Lautrecs.”

Now, check out Ms. Barbara Rose’s tone in her write up:

*”Most remarkably,” she observes “an entire gallery was devoted
to Abstract Expressionism, the art movement that proclaimed
America’s cultural primacy.”  She is even more shocked at the
Iranian Museum of Contemporary art’s “continuing to list the works
of modern Western art, including a number of prominent Jewish
artists, as part of its permanent collection, which is presumably
open to the public [can the museum be making this up?]. A more
recent, “ironic” exhibition, she adds :” is that of paintings by
the well-known Jewish painter Marc Chagall also opened in Tehran
this summer.” [2006].

*Here is what she concludes: “No one knows what will happen to
the masterpieces of modern Western art in Tehran. They are said to
be worth billions of dollars now and are too expensive to be
destroyed.”  And finally, concerning a painting of a female leg,
owned by the museum, which has not been on display, Ms. Rose
speculates: “Did some fanatic realize it is a woman’s and throw a
cloth over its offensive nudity? Is it being held for ransom to be
exchanged for a valuable Persian manuscript or an important weapon?”

* All right, we need more antidote. Let’s just visit a few of our
concluding Visual Delights, some recent exhibits of the works of
Iranian painters and art-lovers who — no doubt — enjoyed the
above exhibit tremendously (and luckily won’t have to read Ms.
Rose’s review). I have particularly enjoyed the portrays by Nemat
Lalehei http://www.elahe.net/thumb.php?gallery=316 . Lalehei is an
artist from the northern city of Rasht. Be sure to double click on
each portraits to see the enlarged version. Another male artist,
and one very different in style and temperament is:  Masoud
Dashtban,  http://www.elahe.net/photo.php?picid=3416 . Finally,
please take a look at the works of the young photographer, Salomeh
Manouchehri. Here too, you must enlarge the photographs to see the
subtleties of her work. Enjoy:
http://www.elahe.net/thumb.php?gallery=313

Have a great week. I hope to be opening another window in about a week.
Best,

Fatemeh
========================
Fatemeh Keshavarz, Professor and Chair
Dept. of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatuares
Washington University in St. Louis
Tel: (314) 935-5156
Fax: (314) 935-4399
========================

]]> http://observer.com/2000/12/lewitts-retrospective-did-he-want-to-bore-us/ Mon, 18 Dec 2000 00:00:00 +0000 jhanasobserver http://observer.com/2000/12/lewitts-retrospective-did-he-want-to-bore-us/ About the Sol LeWitt retrospective, which was organized by

the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has now come to the Whitney Museum

of American Art, the first thing to consider is the artist’s credo. For Mr.

LeWitt has never been shy about making his intentions explicit. The

bibliography of his writings and publications on this subject is, indeed, one

of the most extensive in recent history. While other hands have frequently been

enlisted to execute his paintings and drawings, it is in his writings that we

come closest to hearing the artist’s own voice-the voice of a Minimalist who

found in the operational strategies of Conceptual art a perfect vehicle for the

creation of a copious production.

Here, then, is a paragraph from one of Mr. LeWitt’s key

texts, his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” first published in Artforum in 1967: “I will refer to the

kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea

or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a

conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are

made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a

machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative

of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes

and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of

the artist as a craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned

with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and

therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no

reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the

viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one

conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer

from perceiving this art.”

To which should be added the following passage from the same

text: “To work with a plan that is pre-set is one way of avoiding subjectivity.

It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would

design the work.”

For its current incarnation of the LeWitt retrospective, the

Whitney has supplied a text of its own, from which I shall quote only a single

sentence: “A key figure in the development of Conceptual art in [the 1960's],

LeWitt belongs to a generation of artists who, in their search for new

directions, found little promise in the hothouse emotionalism of the highly

venerated Abstract Expressionists of the New York School.”

Now you may not have thought of the paintings of Mark Rothko

or Willem de Kooning or even Jackson Pollock-never mind those of Ad Reinhardt

or Barnett Newman-as examples of “hothouse emotionalism.” And if, when you

visit the LeWitt retrospective, you take a look at the examples of Abstract

Expressionist painting from the Whitney’s own collection that are also on view

at the moment, you will find little to support this theory of “hothouse

emotionalism.” But never mind. This is what passes for deep thought at the

Whitney these days, and it is only meant to persuade us that Sol LeWitt has

never been guilty of such dreaded emotionalism, hothouse or otherwise. On this

point I am easily persuaded.

On another subject,

however-Mr. LeWitt’s claim that there is no reason to suppose “that the

conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer”-something more needs to be said.

For there is an immense quantity of

work in this retrospective-rooms and rooms of it-that this viewer found to be

almost unendurably boring. I am not suggesting that Mr. LeWitt has set out to

bore us, but a large measure of boredom is built into his depersonalized

method. When “the plan” designs “the work” and “the execution is a perfunctory

affair,” then boredom awaits us, whether or not the artist intends it.

It is worth recalling, in this connection, that back in

1967, when Mr. LeWitt published his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” boredom

was, so to speak, a hot issue in the art world. No less an eminence than Susan

Sontag had grandly proclaimed (in Against

Interpretation ) that “There is, in a sense, no such thing as boredom.” She

was writing in defense of what she called “the new languages which the

interesting art of our time speaks,” which would then have included Minimalism

and Conceptual art.

It was left to Barbara Rose, however, to offer up the

grandest defense of boredom in art. In a widely read essay called “ABC Art,”

published in Art in America in 1965,

Ms. Rose wrote as follows: “If, on seeing some of the new paintings,

sculptures, dances or films, you are bored, probably you were intended to be.

Boring the public is one way of testing its commitment. The new artists seem to

be extremely chary; approval, they know, is easy to come by in this seller’s

market for culture, but commitment is nearly impossible to elicit. So they make

their art as difficult, remote, aloof and indigestible as possible. One way to

achieve this is to make art boring. Some artists, often the most gifted, finally

end by finding art a bore. It is no coincidence that the last painting Duchamp

made, in 1918, was called Tu m’ . The

title is short for tu m’ennuie -you

bore me.”

As Ms. Rose was then married to Frank Stella, she brought a

special authority to this proposition. It was undoubtedly in response to this

defense of boredom that Mr. LeWitt felt obliged to deny that “the conceptual

artist is out to bore the viewer.”

Still, as the viewer makes his way through this immense

retrospective, he may be persuaded that Mr. LeWitt was indeed one of the

artists who, at a certain point in his development, was “finding art a bore,”

and as a hedge against boredom-the viewer’s, if not his own-began to embrace a

kind of razzle-dazzle brand of color design as a substitute for artistic

thought. So the monkish Minimalism of the 1960′s was soon followed by the

atrociously vulgar color design that now covers so many of the walls of the

Whitney Museum, all of it executed by hired hands. “A perfunctory affair,”

indeed, and it remains on view at the Whitney through Feb. 25