rachel whiteread. looking forward to seeing some of her drawings here soon:

http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/172

A big night for Rachel Whiteread. On this date in 1993, she won the Turner Prize for Best Young British Artist, receiving £20,000. Then, minutes later, she walked outside the Tate Gallery to receive £40,000 from the K Foundation-for Worst British Artist.

The work that won Whiteread both awards was entitled ‘House’. It was created by filling a Victorian house in Bethnal Green with liquid concrete, and then stripping away the mould-the house itself. What was left was a solid hulk of concrete, bleak and dead, looking like the opposite of what it once was. The Independent called it one of the most extraordinary and imaginative sculptures created by an English artist in the twentieth century.

Rewind back to the start of the year. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, once number one artists as the Timelords and dance pioneers as the KLF, had been taking out strange adverts in the national press all throughout 1993. As the KLF, their statements filling the page had started out as cryptic and seemingly pointless (K Time), but by the summer their mood changed. On the 14th August an ad was put out with the confrontational message-

Abandon all art now. Await further instructions. Major rethink in progress.

The K Foundation then announced they would hold their own art award in 1993, with the same shortlist as the Turner Prize, on the same date, but with one vital difference. The award would go to the artist deemed the worst of the lot. This seemed to be obviously a challenge to the smug elite of modern art. Avant-garde art, such as that shortlisted in the Turner Prize, was no longer the anti-establishment by the 1990s, it was the establishment. And because of this, it had grown complacent, and become boring and vacuous. The popular media and the public were sick of this abstract nonsense, and it seemed so were the K Foundation.

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But this interpretation was totally mistaken. It is easy to see how this happened. This argument between the art establishment and the popular media had been raging on for years. With their confusing, anonymous messages the K Foundation did not every explicitly deny that this was what they were talking about. So most of the press focussed on this line, seeing the night of the 23rd in this way. For example, The Times saw it as another tiresome campaign in the fight against obscure modern art, while on the other hand Factory Records boss Tony Wilson praised it as a great artistic statement in itself. However it was not really about artistic integrity, aesthetics, or that old chestnut, ‘what is art?’.

It was about money. The journalist Miranda Sawyer noticed something interesting that night. At the start of the night Drummond and Cauty gave the prize money to a group of artists, as witnesses,  to look after and then give to the winner. By the time the money reached, much of it had disappeared, around £9000 in fact. Sawyer saw from this as an example of what the K Foundation were examining – cash, art and all the associated feelings around them. Bill Drummond confirmed this years later. They weren’t attacking Rachel Whiteread and her concrete block at all, they were looking at something completely different. They weren’t making a statement about the art establishment, but rather a statement about money. That’s that then. But wait, what is the statement, K?

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Unrelated to the 23rd November, but if you have the time then watch this 5 part documentary on what the K Foundation did next with their money. Amazing.

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Part 1 of 5)

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Part 2 of 5)

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Part 3 of 5)

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Part 4 of 5)

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Part 5 of 5)

And a brilliantly frustrating TV interview afterwards. Also fascinating.

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Interview)(Part 1 of 3 …

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Interview)(Part 2 of 3 …

K Foundation – Burn A Million Quid (Interview)(Part 3 of 3 …

I thought I had pictures of this sitting on my hard drive, but I don’t, so here’s one from the Wikipedia page: Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial in Vienna.

Thanks Hans Peter Schaefer for uploading your work to the Wikimedia Commons with a GNU Free License!

The monument is a concrete cast of a library turned “inside out” so that entrance is impossible and the contents of the books are lost. The weight of the sculpture is austere, an abrupt interruption to a beautiful square, and if you walk around the library and look at the ground you see the names of all the camps where Austrian Jews were killed. Whiteread’s career is about casting “negative space,” and this is an aesthetically and conceptually interesting use of the concept.

Simon Wiesenthal was on the committee that chose this design, and he explained that books are an important symbol for Jews: “We are a people of books. We didn’t build our monuments out of stone and metal. Our monuments were books.”

I still think it’s wholly unsuited to be Austria’s central Holocaust memorial.

“Jews are not metaphors,” to quote Cynthia Ozick, Jews are not symbols, and Jews are not books. I think this monument goes dangerously far in equating the two.

When I see it, I think “It’s very sad that we lost all of that knowledge,” and while this is a true statement, it’s not the point of the tragedy.

I was just reading a study about Holocaust education in Germany that warned against reducing Jews to the sum of their intellectual contributions, to a list of scientists and thinkers in a textbook. German (and Austrian) children today have for the most part never lived with Jews. They don’t have first-hand knowledge of the fact that Jews are people, who laugh, and cry, and play, and work, and they don’t have first-hand knowledge of the richness of Jewish culture.

I think this monument reduces Jewish culture to “a culture of the book,” and depicts the Holocaust as an intellectual and cultural loss rather than as a human tragedy.

I don’t know if I forget, when I’m looking at this monument, that six million people with rich human lives enmeshed in a living culture were brutally murdered, but I know that I become disassociated from that fact.

They become closed books to me, and I project that image back into the past, forgetting that there ever was such a thing as a living Jewish culture in Europe.

That’s the last thing a central Holocaust memorial should do.

- Excerpts from “Sensation : Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection

Damien Hirst curated the widely acclaimed ‘Freeze’ exhibition in 1988 while still a student at Goldsmiths College. This show launched the careers of many successful young British artists, including his own. Hirst graduated from Goldsmiths in 1989, and has since become the most famous living British artist after David Hockney. In 1991, Hirst presented In and Out of Love, an installation for which he filled a gallery with hundreds of live tropical butterflies, some spawned from monochrome canvases on the wall. With The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), his infamous tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde shown at the Saatchi Gallery, Damien Hirst became a media icon and household name. He has since been imitated, parodied, reproached and exalted by the media and public alike.

Hirst’s work is an examination of the processes of life and death: the ironies, falsehoods and desires that we mobilise to negotiate our own alienation and mortality. His production can be roughly grouped into three areas: paintings, cabinet sculptures and the glass tank pieces. The paintings divide into spot and spin paintings. The former are randomly organised, colour-spotted canvases with titles that refer to pharmaceutical chemicals. The spin paintings are ‘painted’ on a spinning table, so that each individual work is created through centrifugal force. For the cabinet series Hirst displayed collections of surgical tools or hundreds of pill bottles on highly ordered shelves. The tank pieces incorporate dead and sometimes dissected animals – cows, sheep or the shark – preserved in formaldehyde, suspended in death.

Damien Hirst shaped shared ideas and interests quickly and easily, his work developing during the decade [1987-1997] to reflect changes in contemporary life. Relying on the straightforward appeal of colour and form, he made important art that contained little mystery in its construction. Adopting the graphic punch of billboard imagery, his work was arresting at a distance and physically surprising close up. Hirst understood art at its most simple and at its most complex. He reduced painting to its basic elements to eliminate abstraction’s mystery. In the age of art as a commodity he made spot paintings – saucer-sized, coloured circles on a white ground – that became luxury designer goods. His art was direct but never empty. In the later spin paintings, which emphasised a renewed interest in a hands-on process of making, Hirst magnified a ‘hobby’-art technique, drawing attention to the accidental and expressive energy of the haphazard. Influenced by Jeff Koons’s basketballs floating in water, Hirst’s early work used pharmacy medicine cabinets that showed the applied beauty of Modernist design. A cabinet of individual fish suspended in formaldehyde worked like the spot paintings, as an arrangement of colour, shape and form. This work came to be seen in the popular mind as a symbol of advanced art; overcoming an initial distrust of its ease of assembly, people became fascinated by how ordinary things of the world could be placed so as to be seen as beautiful. The work democratised its meaning, operating as simply as a pop song.

Hirst, understanding Collishaw’s coup with the gunshot wound photograph, created work that brought together the joy of life and the inevitability of death, in the process transforming the secrecy of Collishaw’s voyeurism into mass spectacle. A scene of pastoral beauty became one of languid death: in In and Out of Love, newly emerged butterflies stuck to freshly painted monochromes; in A Thousand Years, flies emerged from maggots, ate and died, zapped by an insect-o-cutor. Soon, the emphasis changed from an observation of creatures dying to the presentation of dead animals. A shark in a tank of formaldehyde presented a once life-threatening beast as a carcass: the glass box, half hunting trophy, half homage to the Minimalist object, imposed the gravity of a natural history museum onto an outsized council-house ornament. Hirst’s sculpture progressed with the Arcadian beauty of a solitary sheep, Away from the Flock, followed by the gothic thrill of the mechanically moving pig. Hirst understood the claustrophobic horror of Francis Bacon’s art, and found surprising parallels in the modern office or the lowly art tradition of portraits of animals. His fascination with the elevation of the commonplace, the unremarkable and the everyday has found Hirst at his most inventive.

By the time work by Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread could be viewed here in New York in any kind of depth, both artists’ reputations had long preceded them. We were hypnotised – amazed, up-in-arms, fascinated, threatened – by the flood of images of Hirst’s encased shark, images that for several years here remained uncorroborated by any actual objects. The pickled predator remains the very symbol, and with hindsight the warning signal, for the invasion that ensued. Hirst may have been heralded in a timely enough manner, but in fact he did not have a major one-man exhibition in New York until 1996, the year of his much-delayed inaugural at Gagosian. Thus, the surprise of that carnivalesque event was not only its scale but its unexpected variety: from sliced cows and mechanised pig, to Spin-Art paintings, to a giant ashtray full of butts – it had the crazed, cracked energy of a late-’70s Jonathan Borofsky extravaganza gone grizzly-gothic. Almost miraculously, given the US Customs’ problems attending Hirst’s taxidermical exercises – not to mention the then-fresh panic concerning British beef – the mood at the opening was cheerfully optimistic, indeed quite madly upbeat.

Venecia tiene un nuevo museo. La noticia no parece tan sensacional en una ciudad que regala a cada paso escenarios increíbles, palacios, canales y, por supuesto, decenas de museos y galerías. Lo que pasa es que entre las paredes de la antigua Dogana di Mare se guardan algunas de las piezas más importantes de una sorprendente colección privada de arte contemporáneo. Es decir, Europa tiene un nuevo museo. Es más, todos (los interesados en el arte contemporáneo) tenemos un nuevo museo.

Algunas obras

Sin título, 2007, Maurizio Cattelan
Planta baja, Punta della Dogana
Se ubica en la primera sala del Punta della Dogana, lo que provoca un encuentro inquietante e inevitable para todos los visitantes: un caballo disecado pegado en la parte del cuello a la alta pared de ladrillos y suspendido en una absurda postura. Un salto entre la pared o una trampa irremediable, una conmemoración de gestas heroicas y de antiguos trofeos (sólo que al revés), o simplemente la expresión grotesca de la impotencia. El artista autodidacta italiano Maurizio Cattelan, de la corriente postduchampiana, es un maestro de la provocación, amado por sus creaciones polifacéticas e irrespetuosas, o aborrecido como impostor.

Boy with Frog, 2009, Charles Ray
Exterior, Punta della Dogana
Comisionada por Franois Pinault al artista estadounidense Charles Ray, esta obra fue pensada y realizada expresamente para dominar la esquina de Punta della Dogana. Ahí donde se encuentran la tierra y la laguna, una escultura de más de dos metros y medio en acero inoxidable pintada de blanco representa un niño, levantando con la mano una rana. En la mente del artista, uno de los escultores contemporáneos más importantes, se trata de la representación de la adolescencia, del juego, de la curiosidad. Pero también de la misma ciudad de Venecia, anfibia y codiciada entre el agua y la tierra.

Sin título, 2007-2008, Cindy Sherman
Primer piso, Punta della Dogana
En la misma sala de la escultura de Jeff Koons se encuentran seis grandes fotografías de la artista estadounidense Cindy Sherman. Los retratos, que representan mujeres al parecer muy distintas, reproducen en realidad siempre a la misma fotógrafa, disfrazada y camuflada. Se trata de su crítica y su comentario a la identidad femenina en la sociedad moderna. De sus imágenes surge una mujer obligada a una continua mutación, en espera de encontrar el favor de los hombres y de la sociedad entera. Disfraces humillantes y máscaras grotescas que en el contexto de Venecia adquieren un nuevo significado.

Alpino, 1976, Rudolf Stingel
Planta baja, Punta della Dogana
El cubo en cemento de Tadao Ando hospeda en su interior tres monumentales telas del artista italiano Rudolf Stingel. Representante del arte conceptual, en una de ellas ofrece su propio autorretrato, reproduciendo la foto de una tarjeta de identidad de cuando era joven. Al observarla, resulta evidente cómo el medio fotográfico se transforma en un estilo pictórico virtuoso, en una imagen casi religiosa que completa la atmósfera calma y contemplativa de este espacio físico.

Bourgeois Bust, 1991, Jeff Koons
Primer piso, Punta della Dogana
El artista estadounidense Jeff Koons, destacado por sus obras kitsch y monumentales, está presente en la colección de Pinault con una escultura clásica, delicada y discreta. Representa al artista mismo abrazando a Ilona Staller, actriz porno húngara conocida como Cicciolina, con la cual se casó en 1991. La obra pertenece a un ciclo llamado Made in Heaven, que incluye obras que representan posturas sexuales muy explícitas. Esta pieza en mármol blanco, al contrario, expresa la ternura de un ligero roce.

Algunos artistas

Takashi Murakami
Félix González Torres
Richard Prince
Bruce Nauman
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Franz West
Rachel Whiteread
Fischli & Weiss

Para leer el artículo completo ingresa a la página de Travesías aquí

Untitled (Room 101). El espacio positivo

Escultura Sin Título (Room 101) de Rachel Whiteread en el museo Georges Pompidou, París. Agosto 2009. FATografia.

Para mí es la mejor obra escultórica que he visto en el museo Georges Pompidou en París. Está situada justo a la entrada de las exposiciones permanentes. Es la más visible ya que no está delimitada por paredes, es la de mayor volumen y quizás es la más ignorada (a juzgar por lo que he visto). La gente hambrienta de arte pasa al lado de la misma como si se tratase de unas paredes hechas con Pladur. Y no saben lo importante que es. Bajo mi humilde punto de vista, es la obra más sutil.

Se trata del positivo del espacio, es decir, de la mismísima Arquitectura. Si el cometido de un arquitecto es crear espacios y trabajar con el vacío, ¿por qué siempre nos fijamos en las paredes? Ya nos lo decían Chillida u Oteiza a través de sus esculturas. Ahora nos encontramos ante una escultura de un espacio común que todos reconocemos por su escala y sus detalles.

También nos lo decía Bruno Zevi en Saber ver la arquitectura. Hay que fijarse en el vacío por el que nos movemos y no en sus límites. Hoy en día está más de moda los límites que el vacío. Esperemos que sólo sea una etapa transitoria. Me atrevería a decir que el espacio no tiene colores, sólo sensaciones…

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This is not really film-related, but I thought I’d post it here anyway, in the hope that it might be of interest to anyone whose film-fixation extends to other media, in this case contemporary art. I’ve been selected to take part in Anthony Gormley’s latest public art project, One and Other; from 6th July until 14th October, 2400 people will occupy the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, for one hour each. At 8am on 23rd July 2009, I will take my place on the Plinth, 8 metres above the ground. Since 1999, the plinth has been a platform for a rolling sequence of contemporary art that provides a contrast to the military and monarchical statuary that marks the rest of the area. It has most recently been occupied by Thomas Schütte’s “Model for a Hotel”, which I photographed a while ago:

In the past, it has served very different artistic aims. Rachel Whiteread filled it with a mirror-image of the plinth itself:

The first piece to be installed was Mark Wallinger’s Ecce Homo, a lifesize (and thus vulnerable, ordinary-looking) statue of Christ that subverts the convention of aggrandisement and exaggeration conventions of this kind of likeness:

Also subeverting the expectation that statues are for men with military backup was Marc Quinn’s “Alison Lapper Pregnant”, a giant sculpture of the disabled artist:

All of these are confrontational in their own way, usually by striking up some friction with the surrounding area and its customs. By giving the plinth over to a bunch of nobodies like me, Gormley might risk making it utterly ordinary, but the artist has suggested that he would be disappointed if his project failed to provoke controversy:

I would be very upset if somebody didn’t take their clothes off. They have got to stay within the law, but unless there’s a degree of contradiction this (project) will have no teeth at all. I can imagine there will be occasions for arrests, and we have to deal with that when it happens. There will be self-selecting exhibitionists burning to use this for their acts, but there will be others who just want to be there to represent their communities just by standing. I really don’t think that there is anything that people can do up there that is not acceptable.

I’m happy to report that I will not be that naked exhibitionist. Unless it’s really sunny. I’m not sure it needs to provide that kind of sensationalism to be an interesting experiment – there are already opportunities to debase oneself or get arrested in London, and isn’t the notion of exhibited people enough?

So, I’m open to suggestions on how I should spend my hour as a living sculpture. This is public art, so the public should shape it. But I’m not sure it become a kind of busker’s performance space, or a speaker’s corner, or a political bandstand. London already has plenty of designated places for those things. It’s not a talent show, and nor should it be an audition for other media appearances: it will be televised, and covered round-the-clock by webcams, but it’s not reality TV. At least, I hope that’s not what it becomes. That said, the excitement of the project is that anything (within reason) can happen, and the artist has to sign away some of the ownership of what goes on. The application process doesn’t prescribe what you should do once you get onto the plinth, but people will no doubt feel some pressure to perform, to do something unique. I heard Gormley speak at the Hay Festival a couple of weeks ago, and he did hope that some people would “do nothing”, i.e. they would simply embody the experience of being on display by “being” themselves rather than putting on a show (which might be seen as a mask rather than a self-representation). I thought I might pose as William IV: the plinth was built in 1841 with the intention of offering a giant equestrian statue to the king, but funds ran out and he was, by most accounts, an unpopular buffoon of a monarch, so there wasn’t much incentive to memorialise him. My other option might be to record (with a paper and a pen – I don’t fancy taking a laptop up there if it’s going to rain on me) my responses to the experience and blog them immediately afterwards: I’ll scan in my notes rather than typing them up. It might be intimidating, exhilarating, possibly dull. It might also be a good chance to get some peace and quiet – paradoxically, it’ll be very public, but I’ll also have 60 minutes to myself where I can’t be contacted, if I choose to leave my phone at home.

Let me know your thoughts, or if you’ve also been picked, let me know how you intend to use your hour. Whatever happens, I’m sure it’ll be better than Tracy Emin’s plan to put some meerkats up there.

It’s not too late to apply for your place on the plinth:

Join the One and Other Facebook Group.

View a gallery of other plinth projects at The Guardian.

Hear Anthony Gormley talk about the project in this short video: Antony Gormley on the Fourth Plinth from One & Other on Vimeo.

For some odd reason Jonathan Jones, writing in The Guardian assumes that the public cannot be trusted to make their own mind up about what constitutes great art. We must leave it to the professionals, he suggests. Art is not a democracy, apparently we need to be told what we should like.

The Professionals are exactly what I despise about the art World. It’s why I gave up Photography. I despise being judged by art critics and professionals, as if they have a monopoly on ideas and creativity. I want to be judged by everyone. Some may like my stuff, some may hate it. That’s fine. But to be told “everyone else is wrong, i’m right, and you’re shit” (or words to that affect) is just too much for me.

I remember being told, that for my disastrous Digital Photography Degree attempt (of which I gave up half way through the first year, to my utter relief) to show three of my pictures, that reflected my personality. And so I did. I was told by the pretentious “Professionals” that the photos I chose did not represent me in any way, less than one week after they’d met me. How they could judge my photos against my personality, having only met me once, is beyond me, but they did, and for the subsequent nine weeks, moronic ideals expressed in that very same way, from the “Professionals” only got deeper and more pretentious. Art snobbery is something I never want to experience again. You live and you learn.

Nobody is free to tell me what I should and should not like. But incase you’re in any doubt, when it comes to my taste, this is great art; subtle, warm, and serene simply because you can picture Van Gogh sat observing this scene whilst depicting it. To me, it represents a far off tranquility…..

This Rothko work, titled “White Centre“, well I’m not quite sure what this is supposed to be, it provokes no feelings for me whatsoever, despite Rothko himself referring to his works as expressing “basic human emotions“. In any event, to me, this is simply nonsense………

The Rothko work, is simply a concept for me. A confusing concept at that. One that does not appeal to me. For a work of art to appeal to me, it must show talent in it’s creation along with it’s concept. Vision and talent, should not be replaced by simply a concept, a statement – which seemingly depends on the explanation on the wall next to it.
Of course, it is just my opinion. And for me to suggest that everyone should find this work terrible, would be just as ignorant as a panel of judges telling me just how wonderful it is.

A great many would disagree with me, and that is exactly why the public are much more entitled to judge what our generation considers to be great art, rather than a panel of judges.

I do not doubt that everyone should be free to embrace artistic freedom, to be different, to offer something new, to be as unique as you can possibly be (although it could be argued that modern conceptual art is simply a modification of Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”); but if the vast majority of our generation do not like what you produce, you shouldn’t be protected by a bunch of pretentious judges who insist you’re actually very talented. Similarly, if many people like your work, then you should not be held back by pretentious judges. If some like your work, then great, if they don’t, either keep at it until they do, or move on. It’s quite simple. In fact, i’m not quite sure there should be awards for a subject that is so subjective.

Jones, in his column tells me that Rachel Whiteread’s “House” constitutes good art. He fails to tell me that it’s just his opinion. Because personally, I thought that Rachel Whiteread’s “house” was absolutely nothing special, like everything the Turner Prize has ever produced. But i’m becoming increasingly aware that these so-called Professionals have the final say on what constitutes “good art“, and the stupid, drooling-on-themselves, throwing-faeces-at-the-wall, general public are just not good enough, we must abide by what the Professionals tell us is good. Seemingly forgetting that Turner himself would cringe at fact that an award in his name is handed out, yearly, to absolute trash.

Why does this just apply to Art? The public shouldn’t be allowed to decide what constitutes good music any more either? I shouldn’t be able to decide for myself, I need a professional to tell me.

The indefinably magnificent voice of Andrea Bocelli; his ability, his talent, is spectacular. Most mornings, whilst getting ready for the day ahead, Bocelli will be singing in my background. He is the Leonardo of the music World in my estimation. What if I were to get on stage and attempt a rendition of Con te partirò, knowing that I cannot sing? In fact, regardless of whether I thought I could sing or not, I’d be laughed off the stage at best, and beaten to death by the librettist at worst. Can I count on these professionals to defend me for being unique, and making a statement? Post-post-modernism?

If the snobs win the day though, we could all be potential Bocelli’s, given that we express ourselves in an unfamiliar and unique style (even though it wouldn’t be unique, because Bocelli has already done it, much like it isn’t unique when Duchamp has already done it). And whilst you all cover your ears in pain at my horrendous singing voice, i’ll have judges like Jonathan Jones of The Guardian to back me up. So fuck you!

Article by Charlotte Higgins On Culture Blog Gardian.co.uk

Women are becoming more recognised as artists than a generation ago, but the art world can still be a lonely place for them

Rachel Whiteread, pictured in the Tate turbine hall, is one of one three women to win the Turner prize. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

I’m fascinated by Joanna Moorehead’s piece [July's] arts pages about the collections of art by women at New Hall, Cambridge, and in Washington. My instinct was that I would no more divide the books on my shelves by gender than I would embrace the notion of visiting a women’s art gallery.

Nonetheless, Moorehead’s piece is persuasive. And women do not have equality as art practitioners. A crude measure it may be, but even if you look at very recent history – and take the Turner prize as a snapshot – out of 23 winners, the only women have been Tomma Abts, Rachel Whiteread and Gillian Wearing. If you looked at solo shows at, say, Tate Modern, I am sure the statistics would be yet more bald: part of the force for me of its recent Louise Bourgeois exhibition was that it reminded me how rare an experience it is for female sexuality and female experience to be explored on this scale and with this level of forcefulness and sophistication.

But gender inequality cuts right through the art world. While a phalanx of talented women have risen to the top of the private gallery world in the UK – Sadie Coles, Victoria Miro and Maureen Paley to name three – the public sector is in a ridiculous situation. Of the 31 directors of national museums and archives, only four are women. Clearly, the situation for women in the art world has transformed beyond all recognition over the past generation or so. But it still has a long way to go. Perhaps it will be time to pack up the collection at New Hall when Tate and the National Gallery are run by women.
-Charlotte Higgins On Culture

Original article:

Posted byMonday 28 July 200809.45

BSTguardian.co.ukhttp://www.guardian.co.uk

Western Motel: Edward Hopper and Contemporary Art is an exhibition in the Kunsthalle Vienna, featuring Edward Hopper (surprise!), David Claerbout [page is in French], Dawn Clements, Jonas Dahlberg, Thomas Demand, Gustav Deutsch [There's an English button which I can't get to work. If you can, great, if not, it's in German], Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Tim Eitel, Jim Jarmusch, Rachel Khedoori, Mark Lewis, Ed Ruscha, Markus Schinwald/Oleg Soulimenko, Jeff Wall, Rachel Whiteread.

[Oh yeah, baby, that's Jim Jarmusch right there. ;)]

The exhibition concentrates on Hopper’s influence on cinema and his view of architectural space, but it also features photographs working with the same principles as he did in his paintings – people, who are kind of frozen in their loneliness, light that makes the paintings come alive.

It’s very interesting to see the parallels that are drawn between the different artists, who work with very different media – from painting to sculptures, film to print.

It’s a surprisingly short exhibition – even though there are so many different artists, you can comfortably see everything in an hour and a half – which is exactly the amount of time my brain gives me before it goes in information overload mode.

Although I didn’t like all the artists (and let’s be honest, there’s little chance of that because there are just so many of them), I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

[After the break see pictures of the artists' works.]

Edward Hopper

Nighthawks – probably Hopper’s most famous painting

Western Motel, which gave the exhibition its title. There was a set built of this painting, where you could sit in the woman’s place and take a photo. Pretty cool. [See below: Gustav Deutsch]

David Claerbout

This was a film installation, where the background [the outside] of a photo was manipulated to show people walking past, sometimes trying to open the locked doors. Everything but their shadows had to stay outside.

Another film installation, which only showed the inside of this car the whole time. It’s raining, nobody is talking. In the second half of it, though, we can see the car from the outside, in a wide landscape with the sun shining. It could have been a photograph except for a swaying tree in the foreground of the picture, which gave it all a bit of an eerie feel.

Dawn Clements

Here’s a detail of Clements’ “Travels With MyraHudson”. In fact, the whole thing was huge. Much like this one:

Her work is incredibly detailed and seems a bit like a run-on sentence. You just get carried from one detail to the next, never seeming able to finish.

Jonas Dahlberg

Another video installation, called three rooms (you can watch it on his site). It showed three rooms – a bedroom, a dining room, a living room – with the furniture and everything in it slowly falling apart and decaying. The picture here is of the bedroom, before the destruction.

Thomas Demand

Thomas Demand takes photos, which are – at first glance – rather unremarkable, even if very well executed. Then somebody tells you that he builds all his scenes with paper and cardboard only, which you wouldn’t notice without somebody telling you. And then you’re awed.

Gustav Deutsch

As I mentioned before, that’s the set of the Western Motel painting. Deutsch also did miniatures of other Hopper painting backgrounds (without the people) which you could look at through a small hole. Kind of like a peep show.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

DiCorcia has a photograph series called “Hustlers”, where he photographs young  uhm… hustlers. The title of the photo is the name, age, location and the price of the mostly young boys. This one is: ‘Brent Booth, 21 years old, Des Moines, Iowa $30′

This one is my favourite (of those I know): “Eddie Anderson; 21 Years Old; Houston, Texas; $20″

Tim Eitel

This one’s called quite simply Matratze (matress). It’s a photorealistic painting and really looks amazing.

This one’s called Ohne Titel (Ausblick) [Without Title (View)]. I really like its contemplativeness.

Jim Jarmusch

There were several scenes from different Jarmusch movies like Broken Flowers, Stranger Than Paradise, Coffee and Cigarettes, Night on Earth etc. Jarmusch himself said how influential Hopper was on his style.

And if you take this excerpt from Coffee and Cigarettes it’s pretty plain to see.

Rachel Khedoori

To be honest, I had troubles accessing Khedoori’s work. I did like a sculpture though, that was not unlike this one.

Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis had two video installations in this exhibition. In this one, the camera slowly zooms towards the building, which doesn’t have any windows. There are a few people on the second floor and we slowly discover what they’re doing – making a top spin. [Watch the thing here - it's beautiful.]

That’s the second installation: the camera slowly drives around this triangular building. [You can watch it here, but personally I didn't like it as much as North Circular above.]

Ed Ruscha

 Ed Ruscha made a book from photographing 26 gas station along one highway in the US (was it route 66? I don’t remember). He then used the photos further to make prints like this one:

Aptly called Double Standard. It’s all very pop-art-y.

Markus Schinwald/Oleg Soulimenko

Markus Schinwald shot a video of dancer/performer/entertainer Oleg Soulimenko doing his thing – he kind of moves a bit aimlessly (and pointlessly) about this set. Didn’t watch that for long because I got bored, to be honest.

Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall takes photos, which I didn’t really think were exciting. Artistically I can’t say much about it, but it didn’t really speak to me.

Rachel Whiteread

Another one of the artists I couldn’t really relate to. But interesting stuff.

Rachel Whiteread also did the Holocaust Memorial on the Judenplatz in Vienna (the Nameless Library).

That’s it. *wipes brow*

Yesterday I saw Rachel Whiteread’s Place (Village) at the MFA in Boston. Of course you know how I feel about dollhouses so I was excited to see this installation made from her collection of vintage English dollhouses. In the photographs I’d seen, the room seems well-lit, but it’s actually pitch black with only tiny lights inside the empty houses for illumination. I was surprised how melancholy it felt in person. Having just moved across the country and being in the process of searching for a house of my own, Whiteread’s meditation on place certainly resonated with me.

Image from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In January (13.01.09 – 31.01.09), Michael Hoppen Contemporary, London, shows photographs by John Davies, an English photographer known for his narrative shots of British landscape. “His black and white photographs show the vast, complex and majestic scenery of industrial and post industrial Britain. He establishes classical geometries within his unique vision that take on a mystical appeal. His works are coolly detached and seductive, showing moments of calm and quiet amidst the inevitable change of the modern landscape.” (quote by MH Contemporary)

House 1 1993 © John Davies courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery Silver Gelatin Print 30 x 42 inches

In 1993, Davies made a series of 9 photographs which portray “House”, a public scultpure by Rachel Whiteread, winner of the renowned Turner Prize in 1993 and the first woman to be awarded.

Whiteread is best known for her sculptures  which are actually casts: “In the late 1980s, Rachel Whiteread began casting the ‘negative spaces’ inside and underneath domestic objects and soon moved on to architectural features and entire rooms.” (quote by MH Contemporary)

John Davies: House 8 1993 © John Davies courtesy of Michael Hoppen Contemporary Silver Gelatin Print 30 x 42 inches

House (1993), perhaps Whiteread’s best known work (according to wikipedia.com), was a concrete cast of the inside of an entire Victorian terraced house completed in autumn 1993, exhibited at the location of the original house — 193 Grove Road — in East London (all the houses in the street had earlier been knocked down by the council).

“Whiteread created the work by spraying liquid concrete into the building’s empty shell before its walls were removed. The work became a temporary monument to lost communities and a focus for public debate before it was demolished in January 1994. It stood alone as a symbol of survival, as all the other houses in Grove Road had already been knocked down to make way for redevelopment.”

“The House project was commissioned by the public works organisation Artangel. Whiteread asked Artangel to commission Davies to make some pictures for a limited edition book to record what was her largest and most ambitious work to date.” (quote by MH Contemporary)

Davies photographs are all that remains of house, site and sculpture. His photographs document the site of the condemned building, documenting the scaffolding going up, the cement ‘ghost’ of the building, and finally, the empty space the structure occupied.

John Davies Rachel Whiteread HOUSE

13.01.09 – 31.01.09

Michael Hoppen Gallery
3 Jubilee Place,
London SW3 3TD

EXHIBITION – artist: Rachel Whiteread, location: Michael Hoppen Gallery London, date: 13.01.09 / current exhibitions at: Michael Hoppen Gallery London 2008. Artistinformation and biography-text from: Rachel Whiteread Michael Hoppen Gallery London CATEGORY: art, modern art, projects: TEXTPORTRAITS Rachel Whiteread by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer and Laura May. More information about Rachel Whiteread Exhibition Michael Hoppen Gallery London, United Kigdom.

New entries: actual 0

Barack Obama / Portrait (TEXTPORTRAIT).

textportraits by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

AKTUELLE AUSSTELLUNG: Michael Hoppen Gallery London; Künstler: Rachel Whiteread; Betitelung: documented by John Davies 1993-1995 – Zeitraum der Ausstellung: 13.01.09. Kunstausstellungen (England) aktuell: Michael Hoppen Gallery London (2008). Weitere Informationen über: Rachel Whiteread: Biografie/Biography — | Galerieninformationen/Gallery: Rachel Whiteread — Weitere geplante Ausstellungen: Michael Hoppen Gallery London von Rachel Whiteread — Rachel Whiteread Kunstportal: Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org). Mehr aktuelle Informationen über Rachel Whiteread Michael Hoppen Gallery London.

Beitragsforum Kunst & Kultur allgemein:

Textportrait: Barack Obama.

Textportraits – Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

I can’t get to comment on my public art blog.  As its manager, I have to be unbiased and have to post examples of public art whether I like them or not–whether they’re deserving or not, I shouldn’t have a say about it.  The point of the blog is to feature both known and not so well-known artworks (and artists) in order to be fair for everyone.

But it doesn’t mean I can’t get to comment about some of them HERE in my personal blog.  Hehe.

I just want to write about my three favorite public works of art (click on the pix to link you to the art blog).  When i was making the features on them, I was thrilled about them and found them so fascinating.  These are prime examples of how art moves you…well, at least it moved me… even to the point of tears:

Alison Lapper Pregnant by Marc Quinn. I was aware of who Alison Lapper is, already in awe of her even before I saw this large, beautiful marble statue of her likeness (when she was pregnant in 1999).   She was one of the parents who were part of Child of Our Time, the ground-breaking BBC docu-series which I often watched on cable.  My heart went out to her as I watched her raise her son, Parys, (alone or with caregivers) especially during moments when he hugs her but of course, she cannot physically reciprocate, having no arms of her own.  The statue was considered controversial, being displayed in Trafalgar Square, not suited to the tastes of those who think that statues should only be about the ideal body–perfect, slender or muscular, and having four limbs.  I think it’s perfect already in itself.  They say statues displayed in Trafalgar Square should only be about heroes.  Well, Lapper, who survived abandonment, cruelty and abuse, and overcoming all odds despite her disability to become a renowned artist and fulfilled mother is definitely a hero and inspiration to me.  And it speaks of OUR time–a modern Venus de Milo with cropped hair, only it is not a goddess–it’s a real human being and she’s looks as equally as beautiful.  And it speaks of what lies beyond–for it shows a hint of the future of art (which should be continually changing–or else it will be so unexciting, dry and boring)–becoming more encompassing and truthful, and setting an example (again and again as shown in the history of art) of what was once rejected is now embraced and celebrated.

♥ ♦  ♥ ♦  ♥ ♦

Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor.  I just love this one! I don’t need to explain why–just look at it!  Well, ok, I’ll explain.  When i was small, our thermometer broke, and the liquid mercury poured out of it and onto the floor.  I was fascinated with the shiny silvery liquid metal–I remembered looking at it and yearning to pick it up (of course I couldn’t for i was warned that it was poisonous) to give it a closer look and to squish it with my bare fingers.   It was a weird feeling but it didn’t go away–realizing my fascination with such came back when I saw pix of Cloud Gate.  Amazing concept–and thanks to today’s technology–artworks like these are now possible for us to marvel at and enjoy.    If you go to the blog, there is a picture of Cloud Gate taken early morning with no people surrounding it.  It looks almost plain, lonely, and forlorn.  However, when surrounded by people, it changes–seemingly alive and vibrant.  It seems like it’s taking and absorbing energy from the people and the city.  For me, this is a great example of what public art should be especially if it is commissioned by a city–it should be for the people of the city it is meant for and a serves as a celebration of the city itself.  No wonder Chicagoans are proud of it–as they very well should be.

♥ ♦  ♥ ♦  ♥ ♦

Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial (aka The Nameless Library) by Rachel Whiteread. I’ve been a fan of Rachel Whiteread for a long time, so yes, I AM biased on this one.  There is something about her art that speaks to me–her signature art of negative casting allows me to see what is not there but yet I feel it and sense it–and even if she lets me see it, I am not sure whether I welcome it for it is hard to accept and the discomfort of seeing it unnerves me and yet I have to face it because it is real and it IS there… I am talking gibberish here but that’s how I felt everytime I see her art–ghostly, haunting, harsh, and honest.  Her other works especially the negative casting of the inside of a Victorian room (aptly named Ghost) were able to show what it was like–I mean really like, something that historians cannot possibly reveal to us in their books.  Her works allow me to contemplate on the space that we move in, making me realizing that negative space carries much of time that we spent and absorbs the feelings and energies that we give out.  The hollowness then becomes an entity to be reckoned with, and it is not pretty. That is why, just by looking at pictures of her Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, I feel the same sense of this indescribable sadness (and yes this is the one that moves me to the point of tears)–not just due to the theme but everything about it.  As all controversial artworks–this too was not generally embraced and welcomed.  Maybe some refuse to understand and accept its abstractness or appalled by the simplicity of it.  For me, it is in the simple things that I see the the starkest images, hear the loudest voice, and feel the excruciating sensations.  And Whiteread’s Memorial is one example of those simple things. I am looking forward to more of her future works. And as any biased and unabashed fan would say,  I heart Whiteread!

Flickr pic originally uploaded by Sarah Kernohan

Location: Judenplatz, Vienna, Austria

Artist: Rachel Whiteread, concrete and steel, 2000

Quoted from Wikipedia:
The outside surfaces of the volume are cast library shelves turned inside out. The spines of the books are facing inwards and are not visible, therefore the titles of the volumes are unknown and the content of the books remains unrevealed. The shelves of the memorial appear to hold endless copies of the same edition, which stand for the vast number of the victims, as well as the concept of Jews as “People of the Book.” The double doors are cast with the panels inside out, and have no doorknobs or handles. They suggest the possibility of coming and going, but do not open.

The memorial represents, in the style of Whiteread’s “empty spaces”… a cultural space of memory and loss created by the genocide of the European Jews. Through the emphasis of void and negative casting rather than positive form and material, it acts as a “counter monument” in this way opposite to the production through history of grandiose and triumphal monumental objects.

As a work of art, the memorial was not intended to be beautiful and as such it contrasts with much of the Baroque art and architecture of Vienna… There is an aspect of discomfort in the monument that was meant to provoke thought in the viewer through the memorial’s severe presence. It was intended to evoke the tragedy and brutality of the Holocaust and in the words of Simon Wiesenthal at the unveiling, “This monument shouldn’t be beautiful, It must hurt.”

flickr pic originally uploaded by chad k

flickr pic originally uploaded by mitue

flickr pic originally uploaded by ShiftOperations

flickr pic originally uploaded by Robert Scarth

flickr pic originally uploaded by shlomp-a-plompa

]]> http://annartist.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/two-steps-backward-statuephilia/ Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:54:01 +0000 annartist http://annartist.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/two-steps-backward-statuephilia/

Outside of the central winding staircase’d space of the British Museum, various contemporary sculptors have placed their work throughout the space in Statuephilia, which accompanies Januszcak’s Channel 4 series ‘The Sculpture Diaries’ currently running on Fridays. He’s on heat for sculpture, and defends it against apparent arch enemy painting in this lousy piece.

As if sculpture needs to go head to head with painting! Closing down the remit of art forms like this doesn’t work with contemporary practice – hasn’t the artful object held up on a pedestal been sufficiently smashed in the past century? No, I’m not going to start talking about Duchamp, the poor sod is sick of his works being churned out in every single piece of writing on art and he needs to be left alone – he’s not responsible for the state of things now. In fact he still looks more modern than anything in Statuephilia.

Even so, the premise of putting contemporary sculpture in the British Museum is great. As a research and inspiration hotspot for artists, its collection of colonial loot traces an important tale of the demolishment of indigenous cultures and stealing of every last flint and earthenware pot. It no doubt says a lot about our glorious British culture.

This dubious grounding nevertheless means that we have a wealth of world history housed under this brilliant ceiling. A totem of western domination, the British Museum is metaphorically comparable to the military base housed alongside Babylon, once the biggest and most advanced city in the world and now the playground of gun-totin’ armies that we have sent in as the world’s policemen.

Yet Statuephelia reduces contemporary sculpture to its most banal and meaningless. The worst offender is Marc Quinn’s golden sculpture of Kate Moss exposing her bits (save a tantalising knicker) in a ridiculous yoga position. Her face is as blank as can be. It’s a neat and literal one liner from this duller than dull artist who once had a lucky moment with Alison Lapper in Trafalgar square.

Yeah yeh just cleaning yep

He proudly declares the relevance of the hideous Kate Moss drivel named ‘Siren’ (surely, as in ‘alarm bells’?) – and claims:

‘Siren is an image that glows and gives out love and light but remains completely implacable and silent.’

Like Moss herself. Yawn. Damien Hirst’s ‘For the Love of God’ looks positively deep and meaningful next to this. Oh what, sorry, I’ve missed the point? That it’s gold, like an idol – and we worship it? It’s still aesthetically horrible. If you follow through the supposed reasoning for this work, it’s bitterly ironic that the gift shop sells t-shirts emblazoned with this drivel. It’s representing Moss whilst mocking our acceptance of a model as a goddess but gets all tangled up in a catch 22.

Yet art can’t be ‘good’ through logical riddle, and shit is still shit. Trust your gut.

I’m all for Januszcak’s sculptural conquest, but it’s a shame that the same old list of safe sculptors are always called upon for these events – Gormley has even put in something everybody was bored of the first time they saw it.

On the bright side, at least there’s no Rachel Whiteread.

Hurrah!

Martin Creed owes me kicks. My twelve-year-old Green Flash have finally expired, and the cheeky conceptual bulb-botherer’s to blame. (Martin, if you’re reading, as I have no doubt you are, these superfeet are just the right side of revolting. C’mon. Make a poor Blonde smile.)

Let me explain. Having failed to give much of a shit about the entries for the 2008 Turner Prize, my schelp to Vauxhall was redeemed by Work No 850. The critical kerfuffling over Creed’s sprinters has obscured the sheer, enervating pleasure they bring to Tate Britain’s squeaky-shoed, headachingly airless halls. They took me right back to the Royal Academy’s 1997 Sensation show, when a certain teenaged Blonde got told off for climbing on Rachel Whiteread’s Untitled (One Hundred Spaces). Sensation my arse.

No 850 may or may not say something about Art, but it says a hell of a lot about running, all of it good. What could be more inspiring than a galloping, glistening, lycra-clad carcass, a neon vessel of relentless, thoughtless, physical force, thundering past the prat talk blurbs and throwing our bereted bleatings off their stride? Some good pieces have been produced about the thrill of the chase, from The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner to Haruki Murakami’s sweetly idiosyncratic recent book, but running’s chief appeal is it’s ability to displace our mental macguffinry with a muscular metronome, to let us swollen-craniumed apes realise just for an hour a day what it feels like to burn from the heart.

Work No 850 makes you want to just do it, as, I believe, someone once said. So my laces have been tied danegrously loose, my iPod sellotaped tight. God speed, Martin Creed: you’ve made me shut up and take flight.

UCLA Department of Art

MFA 2009 Exhibition

October 30-November 13, 2008

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 5:00-8:00 pm

New Wight Gallery: 1100 Broad Art Center Los Angeles, CA 90095

Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 9:00 am – 4:30 pm

Visiting Artists Lecture Series