“Does my telephone call to New York strengthen my conviction that the earth exists?”
-Wittgenstein

Living in New York (for now), this question puts me under a lot of pressure. To convince people calling me that the earth exists. If they called in a panic? To be an example of groundedness, and so testify to ground, earth, soil… To be so important to them that I make it exist? A source of support, and supported. (Wittgenstein’s point is that there are certain things we take for granted, and he stresses that, even lacking explicit guarantees, we manage to “go on”).
I used to think how insane cellphones were, the possibility of having a conversation while walking. Same with conversations in cars: there’s a movement to a conversation that seems so complicated to maintain if you’re moving through a real landscape too. (What relationship, if any, does this bear to the frustration of talking on a sofa, facing forward like driving? And for another time: Calle’s red phone on the bed (bed art! Rauschenberg etc…) cutting out the middleman between the jangle of the receiver and the lid of the heart when he calls. Also the dream of calling a phone in an abandoned cabin, being able to set the receiver down and have the rings parse out time indefinitely, to listen and have the rings be like sonar to know the shape of the room).
Recently I’ve been thinking about phonecalls on trains; I’m on them (trains) so often lately. It seems important that we consider lengthy cell conversations so rude but don’t mind if friends are traveling together, talking. Why, though? Because we’re curious and want to hear the whole thing? Does the halfness aggravate us like a chord that we want resolved? (Against this, Marshall Mcluhan’s claim that one need only ever read one of two facing pages, that we’re able to deal with blindspots.) Or the unsettlement that s/he – the telephonist – gets to confirm for someone that the earth exists; the unsought voyeurism?

Hey Everyone,

Have I ever mentioned that I hate the internet at Pont-Aven School of Contemorary Art? Well, I do. I am attempting to post several of my favorite artworks from the trip, and…we’ll see how it goes.

Le Centre Pompidou

Marlene Dumas

Eva Hesse

Dorthea Tanning

Jackson Pollock

Georges Rouault (There was an entire Rouault room–I almost peed my pants!)

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Robert Rauschenberg (HELL YES)

This collection of awesome art will be continued….

Until Next Time,

Zoe

jeudi en novembre, immersion dans le projet de la saison e.space generic_arts visuels_2009-10 (publication sous peu), articulée avec la saison e.space generic_films_2009-10 dont le prototype a été publié hier.

ce post comme palier de re-compression, un regard en arrière aussi sur certains de nos derniers posts, le noir avec et dans l’art, puis “cent fleurs” (1) pour Claude Lévi-Strauss”, une suite de résonnances:

avec le noir comme lutte, comme tension vers le visible, et non pas le culte, la sidération (espantamento) vers l’invisible, le noir “une couleur violente mais qui incite à l’intériorisation… quand la lumière s’y reflète, le noir la transforme, la transmute; il ouvre un champ mental qui lui est propre” (1), légitime violence, dont acte.

(1) in Noir lumière, entretiens avec Françoise Jaunin, La Bibliothèque des arts, Lausanne, 2002

voir:

generic, flux: Soulages @ Beaubourg du 20.10.09

&

generic, flux: Philippe Gronon du 24.09.09

…

The black page from Robert Fludd’s Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia, published by Oppenheim (1617), © Courtesy University Library, Vienna

&

Kasimir Malevich, Black Square on a White Ground 1914 – 1915, © State, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Oil on linen, 80×80cm

&

Frank Stella, From Black Series II 1967, © Tate © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2006, Lithograph on paper, 38.1×55.9cm

les trois images précédentes, et la dernière en bas de post, proviennent de l’excellent article (en anglais) de Gabriel Ramin Schor intitule Black Moods, pour Tate Etc, été 2006, voir ici

&

voir aussi le travail de Ad Reinhardt, ici

&

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Glossy Black Painting), ca. 1951, oil and paper on canvas, source

&

Edward Corbett, Untitled (Black Painting), 1950, Oil and enamel on canvas , 60 x 50 inches , San Jose Museum of Art 2005.33.03. Museum purchase with funds provided by the Friends of the Collection, source

…

une pensée ‘railway” pour notre partenaire Joseph Paris @ Kassandre:

Francois Girard, Le Train (1985)

colour videotape, 5:45 minutes on 3/4″ cassette

Le Train is an allegorical story. A railroad worker has arrived at a halt in his life, at the same stopping point as his locomotive – a place situated between memory and imagination where the spectator may integrate himself into the poetic fiction.

source vitale: http://ubu.com/

…

Raymond Bellour un compagnon de Serge Daney pour Trafic, “Le livre des autres“, 1978, un tissage d’entretiens qui demeure un signal généreux, inépuisable et résolument contemporain (au sens d’Agamben), une source repère quotidienne dans l’activité de regardant ayant l’aspiration de donné à voir.

dans cette édition, p.27 – 52, un échange avec Claude Lévi-Strauss qui rend à l’homme son oeuvre et l’Oeuvre à l’Homme…

enfin “cent fleurs” (1) pour C. Lévi-Strauss

Jenny Holzer, Black Garden 1994, Städtische Galerie, Nordhorn, Germany © 2006 Jenny Holzer/ARS, NY and DACS, London

(1) inspiré du titre du livre de Roger Dadoun, “cent fleurs pour Wilhelm Reich” (extraits ici)

Painters Painting by Emile de Antonio (available on itunes) played on IFC a couple of weeks ago and I was reminded of how extraordinary it is.

Send your answers on a postcard to the edge of the earth.

This, being text based, is quite different for me. Im not quite sure where I found the quote originally, it had been cut out and was lying on the floor, face down, like the rest of my life. 

« Le récit met les corps en pièces, satisfaisant la nécessité de les réifier, de les instrumentaliser. » (Catherine Millet)

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Gelée Blanche

- Occuper l'interstice entre l'art et la vie -

C’est une chose que je devrais garder à l’esprit chaque fois que, éprise d’un livre – ou d’un film – je me réjouis d’avance du plaisir que je vais prendre à en rédiger le commentaire, qu’aucun texte n’est plus difficile à écrire ni, une fois achevé, plus décevant, que celui qu’alimente une passion vive pour son objet. Et d’abord, malgré le lieu commun selon lequel on n’écrit bien que sur ce que l’on aime, l’émotion est moins bonne inspiratrice que son contraire, le détachement. En y réfléchissant, il n’est même pas nécessaire de les opposer : l’émotion, quelle que soit son intensité, est l’amorce d’un mouvement vers l’extérieur. Y succomber c’est manquer de voir, en réalité, son angle le plus puissant. Entre elle et soi, il n’y a qu’un pas – littéralement – ce pas étant aussi la condition du spectacle. Ce dédoublement, qu’il ne faut pas confondre avec sa variante pathologique, la dissociation, accroît mécaniquement le plaisir. Mais je note un fait étrange, qui me ramène à ma première constatation : le spectacle s’achève toujours avec la disparition du spectateur, et le départ feutré des témoins ; ensuite, nulle trace de rien. Aussi ces séances, pour être ravivées, ont-elles recours à la mémoire qui, comme on le sait, se contente de réinventer l’émotion à partir des faits dont elle dispose. L’instant aboli reflue dans un simulacre souvent grotesque, que l’on peut certes par défaut chérir misérablement. Mais comment, sur une base aussi dégradée, prétendre à quelque intensité que ce soit dans l’écriture ? La réponse est évidente, bien qu’inavouable : en ne cherchant pas la vérité. En produisant des artéfacts sur lesquels on ne se fait pas d’illusions, si ce n’est en leur prêtant, par un transfert un peu lâche, le même pouvoir  émotionnel que la réalité qu’ils remplacent. C’est sur cet écueil que s’échoue la volonté de donner du sens, dans un premier temps. En effet, tel le joyau d’un minerai sans éclat, je peux considérer que le sens finit par sourdre de ces altérations successives. Démonstration par mon propre exemple. Il se trouve que je peux me regarder sentir mais difficilement me sentir regardée.  D’un côté j’aiguise mes sens en les augmentant de ceux qui leur font défaut dans l’activité qui les mobilise, de l’autre, la conscience du regard d’autrui m’alarme, me repousse tout au fond de moi comme au fond d’un terrier, dont je referme aussitôt l’ouverture pour regagner la solitude de mes galeries obscures. L’alternative étant :  faire diversion, fabriquer à la minute un personnage et l’offrir en spectacle à l’œil inquisiteur (qui ne tarde pas à se fatiguer de cette mise en scène volontairement outrée). Cette parade a de loin ma préférence en ce qu’elle présente l’avantage de dissimuler l’entrée du terrier, pourvu que j’en aie l’énergie au moment voulu. Mes avatars  me surprennent ; vient un moment où nous devenons fort nombreuses – quel vertige ! De ce groupe, alors, je me retire. Prenant de la distance, je les regarde. Elles me semblent, à un ou deux détails près (invisibles à l’œil inattentif), complètes, ce sont des surfaces mobiles qui s’emboîtent, et d’ailleurs elles se raccordent les unes aux autres. Bien sûr je n’en perçois plus les détails mais je les vois se rapprocher, s’ajuster, avec précision, et fusionner. Instable et constamment modifiée, cette synthèse me révèle pourtant une ampleur de la  réalité que nul agrandissement, nulle concentration, n’auraient pu me signaler. A ce poste sensible, on l’a deviné, je ne m’attarderai pas. Depuis longtemps je suis repartie – à bonne distance. De ce processus rejaillit le sens dont je parlais, non pas d’un point fixe déterminé (idéalisme ou matérialisme), mais du mouvement complet, incessant, vertigineux qui va de réel à sa reconstruction.

***

Les textes et poèmes regroupés dans la catégorie Fractions (fragments de fiction), sont des travaux personnels compris dans un projet plus vaste qui se développe en dehors du blog.

Pandora’s Box Part 1

In treating any disease it is important to identify the problem at its root. It is also important to find classic cases of the problem to illustrate clearly the results of the disease. Some of the cases here are not pretty and might be offensive. It will take some courage to follow me through the following series of articles as we investigate the nature of Postmodern Art. Fortunately the cure for this type of disease exists but, as with all treatments, we will have to act to eradicate this plague from our world. Come with me as we enter into the aftermath of the Greek daughter’s blunder…

There are two versions of the legend of Pandora’s Box. One version tells us that the box contained all kinds of misery. When Pandora opened the box a plague dispersed and doomed humanity to suffer ruin, insanity, and despair. She hastily closed the box to stop the plague but, pathetically, only Hope remained inside. In the other version the box held all of humanity’s glories. When she opened the box progress, knowledge, and exaltation vanished into oblivion, forever lost to humanity.

Today, in the here and now, both versions of the legend of Pandora’s Box are tragically true.

Our civilization’s humanities, the branches of knowledge such as philosophy and art, have contracted Postmodernism. In the contemporary arts it has spread like an unchecked virus, literally and figuratively defacing painting and sculpture beyond recognition.

Let us examine a few of Postmodernism’s sorriest growths.

Erased De Kooning, 1953

“It wasn’t easy, by any means. The drawing was done with a hard line, and it was greasy too, so I had to work very hard on it, using every sort of eraser.”

Documented by modern art historians and considered a historically significant piece is Erased De Kooning, 1953, by Rauschenberg. He was given a drawing by one of America’s leading Abstract Expressionists, De Kooning. He then erased the De Kooning image, signed it himself and exhibited the artwork as his own. In an interview with art critic Calvin Tomkins, Rauschenberg said:

“I had been working for some time at erasing, with the idea that I wanted to create a work of art by that method. Not just by deleting certain lines, you understand, but by erasing the whole thing. Using my own work wasn’t satisfactory . . . I realized that it had to be something by someone who everybody agreed was great, and the most logical person for that was de Kooning. . . . finally he gave me a drawing, and I took it home. It wasn’t easy, by any means. The drawing was done with a hard line, and it was greasy too, so I had to work very hard on it, using every sort of eraser. But in the end it really worked. I liked the result. I felt it was a legitimate work of art, created by the technique of erasing.”

Erased De Kooning, 1953 established a historical precedent that the destruction of an artwork is important aesthetically. Generally, it marked a place in the postmodern continuum in which the theme of shock is an absolute good.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Umbrellas

“But there is one quality [that artists] have never used, and that is the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last.”

Or is it a quality of nihilism on an epic scale?

Jeanne-Claude comments: “…Throughout the millenniums, for 5000 years, artists of the past have tried to input into their works of art a variety of different qualities.  They have used different materials, marble, stone, bronze, wood, paint.  They have created abstract images, figurative images, religious images, profane.  They have tried to do bigger, smaller, a lot of different qualities.  But there is one quality they have never used, and that is the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last.  For instance, we have love and tenderness for childhood because we know it will not last.  We have love and tenderness for our own life because we know it will not last.  That quality of love and tenderness, we wish to donate it, endow our work with it as an additional aesthetic quality…”

This sentiment sounds poetic and beautiful but think about what it means as an aesthetic practice: Beethoven conducting the 9th for one performance and then destroying the score; Michelangelo pulverizing the newly completed David; or Hugo laying waste to the Les Misérables manuscript on a Guernsey shore.

Imagine creating a 26 million-dollar project with tons of enthusiastic support and then wiping it off the face of the planet. Christo comments that their  “work is a scream of freedom.” I don’t know about freedom, but I see an end result that holds a statement of nihilism on an epic scale. Actually, the piece could be called Beyond Nihilism because what was left was not nothing but an absence of what was there before.

Incidentally, this project spectacularly illustrates several of Kant’s aesthetic concepts of the sublime: mathematical enormity, the formlessness of the final outcome, mass acceptance, and the violation of our ability to comprehend the total. I will discuss more of Kant’s aesthetics in Pandora’s Box Part III.

McCarthy, Sailor’s Meat

Self portrait of the artist during a performance piece.

McCarthy is captured on a video which documents his performance piece, Sailor’s Meat, 1975. The video lasts about an hour and shows the naked artist flagellating, raping, and gagging himself with hotdogs. The particular aspect of this piece to note is that he is actually doing these things to himself; it is real life, in contrast to say the art of acting. McCarthy on his subjects and peeve with Disney: “Maybe it is a conditioned response: we’re taught to be disgusted by our fluids. Maybe it’s related to a fear of death. Body fluids are base material. Disneyland is so clean; hygiene is the religion of fascism. The body sack, the sack you don’t enter, it’s taboo to enter the sack. Fear of sex and the loss of control; visceral goo, waddle, waddle.”

Postmodernists have been praised for their ability to push the boundaries. To a figurative painter/sculptor and to a postmodern artist, pushing the boundaries means two completely opposite things: to a figurative artist it means to advance art by creating new developments that add to the long line of accomplished artists through history. To a postmodern artist it means to shock us even if that involves destroying the very nature of art; if it is a painting, let’s knife it; if it is the artist’s hand, let’s cut it off. Aptly, McCarthy, in another performance piece has stylistically enacted these concepts.

“To a figurative painter/sculptor and to postmodern artist, pushing the boundaries means two completely opposite things: to a figurative artist it means to advance art by creating new developments that add to the long line of accomplished artists through history. To a postmodern artist it means to shock us even if that involves destroying the very nature of art…”

Related to McCarthy in spirit are a host of postmodern artists, such as Chris Burden, who literally crucified himself to a car. The gross nature of these postmodern artists and their desperate need to affect us negatively is again a clear indication of the premise of shock as the standard of postmodern art, even if it is suicidal.

Some of you might consider these projects as harmless jokes or examples of insanity. But the facts are that these postmodern artists have devoted their entire careers to making exactly these kinds of works and that the highest reaches of the art establishment esteem them.

Continuing our diagnosis let us take an inventory of the significant postmodern standards we have uncovered:

A theme of shock is present in all these variations of postmodern art. Destruction of artwork is applauded. The use of methodical planning and mass voluntary help towards the outcome of tremendous financial waste that ultimately results in absence. Real-life debasement and violence are postmodern art forms. The postmodern art community rewards expressions of suicidal tendencies for the cause of art.

What does the combination of shock, destruction of art, methodical planning, financial and material waste, and suicidal participants remind you of? September 11 or bin Laden perhaps?

By these standards, could not the destruction of the World Trade Center be the most brilliant example of the furthest reaches of what is possible to a postmodernist? The enormity of that project is gigantic: the methodical planning, the support of volunteers, the huge waste of money, the real violence of the act, and the end result of nihilism on scale that would make Christo jealous, Hitler smile, and poor Pandora freak out. Beyond obliteration the consequential absence of the Twin Towers could be viewed as the crowning glory of postmodern art. If bin Laden claimed to be an artist, he could be hailed as the greatest postmodern artist since Marcel Duchamp.

***

In Pandora’s Box Part II, I will discuss postmodern art education and motives.

Michael Newberry
Originally published in the Free Radical, 2002, revised in New York, 2006

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Plastic Bottles

I  just stumbled upon photographer Chris Jordan’s website. I saw his  work at a gallery in a Los Angeles a year or two ago. I love his photographs. You can stare at them forever. I think Jordan’s photographs make a very interesting statement on consumerism is the United States.  His work is very popular with celebrities and the prints sell out very quickly.

See some more of his work below. I included some work not yet posted on his website, along with some zoomed-in pieces of the work.

Cardboard

“Chris Jordan is an artist based in Seattle, Washington who is best known for his large scale works depicting consumerism in the United States.

Many of his works are created from photographs of garbage, a serendipitous technique which started when he visited an industrial yard to look at patterns of color and order. His industrious passion for conservation and awareness has brought much attention to his photography in recent years. Jordan uses everyday commonalities such as a plastic cup and defines the blind unawareness involved in American consumerism. His work, while often unsettling, is a bold message about unconscious behaviors in our everyday lives, leaving it to the viewer to draw conclusions about the inevitable consequences which will arise from our habits^.”

Perhaps Chris Jordan was inspired by one of my favorite artists–Robert Rauschenberg. Trash can be art.

I just got back from a trip to the MOCA (Grand), one of my favorite Los Angeles museums.  I was so happy to see that the museum was crowded (granted, they were all tourists–but yay, money for the museum!)

There were two sections of the exhibit–Collecting History: Highlighting Recent Acquisitions, and A Changing Ratio: Paintings and Sculpture from the Collection.  A Changing Ratio includes the work of  ” Lynda Benglis, Donald Judd, Franz Kline, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol, among others.

I was disappointed by a lot of the work in the Recent Acquisitions section, but loved the Changing Ratio exhibit.  The best part? They let me take photos!

My friend and I went on a guided tour with Bonnie Porter, a MOCA educator. She was lovely. We had indepth dialogues about a lot of the pieces–including work by Pollock, Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg (my favorite!).  I loved Ms. Porter’s story on Rauschenberg’s visit  at the opening of his  MOCA exhibit a few years ago. She referred to him as “Bob”.

I learned a lot about Rothko.  And, Ms. Porter didn’t know about the Rothko in Cooper’s office on Mad Men, so I filled her in.  She filled me in on why he painted the same thing over and over again with different colors.  Apparently, he really liked to play with how the eyes worked, and how people saw different colors in his work. Next time you’re near a Rothko. Really look at it. Try to figure out which color is coming out at you–in the foreground. Then focus  your eyes on the space when two colors meet. Does that change your perspective?  The longer you look, the more you will see.

We also spent a long time studying Donald Judd’s sculptures.  Ms.  Porter said his intention was to get the viewer to understand space. As you move around his sculptures, your eyes calculate space differently.

And finally, Rauschenberg, we studied one of his work called “Interview” for a good 10 minutes.  We talked about why he called the piece that. In an interview, the person being interviewed often reveals, yet  hides different elements when someone asks him/her questions.

Below are some photos I took.  If you haven’t been to the MOCA recently, now is the perfect time to go!

La mostra che vede coinvoli circa 45 artisti provenienti da tutto il mondo, si tiene a Palazzo Franchetti a Venezia. La tematica centrale è il vetro e le sue spettacolarità. La sua capacita di attrarre e giocare con la luce, di coinvolgere di mantenersi nel tempo. Di rendersi utile e duttile alla finalità artistica, all’esperienza alla ricerca. Sono innumerevoli le opere presenti in questa mostra, quasi impossibile ricordarle tutte. Siamo sicuri che non molto vi rimarrà impresso o forse tutto, dipende dalla vostra capacità di dialogare con il vetro. Solo per citarne alcuni dei presenti vi sono: Mona Hatoum, Cragg, Arp, Arman,Rauschenberg, Chen Zen, Buren,Albers, Ray, Jodice e Kosuth, ripeto sono solo alcuni dei partecipanti. Ci sono poi molte novità, e artisti Italiani. E’ sicuramente qualcosa di nuovo che può incuriosire molto.

Glass Stress
a cura di Rosa Barovier Mentasti e Laura Mattioli Rossi
Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere e arti – Palazzo Franchetti
San Marco, 2945 (Campo Santo Stefano) – 30124 Venezia
Orario: tutti i giorni ore 10-18
Ingresso: € 5

Fino al 22 novembre!

Erased head Georges Melki article [Dessins/Machine 2003-2009]

Wer schon gerade in Venedig ist, um sich die Biennale anzusehen – sollte auch dem Guggenheim einen Besuch abstatten. Dort sind nämlich auch Spitzenwerke zu sehen:

Bis Mitte September wird noch die Ausstellung „Gluts. The American artist and the poetic side of objects“ mit Werken von Robert Rauschenberg gezeigt. Ungefähr 40 Skulpturen wurden aus privaten und öffentlichen Sammlungen, vor allem aus den USA, ausgewählt.

Rauschenberg (1925-2008) Maler, Grafiker, Fotograf und Objektkünstler wurde in den 50er Jahre bekannt mit seine „Combines“ – Kunstwerke, die Malerei und Objektkunst miteinander verbinden.

Robert_Rauschenberg's_untitled_'combine',_1963

Damit hat Rauschenberg Genregrenzen durchbrochen. Während er sich in den 70er Jahren vor allem mit Papier, Pappe, Stoffen und anderen natürlichen Materialien auseinandersetzte, waren es in den 80er Jahren unterschiedliche Metalle. Die Serie „Gluts“ an der er zwischen 1986 und 1995 arbeitete, besteht aus Hochreliefs und Skulpturen, die auf unterschiedliche Art und Weise die visuellen Eigenschaften von Metall reflektieren. Die verarbeiteten Objekte sind „objets trouvé“, gröβtenteils Industriemüll, den Rauschenberg an unter anderem an Tankstellen und auf Autofriedhöfen gefunden hat. „Glut“ heiβt soviel wie Überfluss oder Überschwemmung und bezieht sich kritisch auf die Herkunft seiner Objekte.  Persönlich gefallen mir die „Gluts“ etwas besser als die „Combines“, da Sie doch eine ganz andere Sensibilität des Künstlers bei Umgang mit dem Material zeigen.

Ein Rauschenberg in Berlin

Auβerdem wird anlässlich des 100. Jubiläums der Erscheinung des „Manifest des Futurismus“ von Marinetti in Paris, bis Ende diesen Jahres die Ausstellung „Masterpieces of futurism” gezeigt.

Der “Torre”, ein stählerner Turm des belgischen Künstlers Wim Delvoye ist noch bis zum November diesen Jahres auf der Terrasse des Palazzo Venier dei Leonie zu sehen sein.

Rauschenberg may have set the standard, but he is not the only artist to turn trash into art successfully. Meet Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

“Some of their notable pieces are made from piles of rubbish collected from London streets. A light is projected against the pile, and the shadow on the wall creates an entirely different image, typically one of the couple themselves: this is not at all apparent from looking directly at the pile.”-Wikipedia

Thanks again to stumble upon!

Hi ladies,

I was reading the chapter on Robert Rauschenberg in The Bride and the Bachelors – Five Masters of the Avant-Garde by Calvin Tomkins yesterday. These paragraphs stood out for me, and I thought I’d share:

In the early 1960s Rauschenberg began to notice that more and more collage was turning up in the art galleries – work in which the collage technique was the whole point rather than just a means to an end. This disturbed him and gave impetus to an urge he had been feeling for some time to paint “flat”. A large 1962 canvas called Ace showed the transition; it was basically a flat painting, whose relatively few collage elements were easliy absorbed into the composition. After Ace, Rauschenberg abandoned collage altogether and turned to silk-screen painting, which he adpated (freely to say the least) from commercial art. The images he wanted he took from magazines, newspapers, and such sources, and he had a commercial firm transfer them by a photographic process – in any size he ordered – to silk screens. Then, placing a screen over a canvas, he poured paint over it and forced the paint through the porous silk design with a squeegee. Next he worked directly on the surface of the canvas with brush, palette knife, fingers, turpentine-soaked rags, or anything else.

..snip..

The new technique has not made painting any less of an adventure for him. “It’s as much like Christmas for me as using objects I pick up in the street,” he said one day in 1963, to a visitor who had dropped in at his loft studio on lower Broadway to watch him work. “There’s that same quality of surprise and freshness that I have when using objects. When I get the screens back from the manufacturer the images on the look different from the way they did in the original photographs, because of the change in scale, so that’s one surprise right there. Then, they look different again when I transfer them to canvas, so there’s another surprise. And they keep on suggesting different things when they’re juxtaposed with other images on the canvas, so there’s the same kind of interaction that goes on in the combines and the same possibilities of collaboration and discovery.”

xm

Art and life are the same.

I’m currently astounded watching a recent movie, far, far more mainstream than my usual watch. New in Town, while not “my kind of movie,” has a narrative that illustrates the past five months of my life far, far, too spot on. (But with chuckles added. Okay, Babs, start chuckling.)

But with comedy. And cute actors. And laughs. 

What? Laughs in the colorizations of my every moment of painful being in a new town since time of 2009 began?

You betcha.

And. Why didn’t I think of Katrina and The Waves

as late as a week ago when the trees were still bare here in Minnesota, er, Helena, Montana?

Here’s to you, Aristotle.

In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg displayed the now-cherished Erased de Kooning Drawing. The piece is now in the collection at SF MOMA. The artist, long a fan of de Kooning’s work, had been playing with erased drawings in his private explorations. However, the explorations didn’t have the impact or significance that he was looking for. He wanted the piece to start out as “art” in order for it to stay that way after erasure. The result was an amazing statement. Here is the piece:

Here’s the story from Rauschenberg himself:

Art Critic Vincent Katz offers this great insight about the work:

Thinking a lot about Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), I realized that one of the things it is about is minimizing the subject, indicating that the removal of one subject can allow for the appearance of another. The things that go undiscussed in conversation are in some way equivalent to those that are talked about; what we did manage to discuss was just as important as what was left out.

I really think that gets to the heart of it.

That leads me to another gent working in a different medium, and although he’s not using de Kooning as his starting point, the work carries the same message.

Denis Knopf has a collection of “booty dance” videos on his YouTube channel where he has carefully removed the subjects. Brilliant. I love it. As Katz says above — “the removal of one subject can allow for the appearance of another.” We see something different in the videos without the girls dancing. The barest hint of artifacting from the removal is the only thing that remains. It’s fascinating.

Here is an example:

And the original:

I think it’s interesting to see how people are using this social media video channel to create new and engaging work. I blogged earlier about Kutiman’s brilliant music project. Knopf’s work makes me think in a similar way that Kutiman’s does. There is so much promise in this space.

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Robert Rauschenberg. This artist used silkscreen printing a lot, mostly the photographic film. This was done by combining usual silkscreen methods but with a photographic film over the top instead of a paper template. The usual method works by printing ink through a screen and on to a surface. Between the two is a template which is usually cut out of, working as a negative printing technique, the area which is cut-out is where the ink will eventually rest. Essentially the template blocks the ink from getting to the surface. With photographic silkscreen printing, the method works by missing out of the the template and instead exposing the screen to a photo after a thin film has been lain over the screen.

It was most commonly used in the pop art movement with artists drawing inspiration from the world around them, depicting real scenes. Andy Warhol was also a huge fan of the photographic printmaking method.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember the artist that Jenny told us about in the talk, or I may have been cleaning out a screen at the time, but I want to talk about lithography anyway as it really interests me. The intricate detail is probably the biggest selling factor for me, its slightly photographic without losing all the personalness by getting all the way there. Lithography is a technique which uses a flat stone which is worked on to with arabic gum or a wax crayon, this is a positive image which is produced so where is drawn onto is what is printed. The stone is then covered in water, only the wax oil based part remains unwet as oil and water do not mix. Ink is then dripped onto the stone and the area which is covered in wax is revealed as the ink colour as the oil based materials mix, the water drags the oil away and is left bare. The stone is then used to print onto surfaces. A photographic film can be placed on the stone to get a completely photographic lithograph, this works in a similar way to the screen process where the film covered stone is exposed to a photograph. Rauschenberg, along with other artist including Hockney, Johns and Picasso used this technique a lot in their work.

A tre anni dalla sua scomparsa una monografia curata da Fabrizio D’Amico invita a rileggere l’opera di Mimmo Rotella

di Simona Maggiorelli

La reazione all’informale alla sua furia iconoclasta e nihilista, sfociata nel “suicidio” di artisti come Pollock, negli anni Sessanta fu fortissima.Ma se l’arte povera cercò una via di uscita da quel caos attraverso un nuovo e più intimo rapporto con la realtà, la pop art annullò ogni tormento con l’euforia di immagini cartellonistiche e piatte. Sulla lacerazione non sanata e non ricomposta di Rothko, di Stella e degli artisti che animarono la cosiddetta scuola di New York, Warhol e compagni stesero una mano di sgargiante vernice: Marylin in serigrafia accanto a una gigantografia di una lattina di zuppa; frammenti di realtà quotidiana riprodotti in una cartellonistica seriale. Con la pop art l’immagine si fa piatta e indifferente. Ma se la Biennale di Venezia  del 1964 segnò anche in Europa l’affermazione del pensiero unico di Warhol, con una profusione di opere che isolano oggetti e merci per farne dei feticci, delle icone, dei totem, il filone italiano che ne fu più influenzato non può essere ascritto tout court a quella tendenza di riduzione al grado zero della creatività.

Pensiamo, in questo caso, all’opera di un artista come Mimmo Rotella che – a tre anni dalla sua scomparsa- una monografia curata da Fabrizio D’Amico (Rotella, disegni, Umberto Allemandi editore) invita a rileggere, prestando particolare attenzione alla sua ricca attività di disegnatore.

Accanto all’immagine più nota dell’artista romano, fantasioso compositore di quadri con la tecnica del décollage, emerge così anche un suo tratto più intimo che si esprime in tavole colorate di vaga ispirazione picassiana e in disegni e bozzetti: nel corso del tempo, via via sempre più stilizzati, specie quando si tratta di ritratti di persone e nudi di donna. Con tutta evidenza, già negli anni Settanta, Rotella era del tutto fuori dalla celebrazione del trionfo della merce tipica di Lichtenstein, Johns, Dine, per quanto ironica fosse verso i meccanismi del consumismo e della società di massa.

Dopo l’informale e l’insana vertigine di una perdita totale del rapporto con la realtà, la strada scelta da Rotella non sarà quella di riprodurla anche se in termini polemici e corrosivi. Se qualcosa mutua dall’arte americana è piuttosto lo stile combinatorio del new dada alla Rauschenberg. Ma anche in questo caso il suo riuso di lacerti di realtà, cartelloni strappati e locandine del cinema, non mira banalmente allo scenografico. Quelle immagini rovinate e strappate diventano per Rotella il vocabolario con cui creare un sua visione del mondo. «Per strada mi colpirono alcuni muri tappezzati di affissi lacerati- raccontava lui stesso-. Mi affascinavano letteralmente, anche perché pensavo allora che la pittura era finita e che bisognava scoprire qualcosa di nuovo, di vivo e di attuale. Sicché la sera cominciavo a lacerare questi manifesti, a strapparli dai muri e li portavo a studio… componendoli in immagini nuove».

da left Avvenimenti 24 aprile 2009

Robert Rauschenberg, Art Car, 1986 - BMW 635 CSi

BMW racing driver Hervé Poulain had a crazy idea back in 1975. He wanted to invite an artist to use his car as canvas. American artist Alexander Calder obliged and was the first of 16 in the BMW Art Car project. The cars have been on display in Munich’s BMW museum, but are currently travelling to North America with 4 of their finest. Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg (above) will be on display at New York’s Grand Central Terminal from March 24 until April 6 and then on to three locations in Mexico.

Also on display is Robin Rhode’s” Expression of Joy” project – BMW as paint brush. He installed a set of paint squirters on a 2010 BMW Z4  and set it in motion on canvas. Watch the video!

via:  BMW & yatzer

January 2009 Group Show at the Elaine Fleck Gallery  mandalized (w. Rauschenberg).