.
Grimes, "Oblivion" from Visions (4ad, 2012)
Friday, March 9, 2012
Image of the Day
.
George Maciunas, Painting II, ca. 1950s.
On view now through March 31 at the
George Maciunas / Fluxus Foundation Gallery, NYC.
I am simultaneously repelled by this,
and find it interesting.
George Maciunas, Painting II, ca. 1950s. On view now through March 31 at the
George Maciunas / Fluxus Foundation Gallery, NYC.
I am simultaneously repelled by this,
and find it interesting.
The Place We Live
.
Robert Adams, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1969
Robert Adams, Southwest from the South Jetty, Clatsop County, Oregon, 1992
Both showing as part of The Place We Live, an exhibition covering four decades of Robert Adams's photographs of the American West, opening Sunday at LACMA. More info here.
From the press release:
Robert Adams, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1969
Robert Adams, Southwest from the South Jetty, Clatsop County, Oregon, 1992 Both showing as part of The Place We Live, an exhibition covering four decades of Robert Adams's photographs of the American West, opening Sunday at LACMA. More info here.
From the press release:
Since taking up photography in the mid-1960s as a response to the rapidly changing landscape of his native Colorado, Robert Adams has been widely regarded as one of the leading chroniclers of the American West. Edited and sequenced by Adams himself, The Place We Live surveys a career spanning four decades. This unprecedented retrospective features nearly 300 black-and-white photographic prints as well as a selection of the artist's many important photo books. Adams’s work reflects his extended dedication to describing the changing Western landscape, the growth of its built environment and the lives of its inhabitants.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Image of the Day
.
The back of a 1968 photo from the New York Times archive, featured in the NYT's extremely promising new Tumblr, The Lively Morgue.
(thank you Kyle Johnson)
The back of a 1968 photo from the New York Times archive, featured in the NYT's extremely promising new Tumblr, The Lively Morgue.(thank you Kyle Johnson)
Mr. Steidl
.
Trailer for How To Make a Book with Steidl, a documentary on Gerhardt Steidl – arguably the greatest living publisher of exquisite books in the world, and an expansively revered person across multiple creative industries.
Playing in Seattle March 9–15 at Northwest Film Forum.
Trailer for How To Make a Book with Steidl, a documentary on Gerhardt Steidl – arguably the greatest living publisher of exquisite books in the world, and an expansively revered person across multiple creative industries.
Playing in Seattle March 9–15 at Northwest Film Forum.
Fell Sound
.
Mirroring (Tiny Vipers + Grouper) "Fell Sound"
from Foreign Body (2012, Kranky)
(photo: outside the Peter Pilotto show, London, February 2012 | Instagram @strathshepard)
Mirroring (Tiny Vipers + Grouper) "Fell Sound"
from Foreign Body (2012, Kranky)
(photo: outside the Peter Pilotto show, London, February 2012 | Instagram @strathshepard)
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
The Space You Left Behind
.
Memoryhouse "The Kids Were Wrong" from The Slideshow Effect (2012, Sub Pop)
Memoryhouse "The Kids Were Wrong" from The Slideshow Effect (2012, Sub Pop)
Future Present
.
Not that I don't love a lot of this totally wearable collection, but I feel like Manish Arora could be doing a little something more with Paco Rabanne. Just a small criticism and just my opinion...can't be easy to tackle this kind of legacy.
Paco Rabanne Fall 2012 RTW
Then:
Bottom photo:
Donyale Luna (also at top) shot by Richard Avedon
Not that I don't love a lot of this totally wearable collection, but I feel like Manish Arora could be doing a little something more with Paco Rabanne. Just a small criticism and just my opinion...can't be easy to tackle this kind of legacy.
Paco Rabanne Fall 2012 RTWThen:
Bottom photo:Donyale Luna (also at top) shot by Richard Avedon
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Negative Space
.
Joan Mitchell seems to be having a moment lately.
I was lucky to have caught a show of her late paintings at Cheim & Read this past December, the first time I've seen more than a small few of her works together.
Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1992 (detail)
Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1992
It was a fantastic show: huge canvases – I always have a weakness for those – amazing color, and the energy of raw and unapologetic brushstrokes (and their aftermath).
Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers, 1991
Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers, 1990-91
Joan Mitchell, Trees, 1990-91
But what struck me for the first time is how the white space in Mitchell's paintings – so much of it, at the perimeter of the canvas and between the brushstrokes – holds so much power. It's almost as if the pristine nothingness of the canvas underscores the importance of the positive world, and vice versa. In person the white space itself is a beautiful thing to see, strangely feeling like looking into infinity...or so I imagine. It has an intention all of its own.
Joan Mitchell, Merci, 1992
That got me to thinking about how lately I've been so drawn to art that perhaps purposely says nothing, that's empty and sometimes cold – and in that, pure. Almost exactly a year ago, Mary Boone had a show by Terence Koh. I didn't see it in person; I only read about it in the Times (the review was by Roberta Smith, as my favorites tend to be). But for at least two months I couldn't get it out of my head...I literally thought about it constantly. I would sit on the bus and look out the window and just exist in it, like an actual, physical space. Truly, I was obsessed.
As described, the sole performance piece consisted of a mound of salt in the middle of the gallery. Koh, dressed all in white, circled the mound on his knees for all of the hours the gallery was open, over the course of the month-long show, sometimes prostrating himself on the floor for physical relief. (Apparently he put on knee pads after the show had been up for a week to avoid grinding his knees to dust.) A piece that suggests penance, but more than that, to me, pointlessness. I've never considered myself a fan of Terence Koh, but that may have made me one.
Robert Ryman, Twin, 1966
I'm not sure why I'm drawn to that purity and pointlessness and nothingness right now. It's so strange...you want one thing, and the next day comes, and you want another. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my day job is about information...that's ALL I think about, while I'm at work (okay, well, mostly). And maybe it also has something to do with our present-day condition of constant movement and adaptation and the pressure of needing to absorb and navigate an ever-accelerating existence. The void feels like a relief.
Robert Ryman, Surface Veil, 1970-71
Finally, as a postscript, who knows what I would have thought of Koh's piece in person? Roberta Smith had her reservations ('Is it art?'). But her description made it live in my mind as if I had experienced it, and for that reason I can't think of a better example of just how powerful a good piece of art criticism can be.
I also think that it doesn't really matter how I would have responded to the piece in person. Relational aesthetics aside, to me what matters is my own, one-on-one relationship to (with?) something I grasp or feel in an artist's work – whether as a whole, or just a part that resonates – and that relationship alone. Meaning gets created there.
Joan Mitchell, After April, Bernie, 1987
Joan Mitchell seems to be having a moment lately.
I was lucky to have caught a show of her late paintings at Cheim & Read this past December, the first time I've seen more than a small few of her works together.
Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1992 (detail)
Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1992
Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers, 1991
Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers, 1990-91
Joan Mitchell, Trees, 1990-91But what struck me for the first time is how the white space in Mitchell's paintings – so much of it, at the perimeter of the canvas and between the brushstrokes – holds so much power. It's almost as if the pristine nothingness of the canvas underscores the importance of the positive world, and vice versa. In person the white space itself is a beautiful thing to see, strangely feeling like looking into infinity...or so I imagine. It has an intention all of its own.
Joan Mitchell, Merci, 1992That got me to thinking about how lately I've been so drawn to art that perhaps purposely says nothing, that's empty and sometimes cold – and in that, pure. Almost exactly a year ago, Mary Boone had a show by Terence Koh. I didn't see it in person; I only read about it in the Times (the review was by Roberta Smith, as my favorites tend to be). But for at least two months I couldn't get it out of my head...I literally thought about it constantly. I would sit on the bus and look out the window and just exist in it, like an actual, physical space. Truly, I was obsessed.
As described, the sole performance piece consisted of a mound of salt in the middle of the gallery. Koh, dressed all in white, circled the mound on his knees for all of the hours the gallery was open, over the course of the month-long show, sometimes prostrating himself on the floor for physical relief. (Apparently he put on knee pads after the show had been up for a week to avoid grinding his knees to dust.) A piece that suggests penance, but more than that, to me, pointlessness. I've never considered myself a fan of Terence Koh, but that may have made me one.
Robert Ryman, Twin, 1966I'm not sure why I'm drawn to that purity and pointlessness and nothingness right now. It's so strange...you want one thing, and the next day comes, and you want another. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my day job is about information...that's ALL I think about, while I'm at work (okay, well, mostly). And maybe it also has something to do with our present-day condition of constant movement and adaptation and the pressure of needing to absorb and navigate an ever-accelerating existence. The void feels like a relief.
Robert Ryman, Surface Veil, 1970-71Finally, as a postscript, who knows what I would have thought of Koh's piece in person? Roberta Smith had her reservations ('Is it art?'). But her description made it live in my mind as if I had experienced it, and for that reason I can't think of a better example of just how powerful a good piece of art criticism can be.
I also think that it doesn't really matter how I would have responded to the piece in person. Relational aesthetics aside, to me what matters is my own, one-on-one relationship to (with?) something I grasp or feel in an artist's work – whether as a whole, or just a part that resonates – and that relationship alone. Meaning gets created there.
Joan Mitchell, After April, Bernie, 1987Dark and Getting Darker
.
Stefano Pilati's last collection for Yves Saint Laurent.
middle right, above: that jumpsuit
(if that's what it is) is sick.
Yves Saint Laurent Fall 2012 RTW
[click to enlarge]
style.com
Valerio Mezzanotti / The New York Times
Stefano Pilati's last collection for Yves Saint Laurent.
middle right, above: that jumpsuit(if that's what it is) is sick.
Yves Saint Laurent Fall 2012 RTW[click to enlarge]
style.com
Valerio Mezzanotti / The New York TimesMonday, March 5, 2012
Image of the Day
Circa-1969 photo illustration from a publication by Seth Siegelaub. Seth Siegelaub is an independent curator, author, researcher and art dealer who is widely known for his impact on the Conceptual Art movement. In addition to having a gallery in New York in the 1960s and curating outside exhibitions, Siegelaub edited and published books which functioned as exhibitions in and of themselves, thus helping to formulate one of the tenets of the contemporary artists' book.A selection of Siegelaub's books has recently been made available for free PDF download by the online archive Primary Information.
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