My Work As A Surrogate For Me

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John Baldessari: Heel, 1986

John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, an excellent-looking retrospective of the 79 year-old artist's work, recently opened and runs through January 9th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here's a great video on Baldessari, produced by the Tate Modern, who put the exhibition together with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art:


Get info and see more images at metmuseum.org, and read a great review of John Baldessari: Pure Beauty by Roberta Smith at the New York Times.

A Bullet and a Target

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The last couple of years that we lived in New York my office was just two blocks away from MoMA, and I took advantage of the proximity by signing up for art history classes that met in the museum galleries after hours. It was a great way to escape the stress of my job, and wandering around the deserted museum at night remains among my favorite NYC memories. Anyway, I had an instructor there who introduced me to UbuWeb, an online treasure trove of avant-garde and outsider art, including music, video, performance, and documentaries. It's easy to get lost and spend hours on the site...in fact, that's exactly what I did yesterday, and I'm back to share a few souvenirs.

The images above are street posters from the site's outsider art section (click to enlarge).

Here is the Cars' NSFW "Hello Again" video, directed by Andy Warhol:



And here's film footage of William Burroughs making his "shotgun paintings" somewhere in Kansas. After the film turns upside down at about 2 minutes it gets distinctly less interesting but the first couple of minutes are worth a look (could the outfit be any better?):



An excerpt from an interview with Burroughs about the paintings can also be found here.

There's lots more interesting and/or weird stuff to dig up on the site – documentaries on John Baldessari and James Turrell; Fluxus films by the likes of Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, and Nam June Paik; videos by Ryan Trecartin; Shipwreck Radio, a record created by Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter while intentionally marooned on an island north of Norway; and Images du Monde Visionnaire ("an educational film by Henri Michaux and Eric Duvivier which was produced in 1963 by the film department of Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz (best known for synthesizing LSD in 1938) in order to demonstrate the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline and hashish") are just the tip of the iceberg.

It can all be found at ubu.com (and New York readers can browse and register for MoMA courses here).

And

I've just returned from a few days in ice-cold NYC for some client meetings, so most of this week's posts will be on the stuff I ran across during that brief whirlwind. Here are some photos to kick it off…

Marlene Dumas from her current show Measuring Your Own Grave at MoMA

Swoon in Chelsea

Birds in Bryant Park that reminded me of Littlejeans, both because they look like him, and because he used to stare at this particular fun-size species out the window and think murderous thoughts.

A little garbage rabbit, 22nd Street, Chelsea

53rd Street, Midtown

27th Street, Chelsea

People on 10th Avenue watching news of the crash landing in the Hudson.

My brother outside of Jones, where we had brunch before I left. They were playing the Cave Singers and Dead Moon as we sipped bloody marias and ate our sausage, eggs and grits at the counter. Seemed like a good way to end the trip.

…and here's what I came back to:


I will love and miss New York forever, but I'll be back a lot.
And Seattle? When it's sunny out? Absolutely stunning.

John Baldessari, Goya Series: And, 1997,
from Artist's Choice + Vik Muniz = Rebus at MoMA