random

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“Bruce Nauman, the Sam Shepherd of Contemporary Art” - Francesco Bonami. What are some other examples of this? I know I’ve read them but can’t recall any.

Peter Schjeldahl "motherfucker"! - in comments responding to Geoff Dyer.

retard roundup:
1. Chris Sharp, 2/11/08, for Flash Art - reviews Joe Bradley, Dan Colen responds in comments... discussed on anaba 11/10/08 and 1/05/09 (many great comments).
2. Charlie Finch, 12/11/08, for Artnet - on Marlene Dumas' retarded references.
3. Jerry Saltz, 1/09, for NYMag and Artnet - on going "full retard"
4. Chris Sharp again, 4/28/09, for ArtReview - staking his claim to the retard mantle, mentions Justin Lieberman, Joe Bradley, Dan Colen, Josh Smith.... Justin Lieberman responds in comments.

John Haber on Marlene Dumas, on Saltz' Facebook - "I'm gratified that so many people I like to read are so uniform in dumping on this utter garbage and leave it at that".
John Haber on Dumas, for Haber's Art Reviews.

Jerry Saltz on Marlene Dumas at MoMA

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"MoMA's dreary Marlene Dumas show establishes that she is a sensationalist with no original ideas about painting, color, or photography; she hasn't developed as an artist; is merely a later day Neo-Expresionist; is more connected to Andreas Serrano than to any painter." - Jerry Saltz on Marlene Dumas, on Facebook, 1/3/09.

WOW! That's it?? A facebook note after fifteen years of random sideswipes? Dude, she has a solo show on your home turf, at the freaking MoMA... this was really put-up or shut-up time.

Some great comments in response to the note -

"Well, Jerry, I have noticed that you've been complaining about her for years, is there a full review underway? If not it's time to let go of this thing with her..." - Joe Fyfe

"It appears you're simply writing "dreary" to avoid dealing with Dark." - Joy Garnett

"I find it fascinating how uniformly critics and New Yorkers (yeah, and me) have hated this show, even Peter Schjeldahl, who I'd have guesed would have found the personality to his liking" - John Haber

John Haber is wrong... Peter Schjeldahl reviewed the show positively. Roberta Smith did not hate the show either.

"I'm gratified that so many people I like to read are so uniform in dumping on this utter garbage and leave it at that" - John Haber... I mean John Hater!! haha.

Charlie Finch dumps, and even uses the word "retarded" to describe the show, apparently trying to glom some of the attention Chris Sharp got for his Joe Bradley review.

MISC

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Chris Sharp on Joe Bradley, at Canada - "it doesn’t get much more retarded than this". Dan Colen responds at disjointed length in comments, Dan is seriously hung up on the word "chortle". Dan is OFFENDED, which is fairly hilarious.

RELATED: Artloversnewyork photos from the opening. The Rothko Chapel. Seeing a crucifix at the Rothko Chapel. Jerry Saltz on Dan Colen and Nate Lowman at Maccarone.


Hannelore Baron, Untitled, 1985, from s(election), at Gallery Schlesinger, through November 29th.

RELATED: the flag in art.

Cora Cohen, at Michael Steinberg, on Artcritical.

MORATORIUM EXTENSION ALERT!!! Roberta Smith on photography based painting - "as art formulas go, nothing beats paintings based on photographs".... "it is something of an art-world plague". JUST in Time! The Jerry Saltz call for a four-year moratorium on photography based painting expired this year! I can't wait for the Marlene Dumas reviews!

Hey, every Martha Rosler review starts out with the "conscious decision" made to place a quarter in the turnstile and enter the show... am I the only one that tried to push the thing without putting a quarter in? Guess what, you didn't need to put a quarter in to make the thing turn.

I thought that show was a snooze...

ATTENTION! Nick Kuszyk is not Banksy! Nick's nickers are in a twist... the photographer has posted a response including Nick's e-mail to him. What is the big deal/surprise that somebody publicly making public art might get photographed, especially if it is the art of an (over-rated) superstar, and especially if a big part of his schtick is his "anonymity". Duh, he is courting that attention.

(and i like street art)

MORE ON THE MYSTERIOUS and SENSITIVE NICK! -


THIS IS MY FAVORITE KUZSYK... CliCK HeRE!

Nick Kuszyk curated an awesome show at McCaig-Wells!


This is the kitchen of my friend and I got her hooked on Nick Kuszyk and now she is OUT OF CONTROL. this is only one side of the kitchen.


Nick + Kai!!!!

miscellaneous stuff noted

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Christopher Knight, on Marlene Dumas, for the LATimes - "The earliest painting dates from 1984, when Dumas, then 32, picked up a brush again after a five-year hiatus"

Another (female) artist who stopped for a while, and came back strong. Agnes Martin stopped for seven years, Emily Carr stopped for fifteen years.

I once attended a lecture at which Jerry Saltz advised if you don't work for a year, you are maybe a year better, but if you don't work for two maybe you are not an artist (that is not an exact quote).

Dorothy Spears, on Steven Parrino, for the NYTimes - "In eight years and five solo New York shows, his former dealer José Freire said, he sold only two of Mr. Parrino’s paintings, one for $9,000 and the other for $10,000"

I'm always curious how artists support themselves, especially those that are living in super-expensive NYC. What was Parrino doing for money?

RELATED: a job, PLUS... what is your job - anaba post asking artists about jobs, recent Winkleman post on jobs and something (in comments) about not supposed to be having one, somehow. Lost me.

Greg Allen pining for the supposed days when "an energetic young painter would declare his presence with a work three or six years in the making, not three months"... wtf?

Chris Ashley posted a Bruce Conner video in memory and tribute to the recently deceased artist, and the next day received a comment from his widow's lawyer requesting and demanding it's removal. Again, WTF. This is the artist who cobbled together films from other filmmaker's footage, right? The artist known for bucking expectations, rules, and regulated behavior?

I'm reading a Thomas Disch book - The M.D. - after learning of him (and his recent suicide) on Eric Gelber and Tom Moody's blogs... it's good. Tom Moody is great for book and movie recommendations.

Marlene Dumas Tally Reaches Fever Pitch

Someone left an anonymous comment yesterday morning (thanks!) noting that anaba is mentioned in this week's NYTimes Magazine... a Deborah Solomon profile of Marlene Dumas -

"An art-world blog, Anaba, has taken to listing the names of Dumas’s supporters and detractors as if they were superdelegates charged with putting an artist into office. Are you pro-Dumas or anti-Dumas? “All of the anti-Dumasers are men,” the blog noted in 2005, in a reference to a group of influential critics that includes Jerry Saltz, the art critic for New York magazine, who has described Dumas’s work as 'flat-footed'."

Also noted in my posts, along with the gender split, is that most of those quoted who don't like Dumas are not artists. I'm not sure which posts Deborah Solomon read, but here are the most relevant -

1/5/06 - My ongoing monitoring of the critical response to the work of Marlene Dumas
10/30/05 - The Dumas Report
6/17/05 - Carol Vogel and Sarah Milroy come out for Marlene Dumas
6/1/05 - Jerry Saltz still doesn't like Marlene Dumas
5/12/05 - Marlene Dumas - 1994
5/11/05 - Richard Polsky really hates Marlene Dumas
3/28/05 - Marlene Dumas!

CURRENT TALLY -

PRO-DUMAS: Svetlana Alpers, Chris Ashley, David Cohen, Nicole Davis, Nicole Eisenman (in comments), Joy Garnett, Cynthia King (in comments) Sarah Milroy, George Rodart (in comments), Barry Schwabsky, Adrian Searle, Elisabeth Sussman, Richard Vine, Carol Vogel.

ANTI-DUMAS: Franklin Einspruch (in comments, and on his blog), Charlie Finch, Tyler Green, Jerry Saltz, Richard Polsky, Peter Schjeldahl.

Jerry Saltz has been consistent, but it has always been in throwaway lines, never an actual review, so I'm looking forward to reading his inevitable review of the upcoming MoMA show. I say inevitable because after that much glib dismissal he is going to have to put up or shut up. Hopefully Roberta Smith will also review that show.


Howard Dean and my mother are counting the superdelegate votes as they come in... I'm told a final decision will be reached in about a hundred years.

UPDATE: votes are poring in!
pro - Eva Lake, Amie Oliver

Eric Gelber on Kelli Williams

Kelli Williams, Wet Bar, 2007

I posted Kelli Williams' painting, along with work by some other Leo Koenig artists, after seeing it at the Armory Show last month. Eric Gelber contributed so many thoughtful comments on Kelli's painting, too much to leave buried in the comments box... so I'm re-posting them here.

MUST STRESS - this is a series of thoughtful comments on a jpeg, not a formal review. Eric did not see the work in person. Eric's initial response was to an anonymous commenter critical of the accuracy of Kelli's perspective.

There is no consistent perspectival moment if the composition is looked at as a whole. It would destroy the logic of the composition if the artist used one vanishing point to bring coherence to the whole. The artist wants to fragment and compartmentalize space. This increases the isolation of each figure and each action. It is like a tableau. Within each individual segment the local space makes sense, a field that immediately surrounds each figure. A figure sits on the edge of the pool, another one sits on a bar stool, another one is resting her hand on the edge of the bar. This compositional technique emphasizes the isolation of each figure. They are self contained monads, pleasuring and obsessively gorging themselves. It is a symbolic ode to masturbation and self indulgence.The artist is using a panoramic device. The separate little worlds the figures inhabit are interlocked to form an odd montage image.

Each figure in Kelli's painting is going through an internal process. The figures that are gorging themselves are perhaps meant to represent self destructive behavior or the compulsions/impractical rituals that plague individuals. The other figures are lost in their minds or bodies.

They writhe, stare into space. The bartender is the only figure that directly addresses the viewer and the rest of the figures do not acknowledge one another or the viewer. Figures are whole and fragmented. Some of them are asleep, one looks pregnant. They are practicing mysterious rituals.

The variety of poses suggest stages of life. There is a variety of mental states represented in this one painting. (The figures are wonderfully rendered.) They have a corpse like palor though and this again suggests death.

Also the one male figure in the painting is the bartender, the one who serves intoxicants, and he holds a trident like the Greek god Poseidon. Obviously this references pagan culture, but in the setting of a bar/contemporary swimming pool this is humorous, but also a clue as to what the artist wants to tell us about contemporary life.

The bar itself looks pixilated, like it is made from binary code on a computer monitor, and the painting does very interesting things with ideas of flatness and depth. There is no easy way to figure out the pictorial space.

Lingering thoughts about "Wet Bar":

Poseidon, and his underwater realm, is one of the subjects of this painting. The greenish figures are supposed to be underwater. The figure seated at the bar, with her bosom, shoulders, and head and neck above water give this away. Here lower half is submerged and most of her upper torso, which is flesh colored, is above the water line. So the watery depths represent the human unconscious, but interestingly, the figures above the water line are just as transfixed as the figures that are submerged in the water.

The strange entrail/snake like coils that come out of the vaginas of two of the figures are strange, ambiguous symbols. The woman who is suckling or drinking from the end of one of the umbilical cords/green ropes is either slowly becoming colored or her mid-section is evaporating. She comforts/pleasures herself by grasping a handful of her own hair. The idea that a woman's umbilical cord could be used for self nourishment is an interesting idea. The underwater flora and fauna and various sea creatures, rendered carefully and realistically is a very nice touch, as are the air bubbles floating towards the surface.

So there is the clear portrayal of two distinct realms, above and below water. The figures are lost in strange reveries. Poseidon addresses and identifies with the viewer (while sporting a small boner). But instead of ruling over the female figures he is serving them. Human ritual, human ecstasy, orgiastic pagan ceremonies, feminist recontextualization of female nudity and sexuality, human transformation. The female figures below the water have transformed into mermaids or are in the middle of doing so. After they become mermaids they fall into a coma like sleep. So the transformation from human to mythical half human/half animal creature is also a subject of this painting. What are the psychological implications of this transformation? The painting style and formal devices employed by the artist fully enhance the idea content of the painting.

I like the way the painting morphs and blends the textures of digital imagery and classic mosaics. It straddles the two really, which emphasizes your recontextualization of pagan and mythological imagery. One should also note the play on words in the title. A wet bar is a place in the home where you can mix drinks, and it usually contains a sink with running water. We all obviously know about vaginas and wetness. The painting is all about mixing realms, the real and the mythic, flatness and depth. It has great mystery and that is hard to find in contemporary work.

See all of Eric Gelber's reviews for Artcritical here.

Tyler Green and Christian Viveros-Faune respond to James Kalm

Tyler Green and Christian Viveros-Faune respond to James Kalm's March Brooklyn Rail article.

1. James Kalm's March Brooklyn Rail article, The Ethics of Aesthetics.
2. Tyler Green's letter to the editor and Christian Viveros-Faune's e-mail.

white columns piss-take number 8 - creating a closed loop

Here are the three most recent White Columns reviews from the NYTimes -

White Columns in NYTimes 3/21/08 - Roberta Smith review of White Columns' exhibition of work from the collection of critic/curator Vince Aletti. The review also mentions White Columns' concurrent exhibitions of work from the collection of curator Bob Nickas, and a solo show of photographs by artist-turned-(Matthew Higgs)dealer Janice Guy.

before that was...

White Columns in NYTimes 12/7/07 - Karen Rosenberg review of Looking Back, a group show of art seen in NY (mostly Chelsea galleries) in the previous year. Last line of the review - "If you missed Andrew Lord’s ceramics at Gladstone, for instance, or Sadie Benning’s videos at Orchard, you’ll be grateful for the second chance."

before that was...

White Columns in NYTimes 7/10/07 -Roberta Smith feature reviewing Dealer as Artist, a group show of work by "six prominent art dealers" that used to make art. Janice Guy featured at top of page.

Good job, White Columns.

told you!

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from anaba 7/17/2005 -

Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune - Cai Guo-Qiang has filled Mass Moca's great hall with nine Ford Taurus' flying through the space. There is something coming out of them that looks like fireworks. It's pretty and interesting when you first walk in but by the time I got to the end of the big hall the thrill had left. Another dead boring room is filled with what looks like stuffed tigers (actually paper mache) shot up with arrows. The strongest part of this show is seeing the car that was used in the making of a firework-exploding car video. He filled a car up with heavy duty fireworks - took out the seats, removed all the windows, cut a hole in the roof - and set them all off to make a video. The car is on display here and calls to mind terrorism and car bombings.

from anaba 9/18/2005 -

Cai Guo-Qiang, ugh. I saw that show at Mass Moca and it was so boring. Dead. Lifeless. No energy, no motion, really nothing. I'd cut him some slack and say it is a very tough space to work in but he did the exact same thing with fake tigers in a smaller room. The cars are a one-liner, the dry sawdust tigers are a one-liner, both the same line. The only good part is the one bombed out car. Libby saw the show and liked it. JL liked it. Charles Giuliano really didn't like it at all. Adrian Searle is talking here about a different show, not liking what he sees either. I really liked the tiny ink-on-matchbox landscape paintings done by Guo-Qiang's father and featured on the show last night, those were very nice.

from anaba 3/7/2007 -

Installed in the same room at Mass MoCA, less than two years apart, Cai Guo-Qiang's tired tiger installation VS. Huang Yong Ping's tired tiger installation!

RELATED: Tom Moody, Catherine Spaeth, Roberta Smith for The New York Times, Peter Schjeldahl for The New Yorker, Howard Halle for Time Out New York.

love, walter10021

Biting comments from someone named walter10021 posted to a few of the blogs talking about Tyler Green and Christian Viveros-Faune -

Posted to Geoff Edgers' Exhibitionist -

Get a life. If you don't have smart people working at important posts, you get drivel from idiots like Tyler Green, who can stay as conlict-free as the Virgin Mary and still not be worth reading. - posted by walter10021

Posted to Jen Graves' SLOG entry -

With your lust for the lash, we should call you "Tailgunner Jen" -- it is people like you, and Tyler Green, and that moron at Art Fag City, who are handmaidens to fascism. The point is -- how's the work, good or bad? Viveros-Faune does pretty good. Can any of you say the same? - posted by walter10021

He's good. WHO COULD IT BE? Oh, here is a walter10021 commenting on an article on De Montebello, quoting Artnet... and another commenting on the blog of Artnet editor Walter Robinson's brother, Greensboro News & Record editor John Robinson.

HILARIOUS.

Lacerate, Goad, Raise Whirlwinds

Tyler Green has a good three-part interview with Village Voice art critic Christian Viveros-Faune (part one, part two, part three)... DON'T skip part three, and definitely read Tyler's final thoughts.

It is kind of funny now to read this 2004 nickname I gave Viveros-Faune.

RELATED: Gallerist Edward Winkleman on Christian Viveros-Faune, last year.
RELATED: links to people responding to Tyler's posts.
IMMEDIATE UPDATE: Editor Tony Ortega announces that Christian is no longer writing art criticism for the Village Voice.

mysterious process

Tyler on a Diebenkorn show -

"I'd been looking forward to reviewing the San Jose presentation of show. But when no one at that museum returned three weeks worth of calls/emails, I gave up".

What does that mean? Is there some process involved other than (1) seeing the show, followed by (2) blogging your thoughts?

He saw the show, right? It was number one on his 2007 top ten list. Maybe it has something to do with getting images...

Data Study

A commenter made me curious what a woman critic's male to female review ratio might be, so I looked at the previous six months of Roberta Smith's NYTimes Art in Review contributions.

Roberta Smith contributed 35 reviews of single artist exhibitions to the Art in Review section of the NYTimes between May 23rd through November 23rd, 18 of which were reviews of female artists. I am pretty bad at math but that is clearly 50%!

The above tally is for reviews of a single artist only, no group shows and no reviews featuring more than one artist. If you include the two-person/partnership shows and reviews which note a second solo show within the same review (Fischli & Weiss, Matt Keegan and Jedediah Caeser, Dawit Petros and Bryan Jackson, Nick Z. and Kai Althoff) the total becomes 43 artists, 18 women.

Really good, right?

UNFORTUNATELY (for women), that is not an inclusive tally of Roberta's NYTimes writing within that period. It doesn't count any of the longer feaures/reviews she writes that are not part of the weekly Art in Review. This was a surprise -

11/23 Jeff Koons, 11/16 Lawrence Weiner, 11/08 Robert Greenwold, 11/02 Martin Puryear, 10/26 Georges Seurat, 10/20 Aleksandra Mir, 10/19 Gustav Klimt, 10/16 Damien Hirst, 10/13 Rudy Stingel, 10/5 Renoir, 9/28 Richard Prince, 9/16 Christoph Buchel, 8/23 Robert Gober, 8/17 Richard Pousette-Dart, 8/8 Morton Bartlett, 8/3 Peter Young, 7/25 Chen Chieh-Jen, 7/13 Martin Creed, 6/30 Daniel Gordon, 6/29 Rudy Stingel, 6/15 Neo Rauch, 5/30 Karen Kilimnik.

Twenty-two features/reviews, two of which are of female artists.

Urs Fischer/Christopher Wiedeman.... PLUS

Today's NYMagazine Urs Fischer review makes me want to re-post images of Christopher Wiedeman's piece from last year, in Richmond (scroll down).


Christopher dug a deep pit, through a concrete floor, inside a small cinderblock building. A narrow ante-chamber on a raised platform was constructed from plywood, around the corner of which the plywood flooring becomes a curved ramp directing your eye and body toward the black hole.

The NYMag review, by Jerry Saltz, refers to Fischer's piece as "a Herculean project". It looks cool... but with a backhoe, a $250,000 budget, and a team of assistants.... whatever. Herculean it isn't. Chris did everything by himself, it was a fantastic piece.


Chris building entry, stage, and ramp.


Chris digging pit.

RELATED: Christopher doesn't have any website that I can find.... but you can see another one of his installations here, documented by Michael Lease. MORE: a video.

PLUS: JERRY SALTZ DATA REPORT

I am a guy, so I can point and laugh at Jerry Saltz writing yet another feature decrying gender disparity followed by yet another review of a male artist. Jerry has written twenty-six reviews of individual artists so far this year, only seven of which have been reviews of women artists.

MoMA is a museum, and it's asking a lot to go back and revise history, unfair as it may be, but Jerry is writing new history NOW. If I were a girl I guess I would have no option but to put on a gorilla mask and wheatpaste a poster somewhere. I don't think you can expect much more than 25% representation anytime soon, if Jerry is supposedly your champion.

RELATED: Art Candy hasn't been updated yet, so it still stands at 59 men to 16 women.

Data: Art Candy Study... UPDATED 2x

New York Magazine has two pieces on gender disparity; Jerry Saltz's Where Are All the Women?, looking at MoMA, and this tally of women to men at six other art-world institutions.

New York Magazine should maybe do a tally of it's Art Candy feature... fifty-nine men to sixteen women since August 1st.

BUSTED!


UPDATE: i made a new label, guerilla anaba, for posts mentioning gender disparity. Here's the post in which I note that of the SIXTEEN consecutive individual artist reviews (12/04 through 12/05) written by Jerry Saltz, only FOUR featured women. i get anonymously attacked in the comments, Jerry gets nothing but praise.

UPDATE to the UPDATE: okay, i've re-checked all of those individual artist features, and counted even the smaller blurby ones i'd ignored previously.... the NEW tally is TWENTY-FOUR artists reviewed, SEVEN of whom are female.

The Origin of Roberta Smith! Special Supplement to the Friday Edition of the NYTimes

There is, unfortunately, not much Roberta Smith in today's NYTimes... so, I will give you some Roberta Smith. But not just any Roberta Smith. I will give you the ORIGIN of Roberta Smith.


This is the 1970 letter that the twenty-two year old Roberta wrote to ArtForum, taking umbrage with Robert Pincus-Witten's review of Donald Judd, at Castelli.

The Pincus-Witten article, Fining It Down, was published in the June 1970 issue of Artforum. Roberta's letter ran in the October 1970 issue.

CLICK here to see the 1st page BIGGER. CLICK here to see the 2nd page BIGGER.


Now it can be revealed... the Secret Origin of Roberta Smith!!!

I hope Jerry has not eaten her.

three follow-ups

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- Jerry Saltz has written something in response to my post a couple weeks ago. I guess he did get yelled at.

"Two weeks ago, a blogger noted that in my article ‘Has Money Ruined Art?’ (October 15), I was guilty of using many of the same ideas, lines, and quotes that I have used in previous articles. The blogger called this ‘very lazy’; actually, he/she also called me ‘an undead zombie.'"

What is up with the use of "he/she"? He knows darn well I'm a man. Did our studio visit mean nothing???

Felt a little bit bad about that thing he had to write... but then I remembered that he has no problem gratuitously dumping on Dumas (without ever actually reviewing her), the stupid thing he wrote about Moti Hasson, all the Columbia crap... so, whatever.

- Spoke with Hudson about the products on display at Feature. Hudson first noticed Gentle Wind products in the homes of friends across the country in the 90's , and then "got into it a little" himself.

The products on display are not for sale through the gallery. Hudson is the one who did the Q&A with the Gentle Wind founder.

"I think they're more interesting than a lot of art" - Hudson. Okay, Hudson, over and out.

- Geoff Edgers article on B. in the Boston Globe. The photo of B. in the slide show is handsomer than the other photos I've seen.

RELATED: message from the Attorney General of Maine.

Roberta Smith Calls For The Destruction of Amerika

If an artist who conceived a work says that it is unfinished and should not be exhibited, it isn’t — and shouldn’t be. End of story. - Roberta Smith, on B.

Franz Kafka published only a small selection of short stories during his lifetime, and never finished a novel. Prior to his death, he instructed, in writing, his friend (and executor) Max Brod to destroy all of his papers and manuscripts.

Amerika, The Castle, and The Trial are the three unfinished novels that were published after Kafka's death, against his will, along with most of the stories.

RELATED:

Roberta Smith on Tim Rollins and the Kids of Survival's Amerika.

Roberta Smith on Martin Kippenberger's The Happy End of Franz Kafka's 'Amerika'.
(has Roberta written anything yet on Keith Tyson's Large Field Array, at Pace... that comes from the Kippenberger... which comes from the Kafka?)

Roberta Smith references Kafka in reviewing Christoph Buchel, 12/21/2001. Ouch! TOO IRONIC.

Roberta Smith references Kafka in reviewing Luc Tuymans.

Roberta Smith references Kafka in reviewing Ann-Sofi Siden's QM I Think I Will Call Her QM. DAMN, I saw that - and loved it - at Mass Moca!!

...more. (sorry)

Roberta Smith - well, I had said Roberta's lame article criticizing Mass Moca was "disappointingly redundant", adding zero insight + zero new information, but I hadn't realized exactly how redundant. Did you see the correction printed by the NYTimes? Greg Roach says on his blog -

Cherry picking quotes from old articles and using them out of context is much harder to get away with in the modern age of the internets.

The 9/16 NYTimes (on-line) article was further misleading in including the old slideshow, undated but from an earlier (5/22) feature, with the new article. The third image of the slideshow includes in it's caption "the show will open on Saturday, without Mr. Büchel’s permission or cooperation." Anybody new to this, reading the 9/16 article and clicking through that slideshow, would be misinformed, with any negative impression from the article incorrectly reinforced.

Robert Storr's irrelevance - I'm sorry, Robert Storr. Your affidavit was useless.

Roberta Smith and Robert Storr were two of the three "artworlders", along with Ken Johnson, quoted by Mark Elliott to prove that "the artworld is up in arms". Mark, please take note - three people who live in New York City, none of them artists, two of whom work for the same newspaper, is NOT a representative slice of the artworld.

Yes, there are many artists sympathetic to Buchel, including very good artist Amy Wilson. Earlier I linked to Amy's drawing/paintings made after her visit to Mass Moca, and she has since posted a blog entry expressing her outrage at the decision and hoping for Jenny Holzer to cancel her upcoming show. I mention this because I like the defense made in the comments, and the conversation that follows.

Brent Burket has snapped. Brent works at Creative Time, as does Nato Thompson, the curator of the Buchel show (Nato Thompson left Mass Moca for Creative Time early in 2007). Brent's venom has me wondering how much he is hanging out with Nato, what Nato might be saying, and under what terms Nato left Mass Moca.

UPDATE - Brent volunteers at Creative Time, doesn't work for them, and has little contact with Nato. It is true that he's snapped.

(Weirdly, Nato's current Mike Nelson show for Creative Time sounds like it could be a Christoph Buchel show. Look at these... Mike Nelson 1996, Mike Nelson 2000).

I wonder what Buchel's disclaimer language will say, assuming he adds anything? Maybe Buchel could auction off something, kind of like he did with his Manifesta slot. Like, the disclaimer could say "This is an installation by ____", and he could auction off the space for a name. Maybe Maurizio Cattelan would bid on it, or he could trade a stuffed squirrel for it.

If I had Joe Thompson's ear I would suggest that the best course of action at this point would be to NOT remove the tarps, and to dispose of the materials. There are a lot of smart artists right now that are angry at the museum, in a knee-jerk way, and it would be unwise to further exacerbate any tensions, regardless of principle.

Buchel had abandoned the installation and it was five months past the opening date. The museum had no option but to go to court. Does anybody think that if they had simply called it a loss back in May and removed the materials to a dump Buchel would not have sued? They could not open the gallery, they could not get rid of the stuff... they were at an impasse in which it appeared Buchel would be keeping the installation closed throughout the entire run. They had no option but to go to court and seek a resolution.

UPDATE 9/24: Buchel is appealing.

moratorium

Okay, I haven't seen a Jerry Saltz write-up in a couple weeks, this might be a good time to make a request.

A few years ago Jerry called for a four-year moratorium on photography-based painting. I would like to call for a six-month moratorium on Jerry Saltz writing about the art market, including even writing the word "market". Also, any use of the words "biennial" and "fair" (unless he is writing specifically about work seen at a biennial or fair). Oh, and a moratorium on use of the word "sexy". I'm tired of it.

Can we make a petition? Will you sign it?

UPDATE 10/10/07 - ugh, he really blew it.