is this lame?

Hand Out.

i am adding a donate button. it's on the right. is this lame?

fuuuck

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Jesus... four weeks with four reviews of his own shitty Bravo show. Is this going to continue for another month? It's worse than the three-in-one-week Defense of the New Museum articles, before that mess even opened.

JS facebook page henceforth to be referred to as 'Jerry Saltz's mirror lick'... thank Paul H-O for that one.

huh?

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too weeeird... these trudy bensons at f+v look like eric salls... and doesn't f+v now share the same space with eric's atm? what are they doing? this is bizarrely stupid.

and trudy went to vcu as an undergrad when sall was a grad... hey i am all for taking what you need from others but c'mon it's a joke when james kalm asks who she's looked at and she doesn't mention sall.

not ready for prime-time, sorry.

gassy

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Jerry Saltz on New Museum for NYMag 1, 11/11/09
Jerry Saltz on New Museum for NYMag 2, 11/15/09
Jerry Saltz on New Museum for NYMag 3, 11/16/09
+ tons of comments


the advertising is a gas.

SVA

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James Kalm has been requested by School of Visual Arts' Communications Director Michael Grant to take down his Dave Hickey SVA lecture videos.

From yesterday's post -

"Dave Hickey on art (from about 8:18) - 'Art doesn't do any of the things that we expect of American creativity... you know what I mean... it just makes a bunch of Jews a bunch of money'. Was that a gaffe or a planned quip? Fuck. I thought the whole talk was a ramble. Oxygen... you know what I mean? Love the SS shadow bolt across the red curtain while he is at the podium smearing the Jews."

Maybe Jerry can have his Glenn Beck show at SVA.

UPDATE: Charlie Finch on Dave Hickey at SVA, Charlie Finch on Dave Hickey - Hickey the Phony - 7/2001.
UPDATE: Las Vegas Weekly profile on the sad sack duo of Hickey and Lumpkin, 3/26/2009.

tools

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WTF? The first "real" artist to show at Triple Candie in almost four years is former head of VCU painting Richard Roth? aka Dick Backscratch?

How did that happen? Did he move to Harlem? Oh I get it... Roth had Nesbett/Bancroft give the keynote address at the 2008 Southern Graphics Council Conference.

Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China

Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China, at Mass Moca.... I was excited to see this show, as a former Western Artist in Japan (8+ yrs), but it was disappointing. I think there were only one or two artists who actually live and work in China, so the show is more like Western Artists Make Brief Visits to China and Share Many of the Same Simplistic Responses... lots and lots of repetitive photos and video (the medium of the tourist) of shipping containers and apartment blocks.

Wall texts inform that the work "references China's economic and commercial development as well as the loss of cultural and social traditions in the wake of such progress", or "this poetic work subtly reminds viewers of the environmental impact of China's new development". Those are from two different pieces, but you could almost walk around with a blindfold on and attach wall texts, it wouldn't really make much of a difference. They should maybe just all read "tsk-tsk", or "KEYWORD: Three Gorges Dam"... it would have saved some time. I can imagine the roar of the collective Chinese groan. What would happen if every person in China rolled his eyes at the same time? Would the Earth spin off it's axis???

The most off-putting inclusion is Jules de Balincourt's snooze of a painting, previously seen in his most recent Zach Feuer show (scroll down). Why is this here? Thanks for your insight. Please.

It's interesting to see what artists/gallerists (Feuer, Koenig) are evidently still interested in working with Mass Moca, despite Michelle Maccarone's lobbying against it. I suspect that all of the shows currently at Mass Moca are the most cost-effective shows possible, after all of the money spent and wasted struggling through last year's Buchel/MassMoca mess. Lots and lots of easily shipped and insured video and photography, a collector's vanity show (of work by Anselm Kiefer), Jenny Holzer's projected piece (I think Jenny has covered a lot of the costs of her show, she is awesome).

GREAT NEWS is that Mass Moca no longer prohibits photography! They've even started a flickr pool.

NEXT: i liked some of the individual work in Eastern Standard, if not the show. next i'll feature some of the artists i liked... Tobias Bernstrup, Patty Chang, Walter McConnel, Catherine Yass.

compare and contrast

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This show is a lot like this show.

- happy face balloons... yes and yes.
- clothes on racks... yes and yes.
- flannel shirts, check yes and yes.
- scattered junk and leaning hunks.
- found stand-in man, hunky and dory.
- floormats!
everyone must go = closing down sale

I made the mistake of making a (negative) comment on the Philly artblog... gallery director William Pym responded with the brilliant deduction that I would probably accept if offered a show at Fleisher-Ollman. Wow, what a Sherlock. He really got me.

Randall Sellers thankfully contributed some well-thought and smartly couched/cautious advice (comment #15).
Jerry Saltz review of Wet Pain... with some good comments.

303 Gallery

303 Gallery's Simon Greenberg sent Mark Barry an e-mail telling Mark to remove two photographs of Maureen Gallace paintings from his flickr site, photos he took at the 2006 Armory Show (press preview?).

hello mark -

this is simon at 303 gallery. i noticed you had an image of Maureen Gallace's work up on your flickr page - please be aware that 303 Gallery owns the copyright to the work and all public display of images, including web content. if you could kindly remove this image from your page, it would be most appreciated.

best
simon

303 Gallery is claiming to own the copyright to gallery artists' work? That's ridiculous.

TOO FUNNY: "Chelsea Shoot Themselves In The Foot"... "Chelsea’s bizarre attempts at public relations"... "Chelsea Director of Communications Simon Greenberg"... PR Week says ‘Simon Greenberg is about to embark on a major charm offensive".


Corner of Rodney Graham painting at Hauser and Wirth's Armory (2008) booth... I was photographing Christoph Buchel's Mickey Mouse. Rodney Graham is the artist currently showing at 303 Gallery, an exhibition photographed here by Brent Burket.

What would be the 303 opinion if Disney came after Buchel, for infringing on Mickey? Answer: Who cares.

The other artist whose work I photographed at Hauser and Wirth's booth was a painting by Jakub Julius Ziolkowski (scroll down), whose work I've previously photographed at 303 Gallery.

- Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, at 303 Gallery, posted to anaba 7/6/07 (scroll down).
- Inka Essenhigh, at 303 Gallery, posted to anaba 3/27/06.
- Plus, here's a link to all the 303 Gallery photos on flickr.

RELATED:
- "no photography"... of Richard Pettibone???
- C-Monster's 303 RANT.
- Louis Vuitton collaborates with Richard Prince, but sues designer Nadia Plesner, writing "as an artist yourself, we hope that you recognize the need to respect other artists' rights and Louis Vuitton's Intellectual Property rights".
- Mark Barry took my photo at the 2008 Armory show, without my knowledge, and posted it to flickr.

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton is suing an artist, stating "as an artist yourself, we hope that you recognize the need to respect other artists' rights and Louis Vuitton's Intellectual Property rights...".

This from the company that most recently collaborated with Richard Prince. Too funny.

Richard Prince on appropriating Jim Krantz's work for Marlboro - “No one was looking. This was a famous campaign. If you’re going to steal something, you know, you go to the bank.''

Read LV's initial cease-and-desist letter here.
Nadia Plesner's website.
Techdirt.
Eyeteeth.

UPDATE: this fashion blog brought up the Prince/Vuitton thing before i did.

ps - i still want these sunglasses.... they do not like it when you take pictures in their store.

jamie o'shea is super lame

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supertouch (jamie o'shea) used eight of my photos, taken from both anaba and my flickr set, without any link or mention.

LAME.

thank god there is so little overlap between the stuff i want to talk about and the crap on supertouch.

i left a comment but it's "awaiting moderation"... lamer.

UPDATE: my comment was moderated into the void... new comment awaiting moderation is -

"hey, jamie o'tightie pants, why so lame?"

UPDATE #2: holy smokes he did it again... (scroll down)
UPDATE #3: again... with a pro photog, tod seelie... he's pissed.

White Columns at the Armory, 2008

Matthew Higgs.... soldddddddd. This is on Wednesday.


Janice Guy... Matthew's dealer, stopped making art years ago. Can you see the red dots over each picture?

Good job, White Columns.

white out

Five months later, my White Columns page has finally been erased. That's okay, I can do it again.

Also erased... the history of White Columns exhibitions prior to Matthew's tenure. Are those gone for good? Hope not.

I can't remember how far back those archived exhibitions went, but when I made this post last year I was able to research and link to all of the Lauren Ross-curated exhibitions (scroll down to the second half of the post).

oooh, wicked

Did you see Christoph Buchel's Protect me from what I want Jenny Holzer reference, hidden under the schoolkid's desks of his Hauser & Wirth Miami Basel installation? I noticed it in the photo from the NYTimes slideshow.

Buchel's installation is called Training Ground for Training Ground for Democracy, a coda to his Mass Moca peter-out, and has reportedly sold for $250,000 to the Flick Collection. Jenny Holzer is the artist whose work currently occupies the Mass Moca space abandoned (held hostage? sabotaged?) by Buchel, the first artist to do so.

It's good to see Buchel back at a scale he is happily able to handle, on familiar artfair ground. He's also got a bunch of limited edition prints of his Mass Moca legal correspondence on exhibit at Maccarone's booth, beside McCarthy's chocolate Santas (as advertised in Vanity Fair). Maccarone is the anti-market gallery, or something. I'm not sure..

Make sure you click on Christoph Buchel... it's necessary to keep the world's first google image search sculpture alive.

Feature showing TOTAL CRAP! why???

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Last week I made brief mention of a snooze at Feature -

"The Gentle Wind Project, at Feature - Paul LaFolley + Emery Blagdon.... without the magic, passion, or intensity ."

I knew it was a lame show, but... HOLY SHIT!... I did not realize what a bunch of complete crap it was. I've since received an e-mail about the group, and spent a little time yesterday researching them.

e-mail -

"We noticed your reference to Gentle Wind Project "healing instruments" which are, for some very strange reason, on display at a NY art gallery.

'The Gentle Wind Project, at Feature - Paul LaFolley + Emery Blagdon.... without the magic, passion, or intensity .'

We have no idea why these gallery owners, or anyone else, would want to call these snake-oil products art, but perhaps they have connections to GWP and are looking for ways to promote the group to others.

For more information, see Wind of Changes, which describes Gentle Wind as a cult and also follows their history of suing critics and former members.

Defense against Gentle Wind's lawsuits was assisted by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and was eventually ended by the Maine Attorney General's lawsuit against the group for fraud, which put this rip-off group out of business in Maine.

For another commentary on this so-called "art exhibit" at Feature Gallery -- Disinterested Party.

Sincerely,
Judy Garvey
former member of gentle wind project"

Hudson would not remember it, but we've met and he's awesome, and I really like Feature and most of the artists they show... PLEASE EXPLAIN what this stuff is doing in the gallery. How did they get this show?? So aggravating. I hope no suckers bought that shit. Hudson, seriously... WHY?

Is this a rental? Are you, or were you, affliated with the "group"? What is the deal? All struggling artists, please puke together with me.

Related: 5/10/2007 Boston Globe article, Cult News from Rick Ross... so much more.

PS - Feature is not reviewing unsolicited artists' documents at this time. Please check back with this page in the spring of 2008. Thank you. Blech.

UPDATE: follow-up after talk with Hudson

Cai Guo-Qiang's Mass Moca tiger installation VS. Huang Yong Ping's Mass Moca tiger installation

Cai Guo-Qiang... 2005

VS.


Huang Yong Ping... 2007

Oh man.. I saw Huang Yong Ping's not very engaging retrospective at Mass Moca... the worst (or maybe best) part was entering this room while ACTUALLY saying "this is the room where that last guy had those tired tigers"... and seeing ANOTHER tired tiger installation!

What?! Wow, they are keeping those Chinese tiger fabricators busy over there! Is there a tired tiger installation in the corner of every studio in China? I'm totally confused by the decison to put this new tiger in the exact same room as the last ones, I mean, this is a BIG museum, with both artist's individual exhibitions filling several galleries.

SORRY! We have NO WINNER in this contest... they are both DEAD BORING TIRED.

RELATED: Eric Fischl's Arthur Ashe Statue VS. Paul DiPasquale's Arthur Ashe Statue

"no photography"... of Richard Pettibone???

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Revisiting the Richard Pettibone show at the Tang I was watched like a hawk by the security guards. My mission was to get a photo of one of the double-sided glass cases holding a bunch of his little paintings, to show how perfect the backs are. Pettibone makes tiny stretchers using tiny nails, with tiny braces. The backs are as captivating as the fronts.

But I couldn't get a photo because the security guards at the Tang are the most attentive you will ever see. Walking up to the mezzanine level where the Kathy Butterly sculptures are on exhibit a lady leapt up from her chair and smiled at me. I felt so bad continuing on to the Pettibone show - she seemed like she really wanted to watch someone.

The Tang's "no photography" rule is exasperating on this visit especially because so much of Richard Pettibone's own photo-realist work of the seventies was produced from polaroids taken in museums. He took photos of work by his contemporaries as well as that of artists like Eakins, Gerome, and Ingres. Those polaroids, often taken at odd angles, were then reproduced exactly - including the white borders of the polaroid.

From a wall text at the Tang beside the photo paintings -

"In 1974, Richard Pettibone moved away from mere emulation of Photorealist style by incorporating historical works of art into the pictures. Using photographs he had taken in New York museums, Pettibone depicts white-bordered snapshots of ..

Taken at lateral angles, the picture emphasizes the works in situ status. These tiny, exquisite paintings reiterate art history's reliance on photography to propagate our knowledge about painting."

It's ironic and sad that the Tang, which promotes itself as a teaching museum, forbids that further propagation.

UPDATE 12/05/07: Nobody ever commented on this post, but I did soon hear from both a Pettibone and co-curator Michael Duncan. The Pettibones sent me a CD of images, and Michael Duncan asked for my address and said he would send a copy of the catalogue... but HE NEVER DID!

electronic snoozism

Went to Stephen Vitiello and Andrew Deutsch's performance at Solvent Space on Saturday night. Vitiello has the current show at Solvent Space, which I have yet to experience (it's a sound show) - they are only open three days a week from 1-4pm - so I'm not sure how much Saturday's performance built on or was related to the exhibition.

We all sat on the floor or stood against the walls and a video was projected onto one wall while Vitiello and Deutsch worked a big pile of electronic equipment off to the side. I guess it wasn't really a video, because it was something being projected in real time, and all of it was being created on the spot.

Two small monitors sat on the floor in front of a video camera (they were what was being projected) and one of the two guys was doing something else with another camera and monitor on top of a table. Whatever he was doing is what was being played on the monitors. It's all hard to explain, lots of electronic stuff and electronic noises and feedback and distortion. The images and the sounds reacted and responded to each other, the guys jumped around filming and tweaking and turning knobs.

It was sort of interesting for about ten minutes, at most. Those first ten minutes were spent watching the effects and wondering if maybe concept is following form or form following concept or what, before eventually deciding that in this case both concept and form follow self-indulgence.

Were you there? What happened in the last twenty or thirty minutes that hadn't already happened in the first ten, except maybe for the barely perceptible sound/tone of a little girl's questioning voice that just made me groan and roll my eyes - what did that have to do with any of it?

Most of the people around me were nodding off, checking out the crowd, or fixated on their cellphones - but I'm hoping that someone really liked it and can leave an enthusiastic comment.