What's Cookin': The Art21ndex

What’s Cookin at the Art21 Blog: A Weekly Index

Photo: Jean Shrimpton, evening dress by Cardin, Paris studio, January 1970. © Richard Avedon, Source:GraeMitchell.com

As we jump into the early New Year 2010, here’s What’s Cookin… enjoy!

  • FLASHPOINTS: How does art respond to and define the natural world? The University of New Mexico launched their Art and Ecology as an outgrowth of its ten-year old program, Land Arts of the American West. Read Mattias Merkel Hess’s interview with UNM Art and Ecology professor Catherine Page Harris about how the program started, its relationship with other programs at UNM, and the future of ecological art.
  • Inhale. Exhale. Whew. What is the power of positive thinking in relationship to climate change? Nicole Caruth thinks about Marisa Olsen’s upcoming February exhibition, opening in February at NYC’s PS122 called Whew Age. Nicole also provides information about the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
  • Nicole Rounds Them Up! To learn about some new and upcoming exhibitions featuring Art21 artists who envision utopia; manipulate patterns and dress; summon Baroque culture; and reflect on the intimate act of bathing click here.
  • Art21 Guest Blog Year 2. Many thanks to all twenty-six of them for their informative and often entertaining insights! Here’s to the Art21 Guest Blog Class of 2009
  • LOOKING AT LOS ANGELES: Against The Deluge. Calfornia resident Catherine Wagley looks back at 2009. “…The decade should belong to artists who saw the supposed deluge as a reason to stop trying to make history and start rephrasing, breaking apart, and rearranging their cultural heritage, freeing repressed fragments of meaning in hopes of informing an unknown future…”
  • EDUCATION: Teaching with Contemporary ArtBringing It Back Home. December, January, May, June…. These are popular months for graduates to visit their former high schools because they are either between semesters at college or finished for the school year altogether….
  • GASTRO VISION: The Year in Meat. Here’s a look back at some meaty moments in 2009
  • Entertainers Who Moonlight as Artists: The Top 10 of 2009
  • Performative Interventions: The Progression of 4D Art in a Virtual 3D World. Second Life, performance artists see immersion as a means of taking their art directly to a global audience, thus completely eliminating the need for physical exhibition spaces, although augmented reality exhibitions are becoming the norm…” Artist, Franco Mattes says “In our synthetic performances the performers and the audience only interact thorough avatars, they never meet. Everything is mediated. But this doesn’t mean the relationship is not “real”, as much as, for example, a “phone conversation” is a “real conversation”…