Yearly Archives: 2009

Flash Points

Authenticity 2.0

by Audrey Chan | Mar 3, 2009

At the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes (Nantes School of Art), I am teaching a course called “Contemporary Art in the United States, 2000-Today.” The premise of the course is …

New guest blogger: Audrey Chan

by Kelly Shindler | Mar 2, 2009

New guest blogger: Audrey Chan

by Kelly Shindler | Mar 2, 2009

Thanks to Paul Schmelzer for his wonderful series of posts tackling our Flash Points topic head-on. Follow his daily exploits back on his own blog, Eyeteeth. Up next is Audrey …

Letter from London

Letter from London: See you later, contemporary art curator!

by Ben Street | Mar 2, 2009

Letter from London: See you later, contemporary art curator!

by Ben Street | Mar 2, 2009

Pity the poor curator, scapegoat of the contemporary art sceptic. It’s hard not to feel at least a little sorry for Nicholas Bourriaud, curator of Tate Britain’s Altermodern, who has …

Flash Points

Practical propaganda: Amy Franceschini reinvents the Victory Garden

by Paul Schmelzer | Mar 1, 2009

Practical propaganda: Amy Franceschini reinvents the Victory Garden

by Paul Schmelzer | Mar 1, 2009

Amy Franceschini is my favorite kind of propagandist: she creates enticing imagery you can’t help but rally around, but backs it up with dirt-under-the-fingernails pragmatism in service of a nearly …

Women in the City – One Year Later

by Nicole J. Caruth | Feb 28, 2009

Women in the City – One Year Later

by Nicole J. Caruth | Feb 28, 2009

Last year, gallerist Emi Fontana curated Women in the City, a public art exhibition spread throughout the streets of Los Angeles. Works by Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Jenny Holzer (Season 4), Louise …

Kerry James Marshall: Visible Means of Support

by Nicole J. Caruth | Feb 27, 2009

Kerry James Marshall: Visible Means of Support

by Nicole J. Caruth | Feb 27, 2009

Kerry James Marshall, “Visible Means of Support: Mount Vernon”, 2009. Acrylic latex on canvas. Courtesy of the artist; © Kerry James Marshall. Yesterday, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art …

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the Building: Books (and Zombies) Edition!

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 27, 2009

BOMB in the Building: Books (and Zombies) Edition!

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 27, 2009

Since Art21 rotted our little brains with their Audio Visual edition last week, we decided to retaliate with some literary mind-expanding material. Writers who write a lot. Hipster Runoff is …

Flash Points

Where’s all the rightwing street art?

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 26, 2009

Where’s all the rightwing street art?

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 26, 2009

Learning of Princess Hijab—a Paris-based street artist who culturejams advertisements to include her namesake headscarf—an old question came to mind: where are all the rightwing graffiti artists, stencil afficionados, and …

No Room to Answer in Germany

by Nicole J. Caruth | Feb 25, 2009

No Room to Answer in Germany

by Nicole J. Caruth | Feb 25, 2009

Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler, “Grand Paris Texas”, 2008. Videostill / Video still. Courtesy Württembergischer Kunstverein. No Room to Answer: Projections, a traveling exhibition of video installations by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler …

Flash Points

Share and Share Alike

by Sharon Butler | Feb 25, 2009

Flash Points

Share and Share Alike

by Sharon Butler | Feb 25, 2009

Artists who garner the most attention in any given time period are those whose work, explicitly or implicitly, reflects the deeper political sensibilities of the era. Right now, contemporary artists …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What Light?

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 25, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What Light?

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 25, 2009

On Monday I had the pleasure of attending the last edition of this season’s Art21’s Salon Series with Robert Ryman and Urs Raussmüller. Going into the evening, I kept thinking …

Flash Points

Chakkrit Chimnok’s banana-leaf utopia

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 24, 2009

Flash Points

Chakkrit Chimnok’s banana-leaf utopia

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 24, 2009

Chakkrit Chimnok dreams of a “banana world,” a utopia in which overlooked or discarded items — specifically, the ubiquitous banana leaves that litter the streets in his home city of …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Bad Taste Explosion

by Ben Street | Feb 23, 2009

Letter from London

Letter from London: Bad Taste Explosion

by Ben Street | Feb 23, 2009

Sometimes working in or around contemporary art can be a bit embarrassing. When the papers are splashed with the latest case of a work of art being mistaken for rubbish …

Flash Points

Transcending protest: Looking for pragmatic or poetic art of change

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 23, 2009

Flash Points

Transcending protest: Looking for pragmatic or poetic art of change

by Paul Schmelzer | Feb 23, 2009

This weekend I went to an opening at The Soap Factory, a scrappy and often-excellent nonprofit art space a block or so off Minneapolis’ riverfront. The description of the work, …

New guest blogger: Paul Schmelzer

by Kelly Shindler | Feb 23, 2009

New guest blogger: Paul Schmelzer

by Kelly Shindler | Feb 23, 2009

Thanks to Naomi Beckwith for her series of clever and perceptive posts. Up next is Paul Schmelzer. Paul is a Minneapolis-based writer and editor focusing on the intersection of art, …

Art21 Extended Play

Oliver Herring | Legacy

by Wesley Miller | Feb 20, 2009

Art21 Extended Play

Oliver Herring | Legacy

by Wesley Miller | Feb 20, 2009

DOWNLOAD VIA ITUNES | SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS EXCLUSIVE: Artist Oliver Herring discusses what he perceives as generational shifts in our relationship to the camera, mortality, and legacy, accompanied by scenes …

I Have Decided to Love Contemporary Art

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 20, 2009

I Have Decided to Love Contemporary Art

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 20, 2009

Days have passed since St. Valentine’s Day and the flowers are giving off a sweet waft of imminent mortality, which may make them a dubious token of love. But I …

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building week 3

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 20, 2009

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building week 3

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 20, 2009

This week we find BOMB artists all over the Internets: If you haven’t yet it’s about time you checked out Paul Chan’s National Philistine. Bruce Mau will curate the first …

Flash Points

Obama Special, Part 2

by Daniel Quiles | Feb 19, 2009

Flash Points

Obama Special, Part 2

by Daniel Quiles | Feb 19, 2009

This continues my previous post about the laptop DJ/performance artist Girl Talk, in which I situate him in a lineage of intersections between art and music and suggest a link …

Flash Points

“Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe & Censorship Twenty Years Later” at ICA in Philadelphia

by Hrag Vartanian | Feb 18, 2009

Flash Points

“Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe & Censorship Twenty Years Later” at ICA in Philadelphia

by Hrag Vartanian | Feb 18, 2009

Last week, people from far and wide gathered for a special conference titled “Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe and Censorship Twenty Years Later,” which was co-presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art …

Susan Rothenberg at Sperone Westwater

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 18, 2009

Susan Rothenberg at Sperone Westwater

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 18, 2009

At Sperone Westwater, pioneer painter Susan Rothenberg exhibits new works on canvas that depict fragmented compositions of the human body. The thickly applied oil paintings are a departure from recent …

Say It Ain’t Sew

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 18, 2009

Say It Ain’t Sew

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 18, 2009

Andrea Zittel’s traveling Smockshop makes its first appearance in Europe today before sadly closing shop for good. This is the final opportunity to experience Zittel’s economic experiment, which invites other …

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Hope and Change, Part 2

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 18, 2009

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Hope and Change, Part 2

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 18, 2009

On February 13th I received this message, as many of you did, from Americans for the Arts: Just moments ago, the U.S. House of Representatives approved their final version of …

Flash Points

Sade 2.0

by Thomas Micchelli | Feb 17, 2009

Flash Points

Sade 2.0

by Thomas Micchelli | Feb 17, 2009

On February 7th I drove to the Kasser Theater at Montclair State University to see a performance of The Investigation, a 1966 documentary drama by Peter Weiss (1916-1982), the expatriate German artist and …

Fred Wilson at 92nd Street Y

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 16, 2009

Fred Wilson at 92nd Street Y

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 16, 2009

The 92nd Street Y continues its excellent conversations program this Thursday night with Art and Insight: Fred Wilson. The Season 3 artist is best known for works that blur the …

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building (What we did last weekend edition)

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 13, 2009

BOMB in the Building

BOMB in the building (What we did last weekend edition)

by BOMB Magazine | Feb 13, 2009

Last weekend the BOMB folks cut a swath through the NYC cultural scene, so we thought we would share a sampling of what we found. We started off at Terminal …

Innovations in Sculpture at the Bruce Museum

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 13, 2009

Innovations in Sculpture at the Bruce Museum

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 13, 2009

The very ambitious Innovations in the Third Dimension: Sculpture of Our Time is up now at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. Spanning the bronze age of Auguste Rodin to …

Flash Points

Artful Prudence

by Kristin Farr | Feb 13, 2009

Flash Points

Artful Prudence

by Kristin Farr | Feb 13, 2009

politic adjective 1. marked by artful prudence, expedience, and shrewdness. Art and politics have a complex relationship. In the past week, I’ve seen city officials propose the elimination of arts positions, …

Momenting: Our City Dreams

by Mary Cook | Feb 12, 2009

Momenting: Our City Dreams

by Mary Cook | Feb 12, 2009

Chiara Clemente’s documentary Our City Dreams, currently on view at NYC’s Film Forum, gives us a glimpse into the lives of five women artists living in New York City: Swoon, …

Flash Points

Il a chaud au Cul

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 12, 2009

Flash Points

Il a chaud au Cul

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 12, 2009

Not at all surprisingly for a corporate entity, the Associated Press recently established ownership of a photograph of Barack Obama taken at a 2006 National Press Club event by photographer …

Oliver Herring on Task at Tang

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 12, 2009

Oliver Herring on Task at Tang

by Trong Gia Nguyen | Feb 12, 2009

Currently on view at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College is Oliver Herring‘s Me Us Them, an exhibition culling fifteen years of work by the Season 3 artist. The …

Art21 Extended Play

Jessica Stockholder | Beauty & Politics

by Wesley Miller | Feb 12, 2009

Art21 Extended Play

Jessica Stockholder | Beauty & Politics

by Wesley Miller | Feb 12, 2009

DOWNLOAD VIA ITUNES | SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS EXCLUSIVE: In her New Haven, Connecticut studio, artist Jessica Stockholder discusses the relationship between beauty, pleasure and taste, and how all three have …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It Takes Two…. or Two Hundred

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 11, 2009

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It Takes Two…. or Two Hundred

by Joe Fusaro | Feb 11, 2009

Recently I saw the Mark Dion segment from Season 4 for the sixth or seventh time. I love the Dion segment. I was sharing the video with teachers in a …

Rome on a Roman Holiday

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 10, 2009

Rome on a Roman Holiday

by Naomi Beckwith | Feb 10, 2009

In the depths of a seemingly endless New York winter, my mind is already thinking toward late spring days on the Adriatic and the 53rd International Art Exhibition at la …