Random Photos

It has been a while since I've blogged, though not for lack of interest, but more because I've been trying to tie together the various loose threads summer has left with me, alongside preparing for the upcoming semester, which begins next week, that I haven't had an opportunity to focus much on anything but the briefest entries here. Several entries I've begun over the last few weeks remain to be completed, though I will try to complete them--or at least several--before classes start. Here are a few recent photos!

Breakdancer, with crowd, on 5th Avenue

Breakdancing crew, 5th Avenue

Inventive travel advisory (read it carefully),
Delancey Street Station

Edward Hopper "Nighthawks" installation,
Flatiron Building

741 Park Avenue (a key address in Alex Gibney's excellent
documentary on the American, Wall Street-fueled plutocracy,
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream --
h/t Reg Gibbons for recommending the film)

Flyer at Hoboken Station for Fiscal Cliff,
our 16-year-old neighbor's band

Rainbow over Jersey City
(note that it appears to end almost
at the Goldman Sachs Bldg.)

Caption: Heels? or Wedgies?

Artist working outdoors, Union Square

Chess game, Union Square

Near 42nd Street

In Williamsburg

The shell of St. Vincent's Hospital, soon to
be a luxury condo development

Inside reedspace, on Orchard Street

Looking at Orchard Street, from the reedspace
front window and door

Young homeless man, with his book
of stickers he collects, East Village

At the Essex Street Market

Jazz band, at Warehouse Cafe, Jersey City

Street fair, Midtown

In Williamsburg

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Quote: Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman
(photo by
Monica Simoes)

"At first we [she and Jim Hubbard, at the New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, which they co-founded in 1987, the same year as ACT UP started] showed artists who were experimental. That is to say, they experimented. "Experimental" meant that each artist singularly tried out their own eccentric idea, their own imaginative way, and then they looked at each others' discoveries. They learned how to be artists by making art, talking about art, looking at art, being with artists. Whether or not one went to graduate school was irrelevant (and still is) to whether or ont one was really an artist. But at some point around the height of AIDS/gentrification this shifted. Those true experimenters who needed to earn a living in the rapidly shifting gentrification economy were channeled by inflation into teaching jobs. The increasing number of MFA programs became the only way that artists could earn a living beyond waitressing or copyediting at night at law firms. MFA programs became workfare for writers, as rents skyrocketed, as arts funding--already so elite as to be culturally damaging--was practically eliminated. It was like the role of the artist in society had devolved from WPA to NEA to MFA. Their students started producing inside a now established genre called "experimental". It wasn't actually any longer experimental, but it was a fixed set of derivative paradigms, invented by their teachers--many of whom did not have MFAs." (p. 102)

***

"Of course now that the noose has tightened even further, civilian artists are systematically excluded from teaching, as having an MFA [or Ph.D., for poets] has become mandatory for hiring. Being a product of MFA acculturation is now more important in determining who will influence students than what that person has achieved artistically. So, the frame of information and impulse becomes even more narrow and irrelevant and its product even more banal." (p. 103)

***

"Despite the fact that these programs are homogenizing and corrupting and bad for the culture, I feel that when I am advising working-class or poor students with talent, I have to insist that they go to them. There is simply no other way of getting into the system. As damaging as these programs are when they codify or elevate ruling-class perspectives and middlebrow practitioners, they become the only hope for outsiders to have a chance to be let in. It's a conundrum. Hopefully a talented person can emerge from these programs without a highly distorted sense of their own importance, and if they come originally from the margins this is more likely. But as far as I can see, MFA programs have done nothing to break down the barrier that full-character plays with authorial universes (not performance art, vaudeville, or stand-up) and authentic lesbian protagonists face in the theatrical marketplace. So although they do help certain minority voices who have had the support and sophistication to access and survive the system, overall they reinforce the dominant cultural voice, the clubbiness and repetition and most importantly, the group mentality that is, itself, counterindicated for art making." (p. 108)

-- Copyright © Sarah Schulman, from The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012, pp. 102-3. All rights reserved.

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James Turrell at the Guggenheim

I did not see nor wait in line for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Rain Room" (nor have I queued up, beginning at 5:30 am, for a cronut--yet), so I cannot say definitively that James Turrell's (1934-) exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum is the most crowd-pleasing New York City art show of the summer, but I won't hesitate to urge anyone who is in anywhere near upper Manhattan, has a few hours, and wants to be delighted and lulled by Turrell's artistry to catch the show.

Afrum I (White), 1967 (iPhone drawing by John Keene)

Ronin (1968), Fluorescent light,
dimensions variable
© James Turrell / Photo: Courtesy the Stedelijk Museum

Running until September 25, and James Turrell's first exhibition since 1980 in a New York City museum, the show gathers together several differing and compelling examples of this artist's work, which employs and explores light, color, space, and the possibilities human perception. The show-stopper, which I had heard people rave about and thus had to experience firsthand, is Aten Reign (2013), his transformation of the Guggenheim's rotunda into a sublime oculus that fills and shifts with natural and artificial light depending upon the position of the sun and time of day, the weather, and perhaps other mechanisms I'm unaware of. When I entered the museum, the rotunda was a pale yellow, and I thought, pretty but ho hum, certainly an accomplishment but not worthy of all the hullabaloo. I preceded up the spiral to view the smaller light displays in the Annex-level galleries, about which I'll say a little more below, and was impressed, though the long line to see the topmost piece, a bit of a dud that plays deeply with one's sense of space and vision, did peeve me. I returned downstairs and decided to stand at the periphery of the oculus and draw it, since photography was forbidden. (I had been drawing in my sketchbook, so I decided to see if I could get away with using my phone.)

Aten Reign, 2013 (iPhone drawing by John Keene)

Rendering for Aten Reign (2013), Daylight and
LED light, © James Turrell / Rendering: Andreas Tjeldflaat,
2012 © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

As one of Turrell's famous Skypaces--and evocative in particular of his Roden Crater Project (1979-, the cinder cone crater he has remade in Flagstaff, Arizona), and of Meeting (1986), at New York's P.S. 1--Aten Reign demonstrates his sense of how to use light as a painterly and sculptural tool and device, in order to transform sensory perception. The rain clouds, which necessitated an umbrella, and late afternoon hour paid off, because by the time I had reached the rotunda it was beginning to dramatically and rapidly shift. Green, orange, yellow, and my favorite, an almost unbearably exquisite lavender that held for several minutes, before giving way to a tranquil, transcendent blue. I wanted to lie down on the mat that had been placed in the center of the floor to peer up at it, but there were no openings and none of the people there in deep thrall to the beautiful dance of light and hue appeared willing to move (I later read that the guards did cycle people in and out), so I walked around the periphery, drawing, staring up, in a reverie, just watching the unpredictable palette, until I decided to depart.

Prado (White), 1967

Curated by Carmen Giménez, Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, and Nat Trotman, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and organized in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the show also included wall-sized backlighted pieces (Ronin, 1968) and projected light works: Afrum I (White), 1967) and Prado (White), 1967. There was only one real line to view one of the artworks, and it was a very long one, the line, that is, not the artwork, that stretched halfway up the final summit of the Guggenheim's spiral, and took about 45 minutes to get through (I stood for a longer period to see Christian Marclay's The Clock, but the payoff was huge), to see Iltar, 1976, an example of one of Turrell's Ganzfeld works, in which a volume of light exists without discernable limits and boundaries, and can produce equally accurate perceptions and interpretations of reality. In the Iltar room, which was divided, museum visitors stood in one space and encountered a "sensing space," a room or space that gathered its light energy from another area. In the case of Iltar, the effect was akin to peering into what looked like a cloud--only there was nothing there, no mist, no real light, only the production of an effect based on a structural device Turrell had created. It was intriguing, but ultimately, I thought, not worth the wait. Perhaps a smaller space--a gallery or several?--will host Turrell exhibits comprising a series of Ganzfelde--but make sure they're available for visitation for much greater hours than was the case to see Iltar.

The line to see Turrell's Iltar (1976)

The line to see Turrell's Iltar (1976)

Ultimately Aten Reign is worth the price of admission, or at least doesn't make shelling out $20 or so dollars that bad (though catch it on the Guggenheim's free day/night or use a student/elderly pass if you have one). And if you have to muscle--er, politely request that someone lift herself or himself off that circular pad so that you have an opportunity to stare up at the lightshow, well...I'm not counseling aggressive behavior, but when in Rome....

The entrance to Iltar (1976)

Iltar (1976), Tungsten light, dimensions variable
© James Turrell / Photo: Courtesy James Turrell

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Easy Art Salon, featuring Erica Doyle and Reggie Harris

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to participate once again in ongoing Easy Art Salon series, hosted at the beautiful Brooklyn home of scholar and writer Robert Reid-Pharr. Instead of reading I served as curator, and invited award-winning poets R. Erica Doyle and Reginald Harris, both of whom have new books out this year, to read and talk about their work before an intimate audience. One of the hallmarks of the series is its laid-back feel, and it was an increasingly warm and muggy evening so everyone was probably a bit more relaxed than usual, but both poets brought their own special heat and the event to a lively crescendo.

Erica read first, from her first full collection Proxy (Belladonna Press, 2013), and led us into a world bracketed by 9/11 and loss, and animated by the politics of desire and sex. Erica is a brilliant storyteller, and drew upon her narrative skills in creating a poetic portrait of a life in and out of crisis. Reggie read from Autogeography, his second book, which won this past year's Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Second Book Prize. A map of a self or selves, Reggie's poems guided us, as Erica superbly put it during the Q&A, like thread through a needle into his distinctive vision. As part of the event, artist Ricardo Osmondo Francis exhibited selected works, all of which were for sale, at $100 and under.

Afterwards, the reading turned into a little party, a great way to close out a beautiful Sunday evening of poetry and art.

The readers, Reginald Harris and Erica Doyle
(your truly at left in the striped shirt)
(photo by David Barclay Moore)

Reggie watching as Erica reads from Proxy

Two members of the audience (Mark at right)

The audience

More members of the audience
(Robert at right, in the salmon shirt)

Erica watching as Reggie reads

Artist Ricardo Osmondo Francis
with some of his artwork

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Emotional Outreach Project 5.0 Now Live in Berlin!

TRD-Berlin @ REH-Kunst

If you happen to be in Berlin up through the end of August, please do visit This Red Door's exhibition space there, where you'll see amidst the many exciting performances, installations, readings and talks, and artworks on display my little Emotional Outreach cards, which, I think it's fair to say, may be especially appropriate given the particular moment we're living through right now. Here are some photos, courtesy of TRD and Jomar Statkun, of the TRD-Berlin space, at REH Kunst, and of the Emotional Outreach Project display.

And don't forget, if you do pick up some cards, and give them away, use them or just have thoughts about them, feel free to drop me a note at fieldresearchstudygroup [AT] gmail.com or [AT] yahoo.com. So far I've been bombarded with appeals from my overseas brethren to help them gain release of their impounded funds, but I'd much rather receive even brief notes about the cards and their use! Vielen dank!

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Quote: Enrique Vila-Matas

"39) 'Adieu' is a brief text by Rimbaud included in A Season in Hell, in which the poet does indeed appear to be saying farewell to literature: 'Autumn already! But why yearn for an eternal sun if we are committed to the discovery of divine light, far away from those who die at different seasons?'

"A mature Rimbaud - 'Autumn already!' - a mature Rimbaud at the age of nineteen bids farewell to what for him is the illusion of Christianity, to the various stages his poetry has been through, to his illuminist principles, in short to his huge ambition. And before him he glimpses a new path: 'I tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new languages. I thought I had acquired supernatural powers. Now you see! I must bury my imagination and my memories! The beautiful glory of an artist and storyteller snatched away!'"

"He ends with a statement that has become famous, clearly a farewell of the first order: 'One must be absolutely modern. No songs; hold on to a step that has been taken.'"

"All the same, even though [André] Derain did not send it to me, I prefer a simpler farewell to literature, much more straightforward than Rimbaud's 'Adieu.' It is to be found in the draft of A Season in Hell and reads as follows: 'I can now say that art is an idiocy.'"

-- Copyright © from Bartleby & Co., Enrique Vila-Matas, translated by Jonathan Dunne, New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2007. All rights reserved.

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Reinventing Abstraction: New York Painting in the 1980s @ Cheim & Read

It has been a good year for art exhibits on abstraction so far. Last summer, the Guggenheim Museum mounted a show entitled "Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949-1960," and this summer returns with another show drawing from its rich holdings in abstract art with "New Harmony: Abstraction between the Wars, 1919-1939," which I went to see last week. The Museum of Modern Art held its "Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925" from December 2012 to April of this year, which the art journal October examined extensively this past winter in its "Abstraction: A Special Issue" edition (No. 143). Sunday is the final day to see "Brothers and Sisters," a sprightly exhibit focusing on the conversation Beauford Delany's (1901-1979) abstract works open up with those of other 20th and 21st century black artists, ranging from Jack Whitten and Alma Thomas to Glenn Ligon and Julie Mehretu. And certainly there are many more exhibits across the city.

One I dropped by last night was "Reinventing Abstraction: New York Painting in the 1980s," curated by New York-based artist and scholar Raphael Rubinstein, at Cheim & Read gallery. Rubinstein's focus is on New York artists born between the chronological window of 1939 and 1949 who were painting in the 1980s, the decade now mostly associated with movements such Neo-Expres-bsionism, Appropriation Art, Neo-Geo, identity-based art, and so on. As Rubinstein notes in his rationale for the exhibit, these artists, in their 30s and 40s during this moment, were not so much concerned with a "'return to painting'" as with "finding a bridge between the radical, deconstructive abstraction of the late 1960s and 1970s...with a larger painting history and more subjective approaches." 

From including elements excluded in the prior decade, such as a return to a conventional rectangular support, to allusions to figuration and landscape painting, to allusions drawn from art history and the wider culture, these works mark an important shift in New York abstract painting practice, yet it remains that case that these artists and their work still have not received extensive critical treatment or been regularly shown together, thus Rubinstein's show, which is not just expertly mounted, but instructive and generative in the conversations it opens up between and among the works. From the inclusion of biomorphic imagery to contestations with the frame to the presence of autobiography to attempts to counter the strong influence Color Field painting, these works suggest and point to shared challenges, struggles and achievements that suggest a new stage in abstraction that subsequent generations of painters in New York and elsewhere have built on.  

Moreover, the works themselves harmonize with each other, not in mirroring or echoing fashion, but in their often consonant visual grammars and approaches. One question a viewer might ask is given how extensive abstract painting in 1980s New York was, why such a small show, and Rubinstein's response is that he wanted to zero in on a "specific generation" that contributed to it. As he says, his titling of the exhibition was inspired by painter Carrie Moyer, "who, writing about Stephen Mueller in 2011, identified his as 'the generation that reinvented American abstract painting.'" That may be too tendentious a gesture, but Rubinstein's show does succeed in showing that Moyer's statement does have real basis in fact, which is to say, in the persuasive, beautiful, provocative works themselves.  Some photos from the Cheim & Read exhibit, and a few from the "New Harmony" exhibit at the Guggenheim.

At Cheim & Read:

Raphael Rubinstein (l) chatting with artist Gary Stephan (r)

Joan Snyder, Beanfield with Music, 1984

Stanley Whitney, Sixteen Songs, 1984

Elizabeth Murray, Sentimental Education, 1982

Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (6-30), 1988

Terry Winters, Point, 1985

Carroll Dunham, Horizontal Bands, 1982

And at the Guggenheim:

Frantisek Kupka, Form of Blue, 1925

Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, All, 1984

Francis Picabia, The Child Carburetor, 1919-1939

In the galleries, Guggenheim Museum

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