national
artblog goes to florida, california and new york too.
Juan Downey; the invisible architect at the Bronx Museum
Juan Downey was an important, yet under-recognized pioneer of video (and worked in a variety of other media), who was active in the downtown art scene in New York, where he moved in 1967 and remained until his premature death in 1993. A substantial body of his work has not been seen in the U.S. in decades. The Bronx Museum of the Arts and MIT’s List Visual Art Center have organized this large and stunning, first U.S. survey, Juan Downey; the invisible architect, which is on view in the Bronx through June 10. If you are interested in video, video ... More » »
We find Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, with the help of Dayton
by Dayton Castleman “So where the hell is Bentonville, Arkansas, anyway?” began the ever-so-subtly titled 2006 Artblog post, “The Hunt for Bentonville.” The article was one of several related to the sale of Thomas Eakins’ “The Gross Clinic” to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, located just north of the Bentonville town square, and just a few short miles from the headquarters of Walmart, the world’s largest corporation. Bentonville will also be my new home come July, having been drawn there simply by the chance to be a part of making a mark, as an empty canvas of the art ... More » »
My heart in San Francisco
Recession-proof Union Square is finally looking a little frayed around the edges. On this visit we saw a number of closed storefronts where there had been businesses before. We also saw scrappy young galleries closer in to the center of things, which says to me that rents are down. But the place is still glorious–and green. Even the hotel is green, with recycling bins and reduced linens laundering. Big deal, you may say, but on a recent trip to New York, we stayed in a hotel room with only trash cans. In a parking lot next to Crissy Field in ... More » »
San Francisco part 1–a gallery find
The pleasure of happening on unexpected art–maybe a stencil on the sidewalk, maybe a public sculpture–happened more than once to me last week in San Francisco. The first time was a gallery window I passed while walking toward Union Square. The work was a taxidermied deer head attached to an ultra-long neck hanging off of a modest wooden trophy placque. The head and neck were covered in a homey, crocheted sweater with wooden buttons. The merger of the traditional tender craft with a macho trophy, the luchera mask (or is it a balaclava?) with the Dr. Who scarf, pulled me ... More » »
Rick Prol’s WEEGEE at Grey Art Gallery in Williamsport, PA
Rick Prol’s “Weegee” at the Grey Art Gallery in Williamsport, PA is a throwback to a New York when the world was black and white and crime scenes dominated the news, the streets and the public’s imagination. The artist whose career surfaced from the rubble of the East Village scene in the 1980s, captured a similar sort of crime world with his own art. Like Weegee (Arthur Fellig) who roamed New York’s Lower East Side looking for, finding and dramatizing death, Prol is also a legend who scratched the surfaces and came up with something equally unsettling and equally beautiful. ... More » »
Two Quiet Guys in New York – Rob Matthews and the late Bill Walton
Two Philladelphia artists, Rob Matthews and the late Bill Walton currently have one person shows in New York. Although nothing (but Philadelphia) really connects these two shows, it seemed like a good pairing as both artists fill their respective gallery spaces with a range of small and large exquisite works. And while both shows are basically monochromatic, they feel rich and textured with thoughtful visual constructions. First, to the late Bill Walton, who is the inaugural exhibition at JTT, a new gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side (LES). Seen in conjunction with additional pieces installed a few blocks away at ... More » »
At the National Gallery of Art: Mel Bochner and others
Mel Bochner; In the Tower at the National Gallery of Art (NGA, through April 29, 2012) includes thirty works on paper from the 1960s, most from the group known as Thesaurus portraits, and a room full of recent, large, colorful canvases for which the artist returned to the thesaurus as a starting-point. The use of language and block letters may suggest a conceptual and systematic order and rationality behind these forty years’ work; but dressed up as they are in the protective pedantry of word lists and generic typeface, they instead reflect the personal, idiosyncratic, probing, always intelligent and often ... More » »
Notes from Bushwick: Luhring Augustine, Big Reality, and Regina Rex
The Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn has been a haven of cheap rent for artists and newcomers to New York for at least the last five to ten years as Williamsburg increasingly became overly expensive. The venues of Bushwick are multitudinous: from music lofts, to clean galleries, to someone’s studio. A recent twist in the neighborhood’s development was the opening of Chelsea gallery Luhring Augustine’s satellite space in February. The grey painted façade of the building blends in with its industrial neighbors while standing out as mint construction. I asked the gallery attendants sitting at a desk in the lobby what ... More » »
Buildings and Contraptions R Us – DCCA’s 2012 Gretchen Hupfel symposium
We went to DCCA March 24 for the 2012 Gretchen Hupfel Symposium’s Saturday panels. The topics covered building, cities, and objects, recycling, making versus appropriating — all topics that are hot in the art world these days. Sadly, we missed Marshall Brown‘s apparently memorable keynote talk Friday night. But the architect made some sparky comments during the panel sessions that gave us a glimpse of his broad understanding of the topics at hand. Art historian and freelance curator Susan Isaacs chaired the panel on construction, with four artists–Leah Bailis and Anthony Cervino, featured in the show “Under Construction,” which the ... More » »
Mark Kostabi – Move to New York, you’re not getting any younger!
Mark Kostabi is well known for his accomplishments and controversies. The biggest controversy surrounding Kostabi is his ability to market paintings that he may or may not have touched. This seems overblown considering successful artists have always used studio assistants to help in the mass manufacturing of art. Kostabi’s irreverence towards the artist’s hand is by design, I suspect he is involved in the creation of his paintings to a large extent, contrary to his media persona. Cult of personality is being carefully cultivated in Kostabi’s world. Mark makes no apologies for his pursuit of fame, fortune and what it ... More » »
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