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July 13, 2007
Hirst Shark Finds New Home; PERFORMA 07 Commissions Announced
As soon as Damien Hirst began replacing the rotting shark in that famous work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, the art world began speculating where its owner, the hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, would show the piece. Carol Vogel of the New York Times reports that this week, the Met confirmed that the shark will go on view in its modern and contemporary art galleries by Labor Day weekend. It will be there for two to three years.
“When Steve Cohen acquired it, I sent him an e-mail asking if we could show it,” said Gary Tinterow, the Met’s curator in charge of nineteenth-century, modern, and contemporary art. Cohen bought the piece in 2004 for eight million dollars, which at the time was one of the highest prices paid for a contemporary work of art. He released a statement saying, “I am very excited that the piece will be displayed at the Met with other art-historical treasures.”
In other news, Carlos Amorales, Nathalie Djurberg, Japanther, Isaac Julien, Daria Martin, Kelly Nipper, Adam Pendleton, Yvonne Rainer, and Francesco Vezzoli have been commissioned to create new works for PERFORMA 07. The PERFORMA commissions program, with a fund of approximately $350,000, helps artists realize their visions of live performances, some of them for the first time. All of the PERFORMA 07 commissions will have their world or US premiere in New York City during PERFORMA. The commissioned works range widely in media, from the films of Isaac Julien to Japanther's mix of skateboarding, live music, and dance.
July 12, 2007
Emin Receives Honorary Degree; Schnabel and Uklanski Short-Listed for Film Award
Artist Tracey Emin has been given an honorary degree at the University of Kent, reports BBC News. Emin, raised in Margate, was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 1999 and has had solo exhibitions across the world. She is currently representing Britain at the Venice Biennale. She received her honorary doctorate today alongside actor Sir Michael Gambon at Canterbury Cathedral.
In other news, Julian Schnabel and Piotr Uklanski are among the nominees for the Gucci Group Award, which is dedicated to personalities outside the movie industry who have made an outstanding contribution to a film. The Gucci Group and the Venice Film Festival announced the short list. Variety reports that Schnabel, winner of this year’s director’s award at Cannes for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, will vie for the honor with Uklanski, nominated for his spaghetti western Summer Love, and photographer Anton Corbijn, Korean novelist Lee Chang-dong, and Indian journalist Bhavna Talwar.
July 11, 2007
Huberman and Fried to Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis has appointed Anthony Huberman chief curator, reports David Bonetti in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Huberman, who was born in Geneva, will assume his position this summer. He will replace Shannon Fitzgerald, who was fired amid controversy. In 2006 and 2007, Huberman, an Artforum contributor, was a curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. From 2003 to 2006, he was a curator at SculptureCenter in New York City, and from 1999 to 2003, he was director of education and public programs at P.S. 1. In a prepared statement, director Paul Ha said: “Anthony's exceptional skills and innovative approach to curating make him an outstanding addition to the Contemporary's leadership team.” Also joining the curatorial team as assistant curator is Laura Fried, who most recently was curatorial fellow at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. She will also begin this summer.
July 11, 2007
Hammer Museum Receives Large Gift from Marxes
The UCLA Hammer Museum has been chosen by Colorado developer Larry Marx and his wife, Susan, to inherit their collection of drawings and other works on paper by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and other major postwar figures. The Los Angeles Times reports that neither the museum nor the Marxes placed a dollar value on the gift, which Gary Garrels, the Hammer's chief curator and deputy director of exhibitions, said has been written into the Marxes' will (a fact first relayed in a New York Times article on Sunday). The Hammer will have a free hand in borrowing or displaying pieces from the collection until the Aspen-based couple dies or decides to convey them. The collection also includes works by Claes Oldenburg, Richard Diebenkorn, Philip Guston, and Brice Marden. “For us, this is an absolute dream collection, a cornerstone for decades to come,” Garrels said. The Marxes, sixty-one-year-old Stanford graduates, continue to collect drawings and other works on paper and plan to add to the portfolio bound for the Hammer.
July 9, 2007
Richard Prince's Second House Destroyed by Lightning
An act of nature has destroyed Richard Prince’s Second House, an art installation located near the artist’s home in Rensselaerville, New York, reports Artnet. On June 28, lightning hit the building, sparking a fire that reduced the wood structure to ashes. The house, along with the eighty acres surrounding it, were acquired in 2005 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which committed to keeping the unique project open to the public ten years before transferring its contents to its own collection. One notable component of the work was a suite of eleven Prince sculptures made as casts of actual car hoods, but they were not in the building at the time of the fire, according to the Guggenheim press office. However, all the other items in the installation, which included a joke painting, planters made from old tires, a table made from a basketball backboard, a jewelry cabinet displaying a necklace fashioned from bread fasteners, and a selection of first-edition books about Woodstock from Prince’s library, are presumed to have been lost to the flames.
July 9, 2007
INTERNATIONAL NEWS DIGEST
July 9, 2007
Free Museums in France?; Abu Dhabi Agency Trouble; Spain's Museum Boom; Wyss Says Good-bye to Criticism; Hopper at Serpentine; Lacroix at Arles; Paris Hilton as Art
FRANCE TO “EXPERIMENT” WITH FREE MUSEUMS
French prime minister François Fillon has announced that France will experiment with free admission to certain state museums in Paris and beyond, measuring the effects over the course of an unspecified trial period. In an editorial for Le Figaro, Emmanuel Fessy questions the policy, which has already been adopted—with notable success—in Great Britain. “What if free museums were not actually a good idea?” asks Fessy. The Louvre welcomes 7.6 million visitors every year—two thirds of whom are foreigners—and collects €40 million ($54.5 million) from the sale of tickets to its permanent collections alone. Apart from lost revenues, free museums “will only increase the pernicious sentiment of no-cost culture,” writes Fessy, “a sentiment already fed by the development of the Internet and the explosion of music and film piracy.”
In an interview with Le Monde, French cultural minister Christine Albanel takes a slightly different stance on the new policy. “Fillon's decision to experiment goes in the right direction,” says Albanel. “It will allow for in-depth studies about the impact of free museums on museum frequentation. The goal is known: How to attract a public that never goes? This question has been raised for the last thirty years. Is free access the best way to respond? Is the solution to set up free hours or more attractive entry fees according to age? All these options will be considered.”
Otherwise, Albanel denies charges that she doesn't have an eye—or penchant, for that matter—for contemporary art. While heading the Versailles castle, Albanel notes, she invited Buren, Alberola, Varini, Matali, and Crasset. “I like Annette Messager a lot—I inaugurated her exhibition at the Centre Pompidou—and Sophie Calle, whose work is at the French pavilion.” Albanel admits that it's “absurd” to pretend to like everything. “I have my tastes. Certain works leave me cold, notably those that exist only within the abstract discourse that surrounds them. My personal opinion is that a work of art should both exist and touch [spectators] on its own.”
AGENCE IN TROUBLE IN ABU DHABI
The agency recently established to manage the opening of Abu Dhabi's branch of the Louvre is already searching for a new director. As Le Monde's Emmanuel de Roux reports, Agence Internationale des Musées—which was created this April, shortly after the signing of the official agreement between France and Abu Dhabi—should have met this week under the directorship of Jean d'Haussonville to agree on the agency's statutes. But the Louvre requested that d'Haussonville be replaced—perhaps as part of an attempt to restrict the agency from working on other international expansion projects. “For her part, Christine Albanel, the new minister of culture,” writes de Roux, “changed the statutes ‘to replace the museums at the heart of the project’ while insisting that the agency should concentrate on Abu Dhabi.”
In other news, Le Monde and AFP report that the Sultan of Oman has donated €5 million ($6.8 million) to the Louvre. The generous donation will go toward financing the museum's new sections for Islamic art, which are currently in development. The new wing is expected to open in 2010—two years before the completion of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
MUSEUMS VS. HOSPITALS IN SPAIN?
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung's Klaus Englert takes a critical look at Spain's museum-building boom. The success of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao—which effectively transformed “a gray industrial city on the River Nervión” into “one of the most popular destinations for cultural pilgrimages”—has had a ripple effect throughout the country. “León's Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Málaga's Picasso museum, and many other Spanish art centers are manifestations of a boom,” writes Englert. “Since the '90s, museums have been springing up all over, be it in the capital, Madrid, or in towns like Malpartida de Cáceres in the remote Extremadura—all in the hope of re-creating the 'Bilbao effect.'”
In some cases, these booms have a nefarious effect on the local social structure. Although León has a population of 135,000, the city's Museo de Arte Contemporaneo is one of Spain's largest museums for contemporary art. The design—by Madrid architects Luis Mansilla und Emilio Tuñón—was honored with the prestigious Mies van der Rohe prize. “At the same time,” writes Englert, “León is neglecting its historical heritage—along with its social needs.” According to the Spanish writer Julio Llamazares, “There are places that have neither hospitals nor important infrastructure but that have a contemporary art museum. Like cathedrals once were, these museums have today become important advertisements for the cities.”
WYSS BIDS FAREWELL TO THEORY
On the occasion of Documenta 12, art historian Beat Wyss is turning his back on his own profession, declaring the death of not art, but theory. “The art world is abounding like never before,” writes Wyss in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, “although—or better said—precisely because it no longer relies on theoretical substantiations. Art has learned to run like Zarathustra; now it no longer wants to be confronted with anything—least of all with the art-critical writing guild.” For Wyss, the judgments once delivered by theory and criticism have been replaced by those of the market, which gives artworks both keywords and criteria for evaluation. “It's not about questions of style, nor political theory,” writes Wyss. “Now, it's just like in retail: The price does the talking. And the parties. And who was invited.”
HOPPER AT SERPENTINE; LACROIX AT ARLES
Apropos parties over theory: The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that Dennis Hopper—actor, director, photographer, painter—will be on hand to promote the Serpentine's upcoming annual summer fundraising party. Joined by star architect Zaha Hadid, Hopper will shake hands with the moneyed guests and take photographs, which are slated for publication in the British magazine Tatler.
In an interview with The Guardian's Stuart Jeffries, Hopper reflects on his newest role. “I guess this is the time of year when someone like me should be making movies,” Hopper told the newspaper. “They seem to have conned me into greeting people. I've never done anything like that in my life before. I don't know how good I'm going to be at this, but I'm going to give it a try.”
It seems Hopper is not the only star ready to explore new crossovers in the world of art. AFP and Le Monde report that the fashion designer Christian Lacroix has been named as a curator for the next annual photography festival in Arles, France: the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d'Arles in 2008.
PARIS HILTON AS “SOCIAL SCULPTURE”
When Joseph Beuys coined the term “social sculpture,” he probably didn't have Paris Hilton in mind. But if everyone is an artist, then why not a socialite/ex-convict? Writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Christian Schlüter explores the possibility. “Paris Hilton and the whole media brouhaha is a contemporary work of art—a work of social sculpture,” writes Schlüter. “On the one hand, this work's special charm lies in its perfect self-serving ends—it stands literally only for itself—and on the other hand, in the ubiquitous usability of this characteristic.” Perhaps paradoxically, the “self” driven by such marketing shares yet another quality with the art world, namely the astronomical prices spent on art at recent auctions. “The only difference is that Paris will grow older,” writes Schlüter, “and yet never so old as a Monet.”
— Jennifer Allen
July 9, 2007
Silas H. Rhodes (1915–2007)
Silas H. Rhodes, the founder and chairman of the School of Visual Arts, died in his sleep on June 28, at age ninety-one. Rhodes cofounded the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in 1947, renaming it the School of Visual Arts in 1956. He wrote articles for Graphis and the Society of Illustrators Annual, among other publications. Rhodes won over one hundred awards from various professional groups and organizations including AIGA, the professional association for design, the Society of Illustrators, the One Club, and the National Cartoonists Society. In 2004, Mr. Rhodes received the medal of the AIGA, the nation’s highest honor in the field of design, placing him in the company of Alfred Knopf, Philip Johnson, and Saul Bass.
Milton Glaser, a faculty and board member at SVA since 1961, has been named acting chairman of the board. “Silas Rhodes lived a rich and remarkable life,” said Glaser. “His unwavering devotion to art education has benefited thousands of students and teachers over the last half-century.”
July 9, 2007
John Szarkowski (1925–2007)
John Szarkowski, a curator who almost single-handedly elevated photography’s status in the last half-century to that of a fine art, making his case in seminal writings and landmark exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, died in on Saturday in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was eighty-one.
Writes Philip Gefter of the New York Times, in the early 1960s, when Szarkowski began his curatorial career, photography was commonly perceived as a utilitarian medium, a means to document the world. Perhaps more than anyone, Szarkowski changed that perception. For him, the photograph was a form of expression as potent and meaningful as any work of art, and as director of photography at the Modern for almost three decades, beginning in 1962, he was perhaps the medium's most impassioned advocate. Two of his books, The Photographer’s Eye (1964) and Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (1973), remain syllabus staples in art-history programs.
Szarkowski was first to confer importance on the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand in his influential exhibition “New Documents” at MoMA in 1967. In 2006, Szarkowski had a solo show at MoMA featuring his own photographs.