John Baldessari Retrospective

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Largest John Baldessari Retrospective Exhibition Ever Mounted in Spain

A visitor observes some of the works of art made by John Baldessari on view at MACBA. EFE/Toni Garriga

BARCELONA.- Thirteen minutes and one same hand that writes a single phrase, “I will not make any more boring art”, over and over again on a blank sheet of paper, like the most banal of school punishments. The work is in fact entitled I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) and its author is John Baldessari (National City, California, 1931). “I love the idea that, in a world in which everything has a use, it’s possible to make something gratuitous; and I love to leave people a little unsettled.” Under the title John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, taken from one of his first works exploring language, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) presents the largest retrospective exhibition ever mounted in Spain dedicated to one of the most innovative and venerated artists on the international scene. The display features more than 130 works created between 1962 and 2009 which, following shows first in London (Tate Modern) and now in Barcelona (MACBA), will travel to Los Angeles (Los Angeles County Museum) and New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art). “It’s a bit scary to have so much acceptance. You tend to wonder what you’re doing wrong” says the artist, who received the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement at the last Venice Biennale. Curated by Leslie Jones, Jessica Morgan and Bartomeu Marí, the exhibition brings together many of his most relevant works, such as God Nose (1965), whose floating nose was a prelude to his recent sculptures of noses and ears emphasised to the point of absurdity; Cremation Project (1970), which marked Baldessari’s burning of all the canvasses he had produced between May 1953 and March 1966, accompanied by its corresponding urn, commemorative plaque and death notice published in the San Diego Union newspaper; Commissioned Paintings (1969), in which he ridicules Al Held’s declaration that “all conceptual art is just pointing at things” by making a hand that points at something ordinary in the painting appear in each of his works; and Baldessari Sings LeWitt (1972), featuring the artist singing every one of Sol LeWitt’s thirty-five conceptual statements to the music of different popular tunes, such as Singing in the Rain and the American national anthem. Born in National City, California, in 1931, John Baldessari is undoubtedly one of the most influential artists of our time. He has challenged the conventions of artistic practices by employing language and imagery in unexpected ways. The exhibition begins with Baldessari’s early works made during the 1960s, when he was working as a painter, primarily using oil on canvas. These paintings represent some of those that survived the artist’s infamous Cremation Project. On 24 July 1970, Baldessari incinerated all the work made prior to 1966 that still remained in his possession, leaving behind the ashes in a book-shaped urn as a testimony to the event. This drastic act was a result of the artist’s doubts concerning the dominant art form of the time and symbolised his artistic rebirth. The composition and content of these early paintings were never traditional, already embodying Baldessari’s sense of humour and wit. Fascinated by the idea that art could be taught, Art Lesson (1964) and Art Lesson #3 (1967) mock the preaching of art instruction manuals. God Nose (1965), a Pop-style painting of the sky with a cloud and floating nose, plays with the title of the work and its imagery. This fascination with language is a theme that continues throughout the artist’s work until the present. Working in the cultural isolation of National City and not in Los Angeles, California’s art nucleus, allowed Baldessari a certain freedom to experiment and do what he wanted without being scrutinised by an audience. In 1966 he began taking photos in a working class suburb of his hometown, National City. The pictures were intentionally non-spectacular and mundane, often taken from the car without looking through the viewfinder. As an antithesis to Pop art, Baldessari adopted an anti-heroic attitude by documenting ingenious actions instead of monumentalising his subjects. The photos were enlarged and transferred onto canvas, and then commercial sign painters painted equally prosaic texts identifying each site. These photo and text pieces created new meanings and tensions between images and words and marked a pivotal turning point in Baldessari’s artistic trajectory. Baldessari later went one step further in his inquiry of prevailing art-world aesthetics by dropping imagery all together from his canvases, as well as removing himself entirely from the art-producing context. Baldessari hired assistants to prepare the canvases and sign painters to paint the lettering on them. The texts were appropriated from various sources ranging from clothing labels to theories on art history, which the artist sometimes manipulated. Clement Greenberg (1966–68) displays text from the critic claiming that art is about aesthetic impact, not ideas; while Everything is Purged… (1966–68) insinuates the contrary. A Painting that is its Own Documentation (1966–68) is a growing work that chronicles the exhibition details of each venue, adding new panels as and when necessary. This series of text paintings marked an important exploration of the way language is inextricably bound to our forms of understanding of art. ‘I sought to use language not as a visual element but something to read. That is, a notebook entry about painting could replace the painting... I was attempting to make something that didn’t emanate art signals. The only art signal I wanted was the canvas... [it was] important that I was the strategist. Someone else built and primed the canvases and took them to the sign painter, the texts are quotations from art books, and the sign painter was instructed not to attempt to make attractive, artful lettering but to letter the information in the most simple way.’ The concept of authorship was further addressed in the Commissioned Paintings (1969) series in which Baldessari hired amateur artists to produce paintings of photographs with which he provided them. The photographs are all pictures of a hand pointing at something ordinary. The inspiration for the series came from a criticism that said that Conceptual art was nothing more than pointing. Teaching has always been a significant and integral part of Baldessari’s life. In 1970 he was offered a position at the renowned California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) where he taught alongside influential contemporaries such as John Cage and Nam June Paik. Being exposed to their work and their respective mediums, music and video, made a significant impression on Baldessari. Music brought about the notion of temporality, which is reflected in his work through the use of multiple photos in a time sequence manner. Artist Hitting Various Objects with Golf Club (1972–73) chronicles the artist doing just that in 20 frames. Similarly, in other works the artist photographed his attempts to exhale cigar smoke in imitation of a small cloud or waving at boats passing by. With the recent introduction of the Sony Portapak and its availability at Cal Arts, Baldessari’s naturally experimented with the new medium. Initially made for his students, such videos as I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971), where the artist writes this sentence repeatedly in a notebook as if it were a punishment, and I Am Making Art (1971), in which Baldessari moves different parts of his body slightly while reciting this sentence, have become some of the artist’s most iconic video pieces. The artist’s foray into other media also included artist books such as Brutus Killed Caesar (1976), which consists of the images of two men, one on the left and one on the right, on every page. The image between them, the equivalent of the word ‘killed’ or the murder weapon, changes on every page. Starting with a knife and then a gun, the subsequent weapons are presented in an ascending degree of improbability. Having moved to Los Angeles, the proximity of Hollywood also found its way into Baldessari’s work. He adopted the work processes of the film-making industry as themes in works such as Story with 24 Versions (1974) and Scenario: Story Board (1972–73) where plots are sketched out scene by scene. Baldessari also appropriated imagery from film stills, which he found in local shops and meticulously categorised by content for inspiration and use in his works. Simultaneously, the pieces he created began to take on a larger scale, using the photographs as building blocks to suggest narratives. In Kiss/Panic (1984) there is a provocative juxtaposition of a couple kissing, with a seemingly chaotic crowd scene below, surrounded by photos of pointing guns. By the mid-1980s coloured dots began appearing on the faces of the characters in the found photographs. Baldessari discovered that obliterating the face gave even more anonymity to the subjects and therefore forced the viewer to focus on other aspects of the image to make sense of the scene. Although text is absent from the works themselves, language continued to play an important role in the form of suggestive titles, which for Baldessari are as significant as the piece itself. Bloody Sundae consists of two distinct scenes with the subjects composed in the form of an ice-cream dessert. On top, two men attack a third beside a stack of paintings, while beneath them a couple lounge decadently on a bed. All five faces are covered with coloured circles. The violence of the upper image coupled with the suggestive title, hints at a pending raid on the couple’s room. In the Goya Series (1997) Baldessari returned to the aesthetics of the National City series with simple parings of photos of ordinary objects and text. The curt sarcasm of the titles is inspired by a series of etchings by Francisco de Goya. Text also reassumes its role as the co-protagonist in the Prima Facie series. Portraits are juxtaposed with a range of adjectives that describe possible emotions or characteristics associated with the person’s facial expression – the idea being that you don’t know what anybody is thinking just from the expression on their face. In later works the signature coloured dots usurp the rest of the person, flattening the image and creating an abstraction of the human form. The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building/Person on Ledge of Tall Building/Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building (2003) has three such figures in compromising situations; however the filled-in silhouettes somehow attribute humour to what would be a dangerous scene. Baldessari revisits his ongoing interests in the parts of the body that identify visual sensitivity in the series Noses and Ears and Arms and Legs, in which these parts are isolated while other details of the body and environment are coloured in or omitted, leaving viewers the bare minimum to interpret the work. His most recent series Furrowed Eyebrows and Raised Foreheads, Baldessari continues his exploration of human expression through fragmentations. The works combine film stills of faces and bodies that are covered over by layers of paint or collage, or altered by the superimposition of paint over the foreheads and eyebrows. The sculpture from the new work Brain/Cloud (Two Views): with Palm Tree and Seascapes (2009) is reminiscent of the clouds in his first paintings: Falling Cloud (1965) and God Nose (1965). Baldessari’s long-term exploration of language and image coupled with his inquisitive approach to art making has expanded the parameters of what we consider art. His dedication as an educator has had – and still continues to have – a profound impact on generations of artists such as Rita McBride, Meg Cranston, Jack Goldstein, Allan McCollum, Matt Mullican, Richard Prince and Christopher Williams, among others.

John Baldessari Retrospective

Drawings by Eduardo Arranz-Bravo

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Preparatory Drawings by Eduardo Arranz-Bravo at Franklin Bowles Galleries

Eduardo Arranz-Bravo, 'Allons enfants', 2009. Oil on canvas, 79 X 79. Photo: Courtesy Franklin Bowles Galleries.

NEW YORK, NY.- Franklin Bowles Galleries announces the opening of "Arranz-Bravo: 2010". The joint exhibition features works on canvas and paper along with a series of unusual sculptures and preparatory drawings done while the artist was in residence at the Mercer Hotel located in the SoHo area of New York City in 2008. Eduardo Arranz-Bravo first came of age as an artist in the 1960’s and his aesthetic was inspired and nurtured during the emergence of American Pop Art. Arranz-Bravo was a friend to contemporary luminaries Richard Hamilton and Mel Ramos; he also collaborated on many projects and happenings with the Spanish pop artist, Rafael Bartolozzi. Working and exhibiting closely for over ten years, Arranz-Bravo and Bartolozzi brought back a new level of realism which emphasized formal subjects with a critical and ironic twist. In later years, the work of Arranz- Bravo evolved to include more elements of abstraction, although he seldom strayed from his humanistic roots. The Arranz-Bravo Foundation, located just outside Barcelona in L’hospitalet, was inaugurated in September 2009. The new director, Albert Mercade, will be organizing several exhibitions in 2010 in keeping with one of the foundation’s core missions: to work with the younger generation of Spanish artists, to support their artistic visions, and to sponsor exhibitions which promote their latest achievements. Arranz-Bravo, is very open to new trends in artistic expression and understands the need for ongoing dialogue with all generations of artists – past, present, and future. In 2010 the Foundation will feature a cataloged exhibition of self-portraits painted by Arranz-Bravo throughout his career. Eduardo Arranz -Bravo has exhibited steadily since his early days with Rafael Bartolozzi at Sala Gaspar and has been represented by the Franklin Bowles Galleries in the United States since 1997. Over the course of his career Arranz-Bravo has garnered many accolades and achievements, including the Gran premio and Medella de Oro at the International Biennale in Ibiza. He represented Spain at the XXXIX Venice Biennale, and was chosen as one of only three artists to help promote the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games through artistic work. His participation in this project resulted in the acquisition of 27 works by the Museo Olimpico in Lausanne, Switzerland. Currently the artist lives and works in Barcelona and Cadaques, Spain. His work is included in numerous public collections including the Museo Nacionál Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Skidmore Art Museum, Saratoga Springs and New York, USA; Museo d’Art Modern, Barcelona, Spain; Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil; and the Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain. Recent works of note are two important public sculpture commissions both located in "L’Hospitalet : L’Acollidora" (The Welcoming Woman) installed on a main street of the city, and the "Pont de la Libertat" (Bridge of Liberation) which spans a major crossroads in the city.

Drawings by Eduardo Arranz-Bravo

Pop Life: Good Business is the Best Art

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Pop Life at Hamburger Kunsthalle Proves that Good Business is the Best Art

The photography 'Spiritual America IV' featuring Brooke Shields by US artist Richard Prince is part of the exhibition 'Pop Life' at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, 09 February 2010. Some 320 works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are on display in the exhibition running from 12 February to 09 May after it was successfully presented in the London Tate Modern Gallery. EFE/Marcus Brandt.

HAMBURG.- The exhibition Pop Life takes Andy Warhol’s famously provocative claim that “good business is the best art” as the starting point for a completely new interpretation of the legacy of Pop art and the influence of its chief protagonists. Pop Life shows the various ways in which artists since the 1980s have engaged with the mass media, often involving the deliberate creation and cultivation of an artistic persona as a ‘brand’. The exhibition features works by Andy Warhol alongside key pieces by Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, Martin Kippenberger, Tracey Emin, Takashi Murakami and others. Some 320 exhibits will be on display, including paintings, drawings, photographs, magazines, sculptures, videos, merchandising products, spatial installations and a shop. Pop Life argues that Andy Warhol’s most radical lesson is reflected in the work of artists of subsequent generations who not only reproduce everyday culture in their artworks but also strategically infiltrate this realm, appropriating the mechanisms of the market, the mass media and the omnipresence of advertising in order to reach an audience far beyond the confines of the art gallery. The conflation of culture and commerce is commonly regarded as a betrayal of the values of modern art; Pop Life, on the other hand, shows that for many artists who came after Warhol, the fusion of the two realms is the only possible means of interacting with the modern world. One of the central themes of the exhibition is the performative aspect revealed by the self-presentation and role perception of artists within the spheres of the mass media and the art business. The artists themselves are actively involved in key areas – among other things as forgers, celebrities, publishers, art dealers, gallerists, business owners, curators, TV presenters, even auctioneers. They smuggle themselves in disguise into the operating systems of product and information circulation, exposing these mechanisms without having to take a personal stance. Here in lies the ambiguous content – affirmative and critical at once – of Pop Life. The exhibition begins with an examination of Andy Warhol’s late work, looking at his various roles as a television personality, an advertising icon and the publisher of Interview magazine – typical activities for that time. Highlights include a number of works from the initially controversial series that became known as the Retrospectives and Reversals. As reprisals of his own celebrated images of pop icons from the 1960s, these works prefigure installations by artists such as Martin Kippenberger or Tracey Emin. Like Warhol, these artists openly embrace the self-mythologizing impulse: they consider the creation of their public persona and its distribution as a brand to be one of the fundamental tools of their profession. Pop Life includes reconstructions of Keith Haring’s Pop Shop and Jeff Koons’s series Made in Heaven, which is rarely presented in its entirety. Haring opened the Pop Shop on New York’s Lafayette Street in 1986 to market his branded artistic signature in the form of merchandising products – including T-shirts, toys and magnets – that were aimed at the widest possible audience. In his series Made in Heaven, first shown at the 1991 Venice Biennale, Jeff Koons publicly celebrates his marital union with the Italian porn star Ilona Staller, also known as La Cicciolina. Several rooms in the Hamburg edition of Pop Life are dedicated to Martin Kippenberger. One special presentation that will only be shown here features early works from the collection of Gisela Stelly Augstein, a Hamburg-based filmmaker whom the artist much admired. With this display of black-and-white photo-paintings from Kippenberger’s series Un Tedesco in Firenze, along with the ‘Ideentafeln’ (idea panels), and numerous letters and postcards to Stelly Augstein, the exhibition allows visitors to experience at close quarters the early stages of his development into a skilful self-promoter and social analyst. Following in the tradition of Dada and Fluxus, Kippenberger’s provocative, mocking attacks were aimed at dismantling the traditional concept of art. A further section of the exhibition is devoted to the so-called ‘Young British Artists’, with particular emphasis being placed on their early activities. These include the shop opened by Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas in London’s Bethnal Green district, where the two artists created and sold their work. Renowned pieces by Gavin Turk are featured here alongside selected works from Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, Damien Hirst’s spectacular auction that took place in September 2008 at Sotheby’s in London. A specially commissioned new installation by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who has set up his own multinational company to distribute his art, will be shown in one of the final rooms of the exhibition.

Pop Life: Good Business is the Best Art

Pop Art from the Collection of Valencia's IVAM

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HAVANA.- The IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno) and the SEACEX (Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior de España) openning today, February/5/2010 this co-production with the collaboration of the Embassy of Spain in Cuba and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba.

The Pop Art exhibition at the IVAM Collection is curated by chief curator of the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (USA) William Jeffett, and the Director of IVAM, Consuelo Ciscar.

The exhibition brings together 59 works of different techniques and media including paintings, photography, works on paper and sculptures. These works have been selected from the extensive exhibition devoted to Pop Art held at the IVAM in 2007 and that following its exhibition in San Juan (Puerto Rico), Fortaleza (Brazil) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) are presented now in the National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba.

The works of Pop Art in the Collection of the IVAM, which are among the most outstanding in Europe, focus on the European contribution to Pop Art, complemented by some examples of American artists and including some precursors of this style and actual Pop artists. The collection comprises a large number of the different artistic positions and they are grouped in a flexible manner under the umbrella of the term Pop.

The catalogue published for the exhibition contains over eighty works by Richard Hamilton, Equipo Crónica, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Valerio Adami, Sigmar Polke, Eduardo Arroyo and others, and texts by William Jeffet, Consuelo Císcar, Santiago B. Olmo, Clare Carolin and Lluís Fernández, along with a selection of critiques about Pop Art.

The Collection of the IVAM provides a broad, comprehensive overview of Pop Art and the presence of its legacy in the most recent contemporary creations. It focuses on the artists who influenced the development of the avant-garde movements in Spain, including the important contribution made by Spanish artists to that trend. And we say trend because of the different international manifestations of Pop Art that took place simultaneously in several countries rather than something that stemmed from a single source. Manifestations that can be grouped in categories that go from the precursors of Pop Art like Richard Lidner or artists of the Independent Group like Robert Hamilton or the American precursors Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg or Claes Oldenburg to the artists of New Realism like Martial Raysse, and New Image with works by James Rosenquist, and Narrative Figuration with works by Gilles Aillaud, Hervé Télémaque, Valerio Adami and Eduardo Arroyo, Realismo Crítico represented by the work of Equipo Crónica, Equipo Realidad and Juan Genovés, among other trends, including the legacy that has tinged the cinematographic photography of Cindy Sherman or John Baldessari.

Be that as it may, Pop Art was never a programmatic movement directed by a coherent group that expressed their ideas in manifestoes, but rather a nexus of different groups and critical stances that resorted to images from mass production as their point of departure and that presented important variations according to their geographic and cultural background.

Although in many aspects it is the heir of the historic avant-garde movements, Pop Art constitutes one of the first examples of postmodern art practice thanks, precisely, to its appropriation of images already in existence. Collage and photomontage, along with Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades and similar works or creations of Surrealism, are important artistic antecedents. In fact, a series of Pop artists were directly linked to the latter movement (Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Hervé Télémaque). But more than anything else, Pop was the result of the growth of the consumer society that took place in the nineteen fifties and sixties: the new reality that captured the attention of the younger generation.

The British Independent Group, active from 1952, devoted itself to studying and reinterpreting popular culture and the impact of the mass media on society. Some relevant British Pop artists originally involved in the Pop movement produced a kind of painting or sculpture that does not fully develop their own presuppositions of the fifties. Nevertheless, American Pop emerged spontaneously without a group or manifestoes or an agenda, as a series of individuals that came together by chance through the first exhibitions that dealt with the phenomenon. In its treatment of popular consumerist culture and its figures, characters and products, there is a systematic appropriation and a creation of icons by means of a visual operation that consists in shifting them from the banal context of everyday life to the territory of painting, exhibitions, museums, in other words, to culture.

Josep Renau, who uses collage and photomontage techniques to criticise the American society, appropriating ordinary everyday images of the media and popular culture, has been considered a forerunner or a pioneer of Pop aesthetics, above all because of the influence he had on the work of Equipo Crónica and Equipo Realidad, who used the same techniques in painting to establish a critical interpretation of the images and icons that configure the visual culture of Spain at that time, but also turn their critical glance towards the past and history. However, this resorting to history, the painting of the past or cult cinema, which we find in both Equipo Crónica, Equipo Realidad and Eduardo Arroyo, is not limited to the cultural sphere in Spain but involves permanent interrelationship between popular culture and high culture. This is something that did not follow the initial premises of Pop Art, but in the eighties even Warhol was using images from paintings by Munch, De Chirico or Leonardo's Las Supper in his works.

The strategies of Pop provided a (not only visual but also intellectual) framework that, thanks to the contradictions enclosed in this iconographic encyclopaedia, constituted a point of departure for political and social reflection about the present. This point of departure allowed Pop to survive in neo and post formulations. Pop Art, in its broadest sense, left the avant-gardes the legacy of a narrative that is still vital for the aspirations of emerging artistic movements today.

Pop Art from the Collection of Valencia's IVAM

'Pep Art' Pioneers Willardson and Swerman

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'Pep Art' Pioneer David Willardson and Marshall Swerman at Rebecca Molayem

David Willardson and Marshall Swerman, Elvis #2.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA.- The Rebecca Molayem Gallery in West Hollywood will be opening a solo exhibit on February 13, 2010 from 6-10 PM of the newest work from “Pep Art” pioneer David Willardson in collaboration with digital impressionist and photographer, Marshall Swerman. Willardson and Swerman’s “IKONXART Series” renders American and International superstars like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis Presley, And Warhol, Audrey Hepburn, Amelia Earhart, the Beatles, Muhammad Ali and others. All are represented in larger-than-life scale that reflects their influence on global pop culture and history. Willardson’s use of rich texture, bold colors, and accentuated movement working with Swerman’s creative digital manipulations offer a unique perspective on the scope and meaning of fame and power. The impetus for the “IKONXART Series” came after a serendipitous meeting between David Willardson and Marshall Swerman, whose original photographs of Andy Warhol and his New York “Factory” piqued Willardson’s imagination. The two began collaborating on bold and dramatically colored portraits of Andy Warhol and other “Factory” members like Edie Sedgwick. Willardson and Swerman have since cast their artistic gaze onto American and international icons that have personally influenced and inspired them. The Boys, a 10’ x 4’ vibrant tribute to The Beatles, was inspired by Cirque du Soleil’s performance, Love in Las Vegas. “I was marveling at the beauty and magic of the performance,” Willardson recalls, “when suddenly the image of this painting appeared to me. By the time Love ended, I had painted the entire piece in my mind…each brushstroke, each splash of color and began working with Marshall as soon as I returned to Los Angeles.” David Willardson is recognized as the premier air-brush artist in the United States. Over a span of seventeen years, he created the seminal poster art for Disney’s timeless animated films of Bambi, Cinderella, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and the Lion King. After ending a successful career as commercial artist to focus on fine art, Willardson became the creator and creative force of the “Pep Art” movement, an innovative new genre where cultural icons are rendered with an unprecedented infusion of color, personality and energy. Willardson’s work has been featured in numerous galleries, books, interviews, record & cd covers and magazines and his work is in personal collections throughout the world. "I’m certainly a product of the pop art movement," Willardson professes, "but I also have a great love for action painting. My work is about energy, action, and boldness, I combine pop culture imagery with my love for music, and movement." Marshall Swerman, fine art photographer, has been published worldwide having had solo exhibits in New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Martha’s Vineyard. Swerman is currently working on completing three projects: “Factory and Friends Series” featuring his unpublished photographs of Andy Warhol and his Superstars. When spending time at Andy’s “Factory” in the 60’s, Swerman was fortunate to be possibly the only photographer to take formal portraits of Andy. Swerman also was featured in one of Warhol’s renowned films his 24 hour feature, “Four Star.” Swerman’s other projects include: “Dead Cars and Other Body Parts,” a photographic journey of stripped and abandoned cars and “Flower Power to Armed Love – the 60’s in NYC,” covering the hippies, yippies, drugs, sex, drugs and rock & roll on the Lower East Side and West Village of NYC. In addition to introducing the iconic and inspirational “IKONXART” portraits, the exhibit opening on February 13 will feature a live performance painting by Willardson and a live music performance by world-renowned singer/ songwriter Michelle Shocked, known for her soulful lyrics and passionate voice. The “IKONXART Series” will be on view from February 13 to February 27 at the Rebecca Molayem Gallery located at 306 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90048. To confirm exhibit opening attendance on Feb. 13th please call 310-652-2620.

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'Pep Art' Pioneers Willardson and Swerman

Rise and Fall of the Contemporary Art Market

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Ben Lewis stands outside of Christie's.

LONDON.- The contemporary art boom is now over, but between 2003 and Autumn 2008 the world witnessed a craze for collecting contemporary art unprecedented in history. During the last frenzied year of this boom, art critic and film-maker Ben Lewis followed the contemporary art market, travelling to art fairs, auctions, museums, and the offices and homes of billionaire art collectors,, interviewing dealers, auctioneers, gallery-owners, art market analysts and art collectors, trying to find out the reasons behind this historic phenomenon. He uncovered a world of complicated deals, distinctive market practices and widespread secrecy as well as passionate enthusiasm for contemporary art. On September 15th 2008, the day of the collapse of Lehmans, the worst financial news since 1929, Damien Hirst sold over £70 million of his art, in an auction at Sotheby’s that would total £111 million over two days. It was the peak of the contemporary art bubble – the greatest rise in the financial value of art in the history of the world. One art critic and film-maker was banned by Sotheby’s and Hirst from attending this historic auction: Ben Lewis. Why? He had spent a year making a documentary searchng for the reasons behind the booming contemporary art market, and they claimed he was “biased” against them and contemporary art. During the easy-credit boom years, there were bubbles in many assets – property, wine, copper, oil. But there was one bubble that was bigger than all the rest: contemporary art. An Andy Warhol sold for $72 million, a Rothko for $73 million, and a Francis Bacon for $86 million. While the rest of the economy began to falter under the Credit Crunch in late 2007, the contemporary art bubble kept on inflating, bigger and fatter than ever before. Art critic and film-maker Ben Lewis spent all of 2008 investigating this contemporary art bubble. Everywhere he went, the art world told him that the contemporary art boom would go on forever, fuelled by a new passion from the world’s super-rich. But Lewis found other big reasons for the contemporary art boom – a world of unusual market practices, speculation, secrecy and tax breaks that involved the whole art world – dealers, collectors, galleries, auction houses and, in some senses, even public museums. In the climax of the film, Lewis’ discoveries lead him to play his own part in the bursting of the contemporary art bubble, which is revealed for the first time in this film. Finally the moment came that he had long predicted. A month after the Hirst auction at Sotheby’s, the contemporary art market crashed, dropping by 40% in November 2008 and 75% by February 2009, and still falling today. The Great Contemporary Art Bubble is not only a film about the art market , it may be read as a parable for the delusion and greed which drove the world economy over the edge in 2008. In future years the contemporary art bubble may come to be seen as the epitome of the boom-times we have been living through.

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Rise and Fall of the Contemporary Art Market

John Pilson: Frolic and Detour

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MoMA Commissions Artists to Create Multichannel Videos for Lobby Screens

John Pilson (American, 1968), 'Frolic and Detour'. Digital video, 12 minutes, color, silent. On view April 7 – April 26, 2010.

NEW YORK, NY (AP).- The Museum of Modern Art presents 9 Screens, an exhibition consisting of five new multichannel videos commissioned specifically for the information screens located above the admission desk in the Museum's lobby, from February 3 to May 18, 2010. The concept for the exhibition was developed during conversations between artist Nicolas Guagnini and Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director, The Museum of Modern Art, about MoMA's interchange with artists—how the Museum was perceived by artists, and also its function and role within the artistic community. In 2008, Halbreich invited Guagnini to observe the inner workings of MoMA and share his observations and critiques with both curators and administrators. Halbreich says, 'I was impressed with the program of exhibitions and lectures at Orchard, a cooperative gallery Nicolas founded in 2005 with a group of colleagues. The idea behind Orchard was to increase the connection between audience and artist, to operate to the side of the art market, and to display under-recognized works, often of a conceptual and political nature, across generations. I thought these ideas would be a good jumping-off point to start a project with Nicolas for MoMA.'

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John Pilson: Frolic and Detour

EdgyCute: From Neo-Pop to Low Brow and Back Again

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Books: EdgyCute: From Neo-Pop to Low Brow and Back Again

2 October 2009

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Mark Batty Publisher has just releases a new art book, “EdgyCute: From Neo-Pop to Low Brow and Back Again”. The book is compiled by Orbit Gallery owner Harry Saylor along with Carolyn Frisch. The book features work from 47 artists such as, Ana Bagayan, Gary Baseman, Becca, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Chris Crites. Greg Gossell, Ryan Heshka, Angelique Houtkamp, Jeremiah Ketner, Travis Lampe, Angie Mason, Elizabeth McGrath, Brandi Milne, Mitch O’Connell, Kathie Olivas, Brandt Peters, Lisa Petrucci, Joe Scarano, Shag, Gary Taxali, Brian Taylor, Chris Uminga, Brian Viveros, Keith Weesner and more.

The book is 10″ x 12″, casebound with 176 pages for $45.

Get em here: EdgyCute @ Mark Batty Publisher

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EdgyCute: From Neo-Pop to Low Brow and Back Again

Visual Culture: "

Rumor is that Bansky will premier his first movie at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah that will be going down soon. For more on the film go here.

Banksy

Michael Landy to Transform Gallery into Container for the Disposal of Works of Art

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Michael Landy, Scrapheap Services, installation photograph at Tate Gallery, London , 1995. © The artist.

LONDON.- Michael Landy, one of the most acclaimed and respected British artists of his generation, transforms the South London Gallery into Art Bin, a container for the disposal of works of art. Over the course of the sixweek exhibition the enormous 600m³ bin will gradually fill up as people discard their art works in it, ultimately creating, in Michael Landy’s words, “a monument to creative failure”. Landy famously destroyed all his possessions in his 2001 installation Break Down ... More"

Michael Landy to Transform Gallery into Container for the Disposal of Works of Art

Nineteen New Paintings by Damien Hirst on View at White Cube

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Damien Hirst, The Crow, 2009. Oil on canvas. Triptych. Each: 98 13/16 x 69 1/8 x 4 5/16 in. (251 x 175.5 x 11 cm) (incl. frame) © the artist. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy White Cube.

LONDON.- White Cube presents nineteen new paintings by Damien Hirst. The exhibition will be staged at White Cube Mason’s Yard and White Cube Hoxton Square. At White Cube Hoxton Square, Hirst will present a group of paintings, which include three triptychs from 2007-09, each depicting crows shot in mid-flight against blue skies, with outspread wings and violent splatters of red paint across their bodies. In the four triptychs on show in the lower ground floor at White Cube Mason's Yard, these crows reappear, as omens of bad news. They often share the space with ghost-like figures, skeletal forms and objects, including chairs, lemons, knives, animal skulls, wine glasses or a scorpion. Rudi Fuchs begins his essay with the following reading of these paintings: 'When I try to pinpoint what the visual mood is in Hirst’s new images, I am constantly reminded of Beckett – not of any one story in particular, though subject matter is important, but of the austere dryness of the language. Sentences are interrupted, lines are broken, observations are fragmented in order to direct us slowly towards a clearer perception of the real.' Damien Hirst, Insomnia, 2008. Oil on canvas. Triptych.  Each: 98 13/16 x 69 1/8 x 4 5/16 in. (251 x 175.5 x 11 cm) (incl. frame) © the artist. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates  Ltd. Courtesy White Cube. Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, UK. He lives and works in London and Devon. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Into Me / Out of Me’, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006), ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’, Tate Britain (2004), the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) and ‘Century City’, Tate Modern (2001). Solo exhibitions include ‘No Love Lost’, The Wallace Collection, London (2009), ‘Requiem’, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev (2009), ‘For the Love of God’, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008), Astrup Fearnley Museet fur Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2005), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2005) and Archaeological Museum, Naples (2004). He received the DAAD fellowship in Berlin in 1994 and the Turner Prize in 1995. An exhibition of the artist’s private collection, ‘Murderme’, was held at Serpentine Gallery, London in 2006.

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Nineteen New Paintings by Damien Hirst on View at White Cube

Thomas Hirschhorn's The Subjecters

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Thomas Hirschhorn's The Subjecters on View at La Casa Encendida

Thomas Hirschhorn, “Tool Vitrine”, 2009, 300 x 85 x 220 cm. Mannequin, tools, foam, photos. Photo: Courtesy Arndt & Partner Gallery, Berlin.

MADRID.- Thomas Hirschhorn, a Swiss artist resident in Paris, presents an exhibition entitled 'The Subjecters', which features a series of vitrines containing mannequins and two installations. According to the artist, every work is a 'commentary' on the 'complex, chaotic, cruel, beautiful and wonderful' world we live in. The work of Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, 1957) is a politically committed reflection about contemporary reality. Employing a variety of disciplines such as sculpture, video and installation, Hirschhorn produces works charged with social and political criticism. Three of the works featured have never before been exhibited: 'Tools Vitrine', 'Subjecter', from which the exhibition takes its name, and the vitrine 'Ingrowth', originally created to be shown in a public space in Paris. 'The Subjecters', which will be on display at La Casa Encendida of Obra Social Caja Madrid through 5 January, comprises a series of vitrines with mannequins and two installations. According to the artist, every work is a 'commentary' on the 'complex, chaotic, cruel, beautiful and wonderful' world we live in. Using everyday materials such as adhesive tape, cardboard, sheets of plastic, photocopies or, as in this case, mannequins, he represents universal situations in a transgressive, direct way. Through the mannequins, which are intended to represent human beings, the artist talks to us of a 'universal wound', which personifies his assertion, 'Each wound is my wound.' The exhibition begins with a newly produced piece, 'INGROWTH', which unlike the other works was originally planned to be exhibited in a public space in Paris. However, as it never went on display, it will receive its first showing here at La Casa Encendida. For Hirschhorn, a vitrine is a public space because it is an enclosed place which exhibits an object for a hypothetical audience. In addition to this piece, the artist has produced two new works for the project: 'Tool Vitrine' and 'Subjecter', which lends its name to the title of the exhibition. In 'Tool Vitrine', a mannequin appears to threaten us with a hammer, although he might just be going about his daily work, surrounded by all kinds of tools. The implements are typical of those used by the inhabitants of industrial areas such as Aubervilliers, where the artist has his studio. In the midst of the tools, as if it were an instruction manual, sits a copy of Spinoza's 'Ethics', one of Thomas Hirschhorn's favourite books. Meanwhile, in 'Subjecter', a single mannequin riddled with nails appears outside the vitrines, like a fetishistic representation of a human figure. The mannequins in the works are all "connected" in some way with society, be it through the tattoos on the surface of "4 Women", the magazines that highlight body care in "Mono Vitrine (Interview)", the art books on Goya that remind us of the horrors of war in "Mono-Vitrine (Goya)", the tools in the piece "Tool Vitrine", or the Manga figurines in "INGROWTH". Completing the exhibition are two installations situated in the middle of the room, "Black&White Hemisphere" and "The One World". The Subjecters 'The Subjecters' is the title of the exhibition but also the global term for the pieces the artist has made with mannequins or parts of them. As the artist himself says, 'The mannequin (or the parts of mannequins) is not the Subject – it's a Subjecter. The Subjecter is an invention of mine – it stands for what I cannot give a name but for what I can give form (and must give form, as the artist), and I worked it out with the form of mannequins, which is not new in the history of art, but which is a form to express the 'closest-far-away of myself.'' Thomas Hirschhorn has been using mannequins for several years now, regarding them as a material that is 'inclusive and non-intimidating, unpretentious and democratic, non-hierarchical and simple', like the adhesive tapes, tinfoil and magazine clippings that he usually employs in his installations.

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Thomas Hirschhorn's The Subjecters

Provocative and Colorful Artistic Dialogue by Takashi Murakami Opens in Valencia

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Prvocative and Colorful Artistic Dialogue by Takashi Murakami Opens in Valencia
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A man walks by the lithographs by Japanese artist Takeshi Murakami on display during the 'Superflat. New Pop Culture' exhibition at La Llotgeta gallery in Valencia, Spain. Photo: EFE/Manuel Bruque.

VALENCIA.- The particular, provocative and colorful artistic dialogue between his ancestral Japan and Pop symbols from Occident which have taken him to become ambassador of modernity is the main theme in the new Takashi Murakami exhibition which opened this week at La Llotgeta. Organized by the Aula de Cultura de Caja Mediterráneo (CAM), 'Superflat. New Pop Culture' gathers 21 lithographs and several small sized sculptures made by Murakami, considered to be one of the most recognized international Japanese artists. Murakami's style, called Superflat, is characterized by flat planes of color and graphic images involving a character style derived from anime and manga. Superflat is an artistic style that comments on otaku lifestyle and subculture, as well as consumerism and sexual fetishism. Like Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami takes low culture and repackages it, and sells it to the highest bidder in the 'high-art' market. Unlike Warhol, Murakami also makes his repacked low culture available to all other markets in the form of paintings, sculptures, videos, T-shirts, key chains, mouse pads, plush dolls, cell phone caddies, and $5,000 limited-edition Louis Vuitton handbags. This is comparable to Claes Oldenburg, who sold his own low art, high art pieces in his own store front in the 1960s. What makes Murakami different is his methods of production, and his work is not in one store front but many, ranging from toy stores, candy aisles, comic book stores, and the French design house of Louis Vuitton. Murakami's style is an amalgam of his Western predecessors, Warhol, Oldenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as Japanese predecessors and contemporaries of anime and manga. He has successfully marketed himself to Western culture and to Japan in the form of Kaikai Kiki and GEISAI. Interviewer Magdalene Perez asked him about straddling the line between art and commercial products, and mixing art with branding and merchandizing. Murakami said, 'I don’t think of it as straddling. I think of it as changing the line. What I’ve been talking about for years is how in Japan, that line is less defined. Both by the culture and by the post-War economic situation. Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of ‘high art.’ In the West, it certainly is dangerous to blend the two because people will throw all sorts of stones. But that's okay—I’m ready with my hard hat.'

Provocative and Colorful Artistic Dialogue by Takashi Murakami Opens in Valencia

Indian Comics

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LACMA Presents First Major Museum Showing of Indian Comics

Abishek Singh (India), 'Ravan, the Demon of Lanka,' Ramayan 3392 AD, Issue 5, 2006. Pencil, ink, and watercolor (?) on paper, 24 x 17 in. Liquid Comics, Bangalore, India.

LOS ANGELES, CA. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents 'Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India’s Comics,' an exhibition comprised of fifty-three paintings, works on paper, and vintage comic books, on view from October 17, 2009 through February 7, 2010. The exhibition examines the legacy of India’s divine heroes and heroines in contemporary South Asian culture through the comic book genre.

Indian comic book superheroes and their arch enemies are visualized from ancient archetypes that have long been depicted in traditional painting and sculpture, and are deeply ingrained in India’s historical imagination. In contemporary comic books, Indian gods and goddesses are modern-day superheroes, manifested on Earth to vanquish evil forces. Demons take the form of modern villains, raising havoc in today’s troubled times. Heroes and Villains, curated by Julie Romain and Tushara Bindu Gude, mines the history of the comic book in India from the 1960s through the present. It explores the evolution of early Indian comics, which were modeled on American superhero comics, through the Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories), a popular series based on traditional Indian epic literature and religious texts recounting the heroic deeds of Indian gods and goddesses.

“This is the first exhibition of Indian comics on view at a major museum,” said Romain. “Here at LACMA we have the unique opportunity to consider this contemporary art form in relation to our extensive historical collection of South and Southeast Asian art.”

Today, comic book production takes place in a global cultural context and within a multi-media framework that combines traditional hand-drawn illustrations with computer design and animation technology. The exhibition explores this process through a survey of Liquid Comics’ Devi and Ramayan series, which were inspired by heroic characters from the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and other Indian texts. Liquid Comics (formerly Virgin Comics) is an animation studio based in Bangalore.

To illustrate the continuity of the heroic narrative tradition in Indian art, a selection from LACMA’s historical collection of Indian paintings will also be on view. These include folios from Mughal illustrated manuscripts, paintings and drawings from the northern Indian princely states, and story-telling paintings from central India.

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Indian Comics

Art in the Age of Orbitization - Gotchi Universe | Φrbit° sφaceφlace :: art in the age øf Φrbitizatiøn

Art in the Age of Orbitization - Gotchi Universe | Φrbit° sφaceφlace :: art in the age øf Φrbitizatiøn: "

Art in the Age of Orbitization - Gotchi Universe

gravityaboutufosculpturearchitecturespace stationmathphysicssununiversemoonastronomyscience fictionspace travellermythinstallation artaviationfakerocketeventorbitkinetic arthumorvideo artsoundmusicaliensignalstarsatellitedrawingglobespace artplanetspace explorationpaintillustrationskyspiritual artobservatoryconcept artearth

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Art in the Age of Orbitization - Gotchi Universe | Φrbit° sφaceφlace :: art in the age øf Φrbitizatiøn