Without repetition, things cannot organize.

 

Factory or site, casting, stacking, welding, mortaring, in rhythm and in line.

Organization and redistribution of information comprise art--well, comprise many things. Organization is the broadest level (the widest plinth) of creative thinking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some machines were designed to further organize and smoothen out variability in the human touch, to preserve and replicate the original human inspiration (as CDs to music) and regulate and tame the entropic Chinese Whispers effect that human repetition creates. A cover song is not an exact copy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Machines increase technical productivity and precision, true, but also social accessibility to organized things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of these organized things are devalued by aesthetes; the machined handiwork is a feint spun from a master blueprint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The divinity is gone. The relic status. Only the source (i.e. the lithographic plate) projects the artist's hand, not the reflected image. I think not. They work in tandem; the plate and paper kiss and peel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A book scratched in the writer's scrawl was once a necessity and an assumption. I'm sure this delicacy was taken for granted before Gutenberg's machine shocked the world with the vulgarity of a letter press. (Ah, the scorn and incredulity of bible-scribing monks.) People today are generally indifferent to their sources of literature--sometimes even news.

 

 

For some reason, though, an image not graven directly by the artist's hand creates hesitancy, even repulsion. An uncanny valley of authenticity creates distrust (except in Cheney's case).

A template can project in variable ways, and the "same piece" may fall on a sliding scale of value. IKEA mass-produces thousands of market-approved replicas from 19th century masters like Matisse--popular and easy. However. Matisse, in his lifetime, approved only limited editions of 250 lithographs or less under the auspice of a master printer.

 

 

The rare artist's signature, introducing a new criteria for uniqueness, adds to the value. Do we need to suspend our disbelief to enjoy the IKEA copy as the owner of the original enjoys his? Is there any disbelief left to suspend?

As the number of copies decreases, the value increases in inverse proportion. Duh.

Let's not even bring up Errol Morris and art fakery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The catch is that we assign more seriousness to ideas and forms that the artist has repeatedly pounded out, even exhausted. The artist's conviction. Picasso made a handful of breakthroughs and inventions, but barges full of replicas. (Yes, he often replicated his own inventions, rather than building on their achievements--inevitable when you make 25,000 original works.)

Repetition through serial work can be, at worst, a skipping record; it reiterates a single organization. It forces people to look again, if not at the same piece then the same idea. It's a kind of cynical, business-minded idea that seems to take hold of "successful" artists.

 

 

The uniqueness of an artwork is very important for ownership, but conversely so is the popularity of an artwork. Possession and knowledge have a gooey relationship here. Art has currency if it's ubiquitous as liquid--even more if it gains meme status.

 

OK. OK. I could go on like this forever, but I fear I'd repeat myself. Till next time...

 

---- Andy Ritchie, writer living in Oakland, CA

(All images courtesy of their rightful owners)

 

 

Not long ago I shared a small idea with Vito Acconci.

Our chat hadn't interrupted him whilst he was in mid-masturbatory simulation, but went on after a talk between Acconci and Steven Holl held at London's Tate Modern on the collaboration of Art & Architecture.  The topic of the talk was Storefront for Art and Architecture and Acconci’s design process.

In the discussion, Acconci commented on a problem with his design, namely that when it rained one could not open the rotating walls, thus, rendering this main feature useless for half of the year. During the Q&A afterwards, an audience member offered this question: "What would be your ideal exhibition within the gallery?" Acconci had been previously asked a series of even more boring enquiries regarding his choice of materials. When this question was raised he was somehwat flummoxed and couldn't respond; in fact it was funny because he literally couldn’t come up with anything.  Following the talk I had a moment to speak with Acconci and posed the following to him:

Imagine Storefront became bankrupt. Instead of selling the premises you could donate the gallery to the city. The gallery would move out and the walls would be left open allowing the people of New York to occupy the empty space as and when they pleased. The function of the space would suddenly become boundless; providing shelter during bad weather, providing a meeting point for fellow New Yorkers, or simply acting as a detour to the straight lines of the city streets. Thus, the effect of this would overcome his current qualm with the design and answer the question asked of him originally.

He liked this idea and we shared a joke about how we could sabotage the gallery to implement the plan!

Despite the likelihood that our shared scheme would remain a dream, the event got me thinking about imagined spaces, or even imagined art pieces. Similar to the construction in Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, the possibilities to document fictitious art and its implications are endless. Cheap too.

Since the beginning of the recession an increasing number of spaces have opened up in London. I don’t mean gallery spaces but literally holes where buildings used to be. In some cases, entire blocks have been knocked down with the idea that new buildings would replace them, but when the crash happened developers couldn’t commit the cash and as a result the sites remain empty. I imagine these spaces as blank canvases for architects, an exciting exercise for them to imagine structures where the perimeters are set, budget is no boundary and all you have to do is fill it in. Along with this thought, I've noticed that many houses have also become vacant over the past year or so, boarded up with wood or sytex, and are thus available for let to the imagination of whoever might want to enact a life there. An infamous example is the Heygate estate in Elephant and Castle (shown above).

While spinning these thoughts I happened upon a jewel, nestled in a gap along a Georgian terrace in central London, a shanty-esque shop front with village-hall hallmarks, boarded up and ripe for intrigue.  This shop has the piecemeal architecture of something far more imaginative. The blank notice board and careful colour scheme allude to a purpose that’s been lost, and present possibilities for newcomers to determine their own use of the space. It’s a doll’s house, so unique, one in which lives and loves from beyond reality could unfold from the minds of whoever will paint their dreams onto it.

Above, wedged between brick walls either side, the wooden upstairs seems to have been stuck on, taking Gordon Matta-Clark’s collages as inspiration maybe. Arguably Matta-Clark’s work was also only imaginary. He structurally transformed his buildings but mutated their appearance further in the representation of each action. His images are beautiful, and placing aside the problems of documenting conceptualism, they act as interesting admission that ideas can be investigated further in imaginary format than that which reality allows.

And perhaps this is why a conceptual stalwart like Acconci struggled to put his finger on some-‘thing’ with which to fill Storefront. He was reiterating the fact that there’s a perennial problem with production; that the product will always be bound by various laws of physics, not to mention immediately commoditized. 

So the question is, How to exit this creative cell? Can someone be an artist without producing anything? Or, because it becomes product, will visual art always remain a lesser form of creativity than music, which thanks to technology can go beyond the sonic capabilities of reality?

--BFerguson, writer living in London

(Images top-bottom: Steven Holl and Vito Acconci, Storefront for Art & Architecture, courtesy of Archidose; Heygate estate courtesy of BFerguson; Warren Street building courtesy of BFerguson; Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974, Collaged b/w photograph on cardboard, courtesy of David Swirner, NY)

 

 

 

The successful transition of graffiti art from the outside world to the inside of a gallery remains a challenge largely unmet by graffiti artists.

Graffiti has come to include a wide array of subgenres so let me be clear about the form I am discussing: Large, multi-colored, elaborate, spray painted murals that take up large walls, commonly called ‘burners’ or ‘pieces'. These works involve words and sometimes figures, executed in a variety of styles. Graffiti like this has tremendous presence on the street and even within a museum's bookshop. But, with only several exceptions, I have yet to see it widely transition into a gallery setting.

Though artists like Shepard Fairey and Barry McGee have found major exhibition opportunities, their work is substantially different from the spray paint-based graffiti murals discussed here.

I see the challenges to graffiti murals as (1) simple acceptance of graffiti as an art form; (2) legal issues attending the work; (3) graffiti's site-specificity and how to bring that into a gallery setting; (4) institutional willingness to show this kind of work.

Graffiti art produced during the 2009 "Meeting of Styles" held in Chicago. Image courtesy of Meeting of Styles and wallstreetmeeting.de

There are no doubt obstacles to the acceptance of graffiti as a legitimate art form and there are substantial legal issues. In October, ArtSlant writer Athena Newton in Amsterdam interviewed graffiti artist Laser 3.14 and summed up the tensions surrounding graffiti as an art form. She wrote this introduction to her interview:

“To some, graffiti is considered vandalism; destruction of property, a crime against society. Others believe it to be grassroots creativity; a proletariat method of social and political communication. I personally see it as expression…in every sense of the word.”

Graffiti next to Chicago's Elevated Train lines. By H2O and nre2.

It should be noted that those “some” to whom graffiti is “vandalism; destruction of property,” etc., include police, judges and the actual laws of most cities. For them, graffiti is vandalism and destruction of property, whatever else it may be. It’s impossible to deny that the production of graffiti in public spaces does result in property damage. However as Ms. Newton indicates there is also a wide segment of the population that appreciates the art of graffiti.  I am clearly part of this group, but more importantly, so is President Obama.

In a letter from President Obama to artist Shepard Fairey, the President thanked Fairey in terms that acknowledged the artistry of graffiti: “Your images have a profound effect on people whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign, I am privileged to be a part of your artwork and to have your support.”

This statement of support indicates that one of the most powerful persons in the world understands the art in graffiti and understands its interaction with the public world (through noting placement on a “stop sign”). However, the President remained silent as Fairey was charged in Boston with 28 vandalism-related crimes and in July pled guilty to three of them (the rest of the charges eventually being dropped), receiving 2 years probation and a $2,000 fine.

Graffiti playing off of "Advertise Here" sign (sign has since been removed, though graffiti remains constant). Work by H2O and nre2.

Damage to property occurs because graffiti frequently relies on its site-specificity, as could site-specific art installation; however this site specificity is also part of graffiti's appeal. Several years ago I was flying out of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. As the plane took off and climbed into the sky, I was looking out the window watching the city get smaller and smaller. On the ground close to the runway concrete foundations had been laid for Chicago’s ever-expanding housing subdivisions. Even from hundreds of feet in the air I could read the writing on the wall of one foundation. Summing up the risks of graffiti art while creating a completely unique and site-specific artwork, in big block letters the spray painted mural read, “Art is Risky." If graffiti can be site specific to an outdoors location it can surely have a specificity to an indoors location, it just takes creativity on the part of the artist.

Mario Ybarra, Jr. Promised Land, 2007. Staircase installation, Capp Street Project. Mixed media. Image courtesy of CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.

In August, 2008, I had the chance to interview Mario Ybarra, Jr., for ArtSlant. Our published interview focused on his exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, “No Man is an Island,” but ranged into the topic of graffiti art coming into the gallery, though this segment of the conversation has until now remained unpublished. I couldn’t resist asking his perspective about the subject as Ybarra, Jr., has incorporated graffiti style into his work and is one of the few artists to utilize wall-sized murals (see above). Here’s what he had to say on graffiti becoming specific to a gallery setting:

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Mario Ybarra, Jr.: I think, that as an artist, you need to find a strategic way of bringing graffiti style in. If it’s planned and it’s part of the intent and you bring graffiti in, I think that [makes a difference] . . . As an artist, you have to understand that graffiti is part of a [visual] language, it’s like one word in a language. If you only know graffiti, you only know one word. You have to know the other words, the basic, shared words. So that way if you know the language, you can bring in this slang word.

Abraham Ritchie: Are you saying that there’s a lack of art historical knowledge or artistic knowledge?

Mario Ybarra, Jr.: On the side of graf[fiti] kids that have no understanding of art history, just to be honest with you, they have to understand the museum, as an institution, and if they’re even interested in working within it. They need to know the language of the museum, and work within [the museum’s] constructs . . . an artist interested in showing in the museum and dealing with the museum, but who wants to hang on to a piece of graffiti culture, [has] to know both. If someone doesn’t understand the museum or its art, you can’t just dismiss it and be like, “That’s so wack, I don’t understand that.” That’s like not learning a language even though you want to communicate with someone. You have to understand both languages.

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Ybarra, Jr., fairly points out that there may be some adaptation, and even education, necessary to bring graffiti into a gallery setting. In Ybarra, Jr.’s own practice, his murals quote art history, especially the murals of Diego Rivera, but he isn’t afraid to include graffiti elements like arrows, cartoonish figures and of course spray paint.

Gordon Matta-Clark. Graffiti Photoglyph (top), 1973. Gelatin silver print with spray paint. Coat Closet (bottom), 1973. Building fragment (plaster, wood late, nails, panels). Image courtesy of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark & David Zwirner and Erik Wenzel.

Ironically the entrance of large, mural-sized graffiti into the gallery has been accomplished not by graffiti writers, but by photographers. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the 2007-8 traveling exhibition “Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure,” included Matta-Clark’s 1973 Graffiti Photoglyphs, photographic images, accented with paint, of the now legendary graffiti-covered New York City subway trains (seen above). In September, Chicago’s Kavi Gupta Gallery opened the 2009-10 art season with a solo exhibition of photographs by Melanie Schiff. Recently relocated from Chicago to Los Angeles, Schiff presented photographs that featured LA graffiti writers’ work along forlorn storm drains and culverts. Though graffiti is one of many elements in Schiff’s work, it is clear the photographer understands graffiti’s visual potential.

Melanie Schiff. Hellroom, 2009. Digital c-print. 20” x 16”. Edition of 1/ 5 with 1 AP. Image courtesy of Kavi Gupta Gallery.

 

There are undoubtedly challenges in bringing a site-specific, outdoor, illegal art form into the gallery, and I have briefly gone over a few here. That being said, the promise of such a crossover likewise remains, serious artists working in the style should be trying to firmly establish the art form and communicating it with the public, and graffiti artists should not be worried about “selling out.” Art institutions should be linking graffiti to art history, establishing a basis for understanding the artistic impulse. Large graffiti wall murals relate to typography, calligraphy, action painting, fresco painting, art brut, etc. The list goes on.

Menace, Select Inverse, Onyx, Novem, AFA. Installation for "Inside Out" at the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC). Image courtesy of the SSCAC.

Interestingly, maybe unsurprisingly, smaller institutions willing to take risks are presenting graffiti wall murals (though the Los Angeles County Museum of Art did present “Belmont Ruins”). The CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco sponsored the aforementioned wall murals produced by Mario Ybarra, Jr. In Paris, Fondation Cartier has just extended their Né dans la rue – Graffiti (Born in the streets) full-scale graffiti show due to popular demand.  Here in Chicago, the South Side Community Art Center’s “Inside Out” features large scale graffiti murals made right on the gallery walls, a move I am advocating here (seen above). Though I have yet to see these works in person, I hope that these projects indicate a new institutional awareness in graffiti and certainly there are adventurous curators out there willing to show this work.

The artistic promise of graffiti can be seen all along the world's streets; it's time that artists and institutions try to present this genre as the art it is.

--Abraham Ritchie, Editor for ArtSlant: Chicago

(Images above caption as noted.)

Editor's Note:  a must read article from WebUrbanist, entitled The Secret and Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal)

 

 

The warnings were dire.

Kidnappings, drug wars, bad water, infected vegetables, nefarious taxi drivers, swine flu. And as my departure came closer, the warnings grew advisories grew warnings, multiplying rapidly in people’s mouths until on the eve of my departure, I almost felt like going to Mexico required a well-armed bodyguard and an industrial-strength body condom, lest of course I get injected with swine flu during my kidnapping by a drug-running taxi driver.

Such reports about Mexico City (which the locals call DF, for Distrito Federal) were, as I sort of expected, false.

Mexico City may possibly be the most dynamic metropolis I’ve ever explored, nowhere else that I’ve gone (America, Asia, Europe) had the same mix of raw energy and potential for experimentation among the seventy-foot tall trees and crumbling sidewalks. Looking down the tree-lined avenues past architecture marking periods of Francophile, Azteca nationalism, and pre-war decadence, eating the best and cheapest tacos of my life (Tacos Hola in Condesa if you were curious), jetlagged stumbling through late-night parties populated by expatriates and artists, I began to think about how I could possibly move there. Museums are mostly under-funded, the galleries are few, the collectors fewer, the artists however are multitude.

The ostensible purpose of my trip was to visit with artist Yoshua Okon, who was having an exhibition at the Museo Carrillo Gil (MACG), but the covert purpose of my trip was to take all the contrasting, contradictory stories about Mexico City and compare them to the reality. Nowithstanding his impressive aesthetic output, Okon is an important character in the art of Mexico City, from its now legendary period of artists’ spaces to the present where he’s helping to found a new school called SOMA. SOMA may be of one of the first MFA-style programs in Mexico (and perhaps Latin America). The school is due to open in November for its first students with a host of some of the most respected artists living in Mexico City as its teachers: Francis Alÿs, Teresa Margolies, Eduardo Aberroa.

In the 1990s, after a wave of foreigners (like Alÿs, who comes originally from Belgium) seemed to dominate Mexico City in international conversations about art, a series of DIY spaces attempted to invigorate a somewhat staid approach to exhibition done by the few galleries and official museums. They offered frenetic exhibitions schedules of art like no one had before, placing young Mexican artists not only alongside the generation that came before them but also along their international contemporaries, attempting to open a dialogue with the rest of the world about what was happening in Mexico City. The most famous of these was La Panadería, which was run by Okon. La Panadería, despite artforum.com’s current entry for it, has been gone for some years. But Okon, still lives in the building in an apartment on the top floor overlooking the Condesa, a neighborhood that reflects many of the changes of the past fifteen years, and hints at some of the potential for further development in the city.

 

An Angeleno equivalent of Condesa might be the area known as Silver Lake.

Bourgeois bohemian, populated with sidewalk cafes and thirty-somethings walking their well-coiffed apartment-sized dogs, the rough and tumble neighborhood that housed La Panadería at its inception, is now gone, replaced with leafy green streets and rents treble what might be found in the less genteel districts. The gentrification of Condesa happened alongside, as is sometimes typical, its brief takeover by artists. Though the succeeding in gentrifying one neighborhood, the era of the dynamic artists’ spaces seem to be over for Mexico City for now. However, everywhere I looked, commercial galleries were attempting to invoke the history of these spaces to capture some of their potent energy. Yautepac gallery, one of the new commercial spaces that’s opened in the last years, has on their website:

Since its inception in January of 2008, YAUTEPEC has become something of an enfant terrible within Mexico City’s art world, shaking up a largely staid gallery scene with a return to the youthful energy and experimentation of the capital’s DIY spaces of the 1990s.

We’ll forgive them the bad form of calling themselves an enfant terrible, but by invoking the artist’s spaces of the ’90s, they prove not only that such a moment is over, but that it is a historical premise worth invoking. Again and again, people I spoke with harkened back to this time as a golden moment for art in Mexico City. The artists’ space model, however, has a shelf-life. Artists need to be artists in the end, and not gallerists.

The rapid and stratospheric success of kurimanzutto has served as encouragement to be sure for the new generation of commercial spaces. Founded (in part by artist Gabriel Orozco) in 1999 and recently moved into a permanent space, kurimanzutto may be the most successful contemporary art gallery in Central America, others have taken note. Neither painfully provincial nor completely ignorant of international art world, Proyectos Monclova and House of Gaga seem to be promising additions to an undersized gallery scene, both did recent projects with significant international artists, Cyprien Gaillard and Claire Fontaine, respectively as well as showing some of the best of DF not already being shown at the older galleries.

I only have myths of the ’70s in the end, but DF feels like the way people talked about New York forty years ago. Run down, a little wild, the whisper of real danger in the air, filled with beautiful, crumbling buildings and not nearly enough money to keep them up, a daft political system, and yet artists, lots and lots of artists.

The foundation for the development of contemporary art in Los Angeles was formed not by the market or even a push by urbanists to remake the city into a contemporary cultural capital (as sometimes happens, like in Barcelona), but the schools. The art schools convinced a bevy of international artists to stick around LA, many of whom turned out to be some of the most important of their generation. Their style was less based on the Ferus gang that had been the first set of artists to put Los Angeles into conversation with Europe and New York, and more based on a particular kind of Conceptualism that was looser, freer, funnier, and darker than their East Coast peers. One of the founding myths of art in Los Angeles is when Mike Kelley decided not to chase his peers to New York after graduation from CalArts, but to stick around LA. And some time later, he too ended up a teacher for awhile. In Mexico City, SOMA has the founding potential for that city what CalArts had for Los Angeles. Though the effects of a well-funded CalArts took years to take hold in Los Angeles (with a host of MFA programs following its example and eventually surpassing them, UCLA and Art Center in the ’90s, USC recently), perhaps in an accelerated world, SOMA will make its presence felt quickly both on art and the cultural life of the city.

Mexico City has some way to go to compete with the gravitational pull of Los Angeles. With the success of SOMA (and the encouragement of more programs like it) Mexico City will likely evoke the gravitational pull for artists from New York, Los Angeles, or London. And as the students graduate, they will likely do what well-educated and talented artists do: make room for themselves in the world.

And they’ll do it in Mexico City, likely without the salutary aid of a bodyguard or a body condom.

--Andrew Berardini, West Coast Editor, living in Los Angeles

(All Images ©courtesy of their rightful owners.  From top-bottom: Mexico City; Yoshua Okon, White Russians, 2008, performance view; Silver Lake, CA; Kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City)

 

 

On my second day at Frieze I began to get my sea legs.

As one dealer put it: “It takes 4 laps around the tent before you can start to see the art…”

This sea-leg thing was an apt metaphor. The pitch and yaw of the faux floor in the Frieze big tent was akin to a big ship adventure.  It caused me to wonder if the floor wasn’t pitching towards certain favored stands, or rolling us down to the new Frame section where younger galleries were exhibiting single artists.  As if the art and the people and the fetish weren’t enough, the dizzying factor of the unsureness underfoot made for a kind of sensory debauchery.  Paul McCartney where are you? (He was outside in the sculpture garden).

(Note:  I have found that this dizziness factor, which is not really about the floor but more about the gigantic glut of gorgeousness emanating from corner to corner within the big tent, disrupts any possibility of a contemplative viewing experience.  Rather, it promotes the experience of art as Spectacle, actually the whole of the art world as Spectacle, and demands a trajectory of superficial engagement and hyper excitement.  This then feeds into frenzy and that's where the whole art-as-appetite kicks off.)

So standing just inside the entry way, I tried to get organized. My eyes strayed to the floor where I found someone’s map of the fair with certain stands circled in bold, black marker. I decided to keep it – why not try someone else’s taste?  I studied the black circles for a clue to the selection process.  They seemed so mercenary, so exclusionary in their firm and confident stroke.  This was along the lines of Marching Orders, not a plan for discovery. (Did you know that the phrase "black mark" has been deemed offensive, along with a number of other politically incorrect "black" phrases, according to an August 2009 article in Metro.co.uk?)  On looking at these black marks, I think I intuitively sensed the tongue lashing behind these strokes as well. Shuddering, I stuck the marked-up map into my bag for later consideration and decided upon my usual arbitrary approach.  I just wanted to ping from eye-catcher to eye-catcher in viewing bliss.

Once I asked an artist why he thought people come to the fairs. ”It’s sexy,” he told me.  I had to admit, the feeling under the big tent was like the morning after make-up sex – soft and a little awkward.  The hurt of the breakup still lingered at the edges, but the preview evening of robust sales and collector/dealer tangos had done much to repair the rift caused by the economic crisis...everyone seemed happy again and the smiles were proof positive.  Maybe the art world will live happily ever after, afterall.

My friend showed up and we began our fair go-around at the Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery.   “I think there was a Kapoor here in this same spot last year that sold immediately…”  I gaze into the golden dish and smile at the woman who is swimming next to me…pitch and roll.  I make a note to self to go to the show of Kapoor’s new work.  Leaving Kapoor, we went down the hall to “the craziest stand at the fair…a must-see," namely the Tomio Koyama manga-extravaganza where a young painter, Tomoko Nagai, was being shown for the first time outside of Japan.  “Tomoko was here for 12 hours working on her installation…” I tried to wrap my head around all of the sparkle and unicorns and little girl fantasies jammed into every inch of space.  A worn black teddy bear murmured nostalgia in the far corner; a doll in underwear was pinned to the wall.  A man hovered in front of the largest painting at the front of the stand.  He confessed under his breath “I bought this at 5 minutes after 11 yesterday…” as I stood and looked with him.

Next was Sprüth Magers where Andreas Gursky’s James Bond Island II could be found.   I, like many others, was instantly in lust.  I wanted it.  It is fantastic.  Also on view at another stand was his 2007 work, Kuwait Stock Exchange, and it drew the crowd as well.  On we rolled to Salon 94, which won the first-ever Best Stand award.  It must have been the juxtaposition of Barry X Ball’s Madonna-esque sculptures in front of the Lorna Simpson photo wall that cinched the prize.  This year there was a greater focus on curated stands, with the best stand prize and the addition of the Frame section with solo shows.  Apparently, the reduction in the buying frenzy might prompt a more considered kind of experience for future fair goers.

Across the way an air of space-and-lightness was had with some lovely Lisa Lapinski drawings at Richard Telles (I saw my first Mary Heilmann show at the Telles space in Los Angeles and can recall it almost verbatim.)  Around the corner, The Approach beckoned – such fun – where the Alice Channer piece that the Tate bought was on display.  I peered through Evan Halloway’s spindle-fest…the world just looks quirky with a Halloway in front of it.  Then we pitched over to doggerfisher where a couple of Charles Avery drawings captured me (so darkly powerful).  Our final resting spot was before the Luc Tuymans piece, reputed to be one of the most expensive offerings at the fair (Wonderland, 2007) at David Zwirner.

I told my friend “it feels like the magical mystery tour with a bit of Bond lux and a chalet hideaway to boot.”

“Shall we go down to Frame for all the emergents…it’s like the bigger fair gobbled up the little fairs…?” my viewing companion asked.  Hmmm – big fish-litle fish (stop!!)  I declined, having decided to save that for the next lap, and rolled back down to the cafe for a rest and regroup.

There I met up with Ben Ferguson and David Yu (ArtSlant team members extraordinaire). Ben had just been on the Jordan Wolfson string theory tour and David was taking a tiny rest between fair affairs. We stared at the Dayanita Singh photograph on the outside of the Frith Street stand and ended up talking about art residencies in Antarctica…I wondered what walking on a melting iceberg would be like.

Slippery business.

From Frieze, I took the tube over to Zoo 2009.

Being renamed and relocated, Zoo 2009 was touting itself as an “event” rather than a fair.  I have always favored Zoo.  The emphasis has been a bit more cavalier and little less consumptive, and surprises often abound.  This year’s location was a cavernous, dark affair – definitely not for the stiletto-heel gang, in fact it was absolutely the young, art crowd with skate boards and leather jackets in tow. An empty brewery or warehouse (I heard both), the nooks and crannies made navigating one’s way through the dank and crumbling rooms an adventure in itself.  If Frieze was the deck of the ship, Zoo was definitely the boiler room.  One of the recurring themes throughout was the Caution Trip Hazard signs that were nailed everywhere.  The implied danger became a conceptual focal point  that was difficult to shake, and their graphic dominance almost overshadowed the actual art, which was by-and-large toned-down and thoughtful.  All in all it was a good lesson on context.  Everything about Zoo 2009 screamed subversive, a return to the avant-garde, except the art.  Disappointing.

A notable exception was the ALP/Peter Bergman gallery from Stockholm where Daniel Jensen’s installation and sculptural pieces provided a sense of  correctness within this exhibition space.  Jensen's "trolls" belonged here - and the transformation of the space into a domestic environment of sorts allowed a fantasy to encapsulate and enliven these pathetic and creepy things. The other notable exception was in the Works/Project space where the painted floor and wall set off the pieces.  The last was in the LUX project area, where the subversive quality of the media work seemed to partner well with the abject quality of the building.

I guess all in all the promise of Zoo 2009 failed in many ways, and I left that event with an appreciation for the successful crowd shows (to quote Erik Wenzel from ArtSlant Chicago) I have seen in many a warehouse district.  I am still loyal to Zoo and hope they find a way to both differentiate and succeed next year.

The last mention of the fair weekend has to go to the social aspect of these art gatherings.  Truly, this is the by-product which can be so richly rewarding.  From the parties to the chance encounters, there is something well sexy about the circuit.  And now that the Titanic looks like it will right itself, all is ship-shape on the SS Art World.

--Georgia Fee, Editor-in-Chief, ArtSlant

(Images top to bottom: Fair meeting area; Ugo Rondinone installation, Barry X. Ball sculpture and Lorna Simpson photographs at Salon 94; Evan Halloway sculpture at The Approach; Luc Tuymans, Wonderland, at David Zwirner; Ben Ferguson & David Yu camping it up at Frieze;  Caution sign at Zoo 2009; Daniel Jensen installation at Peter Bergman Gallery.  All images courtesy of ArtSlant)

 

 

I am a big fan of the Louvre.

The Louvre must be my favorite place in Paris, I love everything about it - its architecture, the collection, the activities, exhibitions, and there’s nothing better to do on a Friday night than visit my favorite paintings which, because they don’t appear on the “highlights of the collection” guide for visitors, always silently await my arrival.

One of the things I have always admired about the Louvre is its awareness of the necessity to keep the collection alive. While other museums might be happy to let their Roman antiquities, Egyptian relics, medieval paintings, and old masters rest on their historical reputation, not the Louvre. Not only does the Louvre invite young artists to create works that converse with the collection, it purchases and commissions contemporary works - see the installation of the Anselm Kiefer pieces in Richelieu. I have also had the joy of being educated by young art students in one-on-one presentations to visitors about otherwise obscure works they have studied. These and other events ensure ongoing interest in the Louvre’s extraordinary collection, and bring to life works I would probably have otherwise walked straight past. 

So while I am not surprised that the Louvre invited a figure such as Robyn Orlin into the museum to unleash her creative vision, I am nevertheless impressed that this stalwart of French heritage and culture embraced Orlin’s lashing critique of its whole raison d’être.

Babysitting Little Louis is swashbuckling fun from beginning to end. The title of the piece refers to a minature of François Girardon’ 1692 statue of Louis XIV which sits in the Puget courtyard with other impressive, but noticeably bigger, bronze and marble statues. Like the bigger, more sturdy, pieces in the Puget, the tiny bronze sculpture sits in the open air (as opposed to encased in glass) to avoid oxidation. And so, little Louis is very vulnerable, and needs to be “babysat” by the guards to protect him from the temptation of wandering hands. This is explained to us in song by the 8 security guards on the first stop of a “guided tour” they will lead us on over the next two hours.

Immediately, the colonial and racial politics of little Louis’ power are the focus of the show. We hear of Louis’ nightmare — as we watch black African women in fantastic dress writhing on the opposite balcony. As we all stood around, a six foot plus African guard approached a group of us, to tell a story of how when he was a young boy in Africa he met a man with no head. A story that was brought to resolution when the man came to Paris as an adult and found the head on display in the Louvre! Clearly, the other guards of various racial origins were telling similarly frightening stories of Louis XIV’s colonial rule. 

Towards the end of the performance an English tourist (one of the handful of professional dancers and actors used by Orlin), goes to Africa. While the audience sits and stands huddled in between headless African statues and oriental antiquities, the man plays Louis in Africa: he recounts in a broad British accent such exciting events as his lunch with Nelson Mandela, who when he arrived was having tea with Madonna. Carrying an “Out of Africa” shopping bag, at one and the same time, a typical tourist and a slanderer of French Imperial oppression, the man had me in hysterical laughter. Sadly, for a non-English speaker, the French translation did not capture the trysts and asides that held the most humorous, and cutting, remarks.

There were many other wonderful moments as we went around the museum: one highlight was when a guard entered into a conversation with deeply reflective statue that mimicked a therapy session. “I know you are depressed, but many people would do anything to be in your place surrounded by treasures;” “you want to be like Michael Jackson, dying, and have all these people come to mourn you.” And on she went; it was brilliant.

Mention must be made of the extraordinary guards who performed the piece. Apparently Orlin talked to guards, watched them in their work and eventually selected eight enthusiastic security guards for Babysitting Little Louis. Orlin invited them to make a film of their favorite work in the museum. At one point on our tour, everything stopped, the guards opened their jackets and projected their films on the inside. So we all crouched down and watched intently at the amateur images. While the technology of projection onto jackets, and sculptures in the midst was probably more interesting than the films themselves, the point was made with conviction.

Guards in a museum are not simply someone

 to ask for directions to the toilet and the exit.

As much as the piece was a scathing critique of the history of French culture and its acquisition, it also gave voice to an otherwise silenced group: the museum guard. The eight guards who performed in Babysitting Little Louis, not only showed their creativity through singing, dancing, filmmaking and performance, but the piece was an opportunity for their articulation of the depth of their engagement with the works they survey. The greatest tribute to them was that I didn’t know if they were actual guards from the museum or actors until I got home and read the program. Ultimately, it was the guards, and their continual interaction with the audience and statues alike, that shattered our preconceptions of what we do and who we are in a museum: that we should observe silence, or that guards (like Africans) have no opinion on culture or their own oppression within cultural structures, and so on. 

It is true that as we walked around, following the guards on their journey through the Louvre, there were times when chaos reigned. There were times when I wondered what I was meant to be looking at, times when I couldn’t see, and times when there was so much going on that I didn’t know where I was supposed to be. Our movement through the space, and the conception of the piece itself, were at times too ambitious, resulting in incoherence. However, there was much to make the night fun and memorable.

In addition to the innovation of the whole spectacle there was the pleasure of being in a French audience.

While the French are usually reluctant to laugh out loud, I did catch a few having a chuckle at this relentlessly entertaining, and simultaneously, searingly critical “night at the museum.” That in itself really speaks for Orlin’s performance: getting the French to laugh at the principles that underlie the history and culture on which they have built their very national identity. And this, within the walls of their most revered cultural institution no less. This alone makes Babysitting Little Louis quite an achievement for Orlin.

And in its embrace of an opportunity to see itself and its collection from an innovative (and not so flattering) perspective, Babysitting Little Louis has me even more in admiration of the Louvre.

--Frances Guerin, writer and film historian living in Paris (see her blog, Fx Reflects)

(Images courtesy of the artist and the the Musée du Louvre)

 

 

The ambient and unpretentiously friendly Simon Rodia Jazz Festival is held every September on the modest span of grass between the Watts Towers and the neighboring art center.

The whole event feels a little bit like a laid-back churchyard carnival, albeit one with a rich history and impressive guest list. Vendors’ booths, filled with hand crafted soaps, jewelry, and carvings, create a half-circle around the white-topped performance tent and the smells of jambalaya and fried chicken begin wafting well before lunch time.
 
When I arrived, I couldn’t tell if the prophetic voice I heard was coming from the open-doored United Methodist Church nearby or from the festival tent. It came from both, I soon discovered. The Watts Towers have always had a religious pull, a trend I find fascinating. How did something so starkly individual lead to such devout, long-lasting community?

The Methodist preaching drifted across the street to mingle with the voices of Alaadun, an African heritage group and the festival’s first performers. Alaadun’s leader, dressed in a light green tunic and speaking with amazing urgency, administered blessings on the grounds, then introduced his instrumentalists, pointing out drums from Ghana and other African regions—this is where all of it started, he said, so take note; jazz, rap, hip-hop, they all started here. He also introduced Professor Peter Abilogu, a traditional stilt dancer who moved at least five feet above the ground with so much eloquence that he seemed unearthly.

“I am stepping on the ground, but I am not landing,” said Abilogu. “It takes more than the real to be here.”
 
Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant who left behind three broken marriages and a chain of industrial jobs bought his Watts lot in 1921.  He spent the next 33 years crafting his towers out of steel, mortar and mosaic. He worked them one layer at a time. They’re idiosyncratic and looming, but also tenderly vulnerable in the way that any improvised, hand-crafted object is. Upon finishing, he apparently claimed “I had in mind to do something big and I did it,” a quote that’s been so widely repeated and lionized you’d think it was the only thing he ever said. In 1954, he deeded his property to a neighbor and never returned.
 
All of this sounds like folklore to me and it is—real folklore. When Rodia disappeared, ten years before the notorious Watts riots, tensions already engulfed the area. In 1959, the city of Los Angeles threatened to destroy the towers, built without a “rational plan.” Young film editor Bill Cartwright bought the property for $20 down, and fought for its preservation in what became both a community-against-city and an artist-against-philistine battle. In a 1959 issue of Progressive Architecture, co-editor Ilse Reese wrote “Simon Rodia was both a structural innovator and an artistic genius. . . . May architects across the world assist [William Cartwright and partner Nicolas King] in warding off city-planned vandalism.”
 
Bill Cartwright attended the festival on Sunday, as did a slew of others who had once lived, slept, and breathed the Watts Towers—former center directors, city officials, community activists. During a brief ceremony, they accepted awards (unwieldy documents that resembled college diplomas) in commemoration of the Watts Art Center’s 50th anniversary. Then the partying began again.

In the afternoon, Bonesoir, a classy trombone quintet, played a smoothly professional but not terribly dynamic set. I might have slipped out if not for the man standing a few feet in front of me. Short, lean, balding and dressed in a half-tucked-in Hawaiian shirt, he seemed to be hearing a concert all his own. I once saw a Pentecostal speak in tongues, and this man looked just like that. His hands were raised and his body was gyrating rhythmically, but also haltingly. The funniest thing was that I didn’t see him as eccentric or out of place; I saw him as more connected than the rest of us. I imagined that he was a sort of embodiment of the Watts Towers, a Simon Rodia stand-in.

Sympathetic communities are supposed to embrace idiosyncrasy, but the Watts Art Center has idiosyncrasy at its core. I like to think that makes Watts inspired.

--Catherine Wagley, a writer living in Los Angeles

(Images: Interior of Towers - photo by Lucien den Arend; Simon Rodia, courtesy of Watts Towers.us; Catheirne Wagley, 2009 festival)

 

 

Anybody with a shoe box full of vanity can scoop up the earth and tramp down a subterranean time capsule.

I've done it...on accident...with a handful of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a flooded sandbox. Then again, digging down seems the preferred stowage answer over, say, throwing Matchbox cars into the sky. (They'll be underfoot long before you whistle them down.)  Enter curator-to-the-cosmos and interstellar disc jockey Carl Sagan.

Sagan's designs to upend tradition harnessed the jettisoning power of auspicious planetary alignment in 1977. That year, NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 missions lifted off and (preluded by the Pioneer Plaque) sequestered Sagan's gold-plated copper LPs into the extrasolar black. Audio of earth sounds are on the record--expected. But so are some truly synaesthetic etchings: mathematical formulas, photographs, and drawings.

On the Golden Record, the artist Jon Lomberg depicts hairstyles (and body styles) that have already gone out of fashion, prompting a serious question: How much will we resemble our long-playing greeting card when it's found, if it's found? How much will our expectations of alien intelligence change along the way? (Maybe we should've stressed not to bite into the record like a foil-wrapped chocolate?) In any case, we won't be seeing this slice of life ever again, eBay be damned. Consider it a space-time capsule. Although our hundred-plus years of (radio/TV) waving at space is more likely to rouse the attention of aliens--it's omnidirectional--our snail-mail version has disarming charm...if the golden whorl can be decoded:

 

The information in the upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how pictures are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of a picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to ordinary television, in which the picture is a series of horizontal lines. Picture lines 1, 2 and 3 are noted in binary numbers, and the duration of one of the 'picture lines,' about 8 milliseconds, is noted. The drawing immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered 'interlace' to give the correct picture rendition. Immediately below this is a drawing of an entire picture raster, showing that there are 512 vertical lines in a complete picture. Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on the record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to insure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction.

Source: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec1.html

 

 

Jon Lomberg: Calibration circle.  Calibrate your needles NOW.

 

Jon Lomberg: DNA Structure

Here Lomberg describes the structure of DNA, about as technical as his Voyager drawings get. Mathematical and physical knowledge, also on the Golden Record, was contributed by Frank Drake.

 

Jon Lomberg: Diagram of Conception

Sexual, symbolic, bold--a Prince album cover! Unlike the rigid Renaissance geometry of Vitruvian Man (practically breaking on the rack), Lomberg's curves are dimpled and his humans stand contrapposto.

Jon Lomberg: Fetus Diagram

Carl Sagan, optimist, no doubt influenced the noble, creative, and innocuous depiction of humanity. Eschewing ICBMs and slavery, Lomberg favors an ideal mind and a normal physique.

Jon Lomberg: Diagram of Male and Female

The record's intent is partially to preserve, and partially to communicate. Its no-decay environment surely chagrins the contemporary artist desperate for legend. (Don't worry: we have reality shows for posterity now.) You've gotta hand it to the immortal Jon Lomberg, though; it's like he fired his remains from a cannon...all the way to space. And he's still alive.

--Andy Ritchie, artist and writer living in Oakland, CA

Image credits:

(1) Golden Record http://www.orbit.zkm.de/

(2) Explanation of Recording Cover Diagram http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/ goldenrec1.html

(3) Jon Lomberg diagrams http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/sceneearth.html

 Viva Latvia!

Walking down the wide streets of central Riga, with its gorgeous collection of Art Nouveau buildings (over 750, the most of any city in the world), I am occasionally unnerved by bicyclists who speed down the sidewalks within an inch of a spill. There are no little tinkling bells warning their fellow pedestrians, though admittedly this defensive form of walking is a cheap thrill, like little insects surviving in the food chain. Bicycling by the bigger numbers is a relatively new phenomenon here, where the economic crisis has taken a toll on riding gas-guzzling cars. Those continuing to drive are apparently a reckless hazard to their two-wheeled pedalers, who have decidedly not taken to the streets.

My first two days here I explored medieval Old Riga, wonderfully preserved and restored. The city itself is filled with Soviet-era block-style apartment buildings, incredibly quiet streets, and a friendly population that is reserved and respectful. This is not to say that the city is not lively, as that dimension certainly exists. But there is less of that spirit at the moment, with the country’s rapidly contracting economy under eminent threat of a collapse, its credit rating reduced to junk status, massive reductions on school and hospital spending, and all this to go with the coalition government’s implosion in January. Though they certainly don’t long for the 1991 pre-independence times, Latvians may be feeling the worse pinch of all the European Union countries.

As a visitor, one couldn’t really tell of the despair lurking behind Riga’s manicured Jugendstil facades and ample, clean-swept boulevards and small cobblestone streets. Less we forget, the Latvian capital is on the shortlist in consideration for Culture Capital of Europe in 2014 for a reason. So let’s talk art a bit.

In Old Riga, I visited the Riga Art Space, a small museum that featured Zeitgeist and the Atmosphere of a Place, an exhibition of the multimedia artist and architect Hardijs Ledins. The show takes a look at Ledins’ Modernist architecture analysis of the individual’s existence within the 1980s city environment.  In the well-represented documents and photographs, one almost feels a sense of nostalgia towards the blocky buildings, which still stand today.

Nearby at the Latvian National Musuem of Art, a traveling exhibition titled Private looks at contemporary Latvian photography through the lens of seven artists, including Vilnis Vitolins, whose saturated color interiors of Latvians in their equally bizarre and saturated (e.g. cluttered) domestic spaces would give David LaChappelle a run for his money. Another highlight in the show is Arnis Balcus, whose installation of old family photographs and constructed, new images tell the tongue-in-cheek but visually compelling story of a Latvian young man who goes to London to study, falls in love with a Muslim woman, gets married, and comes back home to live in Riga.

So that was yesterday afternoon.

The main reason I am traveling in Riga is to participate in a seminar (Playing Chameleon, curated by Anda Klavina) on art and the sunken economy, organized in conjunction with the festival Survival Kit, which opened in the evening.

Coupled with the delicious apples and pears that are in season, the city known as the Baltic Paris is alight with this timely exhibition. Curated by the Latvia Centre for Contemporary Art, Survival Kit utilizes vacated commercial properties that have gone bankrupt over the last year as economic crisis casualties.  Showing art in unused public spaces is not new, and there is plenty of it going on worldwide. And surely anyone can put on a show in a squatter’s space, but is it ultimately worth seeing?

What’s different about Survival Kit is that it is a concerted, citywide effort resulting in a well-organized, strong, and cohesive statement. The mantra for the festival might be “We will make it through this, and this is one way how.” For two weeks the festival is taking over storefronts that were formerly casinos, restaurants, perfume shops, clothing boutiques, etc., and presenting a spectrum of responses on how to contend with the devilish economy. The fifteen-plus participating spaces each takes the uniqueness of its previous commercial life and suggests something more sustaining (hopefully).

In no particular order of what was most memorable, I’ll begin with Kristaps Epners’ installation It’s a Dog’s Life. The artist recreates a Scandinavian dog farm where huskies are kept leashed and fed only to wait for the winter, when their special coats and sled-pulling abilities make them a cold-hot commodity. Epners has faithfully rebuilt these kennels, each individually marked with a dog’s name and the amount of food it requires daily. In place of the kennel doors, the artist embeds a monitor showing the dog and its real, very limiting day-to-day activities. The animals don’t appear to be mistreated, yet there is no freedom. The poignancy of Epners’ installation lies in its palpable, uneasy feeling of despair that perhaps can come not only with incapacitation, but also – 19 years and counting – liberation.

Design Group Zafte produced an installation/fashion show in a previous high-end, clothing boutique. Members Inara Gauja and Ingrida Zabere used old clothes and garments to make their new ready-to-wear collection. Though seeing pretty models joyously catwalking the roundabout rug and sharing a single baton “flour bag purse” provided a moment of escapism, the message might have been better delivered had the clothes been constructed with the closed stores’ draperies and upholsteries. This might have made for a more effective statement, considering that recycling second-hand clothes is by now a common staple of designers seen regularly in Fashion Week.

Every survival kit must include a match, so Kus Magazine asked the question “What are you going to do if there is only one match left?” 200 comic book artists and illustrators answered the call on sheets of paper sized to a matchbox. In place of a nail, each little work hung elegantly on its own, what else, matchstick.

In yet another defunct clothing store, Egija Inzule and Maja Wismer curated Is a Show, Is a Shop, Is a Book. The ambitious program in this pop-up bookstore will encompass guest lectures, talks, performances, and of course art books that are for sale. Hard to believe, but no such bookstore currently exists in Riga. Judging by the constant flow of hungry readers, the need for such a shop is in high demand. It seems the e-books have not yet won the war, and sometimes going back to simpler roots might very well provide the answers.

The most fulfilling – gastronomically at least – performance of the evening had to be the soup kitchen where Riga’s poets and artists cooked up some hearty fare and served it for free to all passerby. I imagine some of the most difficult problems were solved during kitchen chatter or over a meal. Hunger is no laughing matter, though, and this particular happening organized by Katrina Neiburga is evidence that in a struggling economy, survival begins with a little sustenance. Cuisine meets creativeness.

After Riga gained its independence in 1991, Soviet street names and monuments were removed, including the Lenin statue on Brivibas (Freedom) Boulevard. As one of the parallel events to Survival Kit, Aigars Bikse recreated the giant statue (slightly smaller in scale) out of a blue tarp material with a wooden pedestal. A lit text on the latter reads “Idealist. A Two-Minute Cycle of Historical Justice.” Starting right at midnight, the figure, which was initially deflated, filled with air and came to life, right arm raised in salute. Placed exactly where the original was before, and opposite the Cabinet of Ministers, Bikse’s version continued to alternately slump and then resurrect with authority. We may be feeling a bit blue right now, but justice, history, and economic depressions ultimately come and go. Until then, do as Lenin does and not as he said. Breathe in. Breathe out. And “after midnight, we’re gonna let it all hang out…”

There’s plenty more to see, but for now, that’s a wrap from la petite Paris and Survival Kit.

--Trong Gia Nguyen, ArtSlant East Coast Editor, living in New York

(Images: From Top Left (across and down): One of the many Art Nouveau buildings in Riga; Pears and apples in season; Arnis Balcus, Contemporary Latvians (2007) installation at Riga Art Space; 1975 photo of Lenin statue in Riga; Aigars Bikse, Idealist. A Two-Minute Cycle of Historical Justice (2009); Egija Inzule and Maja Wismer, Is a Show, Is a Shop, Is a Book; Kristaps Epners, It’s a Dog’s Life (2009); Design Group Zafte, Boutique Fashion Recycled fashion show; Lotusland soup kitchen; Kus Magazine, The Last Match installation.

 

In the summer of 2005 my husband Aaron and I traveled by car from San Francisco to Yellowstone for a family vacation.

Equipped with a smooth ride from the rental agency, some hand-written directions snagged from the internet, and a bit of free time, we made a side trip to the back roads of the north-eastern end of the Great Salt Lake in Utah to see Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty.

Leaving Highway 83, it took as much time to drive the last couple of miles on the lonely gravel road as it did for the last hundred from Salt Lake City. No sign of life but for great pelicans gliding just above us, as if in slow motion. Dust kicked up. Around the bend lay hulking masses of rusted metal, the forgotten remains of ancient motor vehicles. Obstacles cropped up in our path: a puddle of indeterminate depth, a jagged boulder. The relics of oil drills, their corrosion accelerated by the salt air and water, appeared to have been centuries-long abandoned. The lake--pink and luminescent--is truly an alien border land, void of vegetation, the only thing growing are the endless crystals of salt.

Then you see the spiral...

...and all of a sudden you're not alone anymore.  

Gathered near the Spiral Jetty we encountered groups of people--grad students, professors, artists. Not more than 10 or 12 people, but considerable for how far out we were, and how arduous the journey. Imagine the networking you could do out at the Spiral Jetty! Who knows what curator, what art-lover, gallery owner or professor you could meet in the middle of Utah, clambering over Smithson's jagged basalt boulders, wading into the lukewarm pink water, snapping photos all the while... We laughed and tread the line out onto the jetty, out into the lake, following the primordial shape crusted with salt crystals, until we stood in the middle.

The water inside the spiral is a deeper shade of pink, and the white salt crystals sparkle as they grow ever denser, continuing their decades-long conquest of this art installation, this fragmentary fractal off the lake's shore. Viewed from satellite, the salt patterns appear to be sweeping off the spiral, giving the jetty the illusion of swift motion. As the level of the lake rises and falls, the jetty becomes more and more integrated, a part of the bizarre environment in which it was situated. I too have been in swift motion, rising and falling, and that was 2005.

Now here I am in 2009, a couple of weeks into my new permanent home in New York, and I'm already longing for open space and some semblance of quiet. It seems here there is no end to the number of people finding a way to walk right in front of you, taxis forgetting the concept of turn signals, general claustrophobia and chaos, coupled with the constant noise of the all-too-sensitive car alarms blaring each time someone with a subwoofer in their trunk comes bellowing (and often squealing) down the street. On top of that add dueling ice cream trucks, mothers yelling and cursing at their kids, girlfriends cussing out their boyfriends, construction workers loudly berating each other, shops blasting hot salsa beats or bass-heavy hip hop, elevated subways thrashing out their sporadic industrial rhythm overhead.

Not all the sounds are unpleasant. I am enjoying some new ones for summer--the whirr and grate of cicadas in the trees, the shuffle and clack of dominoes on plastic tables. You can tell I'm not an east-coaster, and all of this is quite new to me. Don't even get me started on the new smells...

This sudden cacophony shouldn't be all that unfamiliar. I've made major metropolises my home for many years -Paris, London, San Francisco. I've often walked through my days with eyes on the pavement. But New York seems so much bigger and bolder, and the transition is made all the more jarring by the fact that my summer was spent with an eye toward the sky, in the natural wonderland that is Colorado--a landscape marked by massive mountains obscuring the sunsets, the air smelling of ozone and impending lighting, cleansed on the daily by the thunderstorms broiling up and heaving out of the Rocky mountains. With eyes toward the sky you forget you're in the parking lot of the Walmart or in a passenger seat zooming down the Interstate. In such a big beautiful place you almost start to forget that you haven't seen any art in a long time.

In New York I'm living in the center of the art world, where the abundance of galleries and museums is almost daunting. New York is a vortex for artists and art professionals and it is hard to resist its gravitational pull for long. But once you're here sometimes it's easy to forget why, because unlike the Spiral Jetty (which is another kind of vortex--and literally shaped so), New York attracts more than just art-lovers.  It attracts the whole mess of humanity and it is easy to get distracted, to get caught up in the sheer speed of things.

Walking quickly with eyes on the pavement, you can easily forget to look up. It's important to make that effort--wherever you are--whether it's making that spiral journey or just setting aside the time to experience art.  So here I stay for now, amid the noise and crush, keeping my eyes up and remembering why I'm here.

 

--Natalie Hegert, ArtSlant writer and editor, living in New York

How to get to Spiral Jetty: find directions on www.spiraljetty.org, provided by the Dia Foundation.

(*A note on images: as we traveled out to the Spiral Jetty before our switch over to digital, the photographs we took ended up archived somewhere or another out of reach. Creative Commons licensed photos of the Spiral Jetty were kindly snagged from the Spiral Jetty Flickr group, except where noted. From top to bottom: personal photo of Natalie HEgert; Highway, 2009, photo by Natalie Hegert; Jetty13, photo by informedmindstravel. Spiral Jetty, photo by post-postmodern. Moving sky, Colorado, 2009, photo by Natalie Hegert. New York, 2009 @ArtSlant))