The Brooklyn Rail
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
SEPT 2007
ArtSeen
Analogous Logic
by Shane McAdamsArtSeen
Remember when curators were content to take a passive role in the art world, when they were agents and administrators of creativity rather than producers in their own right?
Projects 85: Dan Perjovschi WHAT HAPPENED TO US?
by Valery OisteanuArtSeen
Recently the Museum of Modern Art offered Dan Perjovschi the Marron Atrium, and he promptly defaced it with nearly the same caricatures he had painted directly on the walls of Lombard-Freid Projects in Chelsea in a show called Back to Back (with Nedko Solakov) in April 2006.
Alex Hay New Paintings
by Roger WhiteArtSeen
After an early career as a Pop artist, including a key role in the seminal Cage / Cunningham / Rauschenberg performances of the mid–60s, and a long hiatus from public artmaking in Brisbee, Arizona, Alex Hay has recently started painting again.
An Artist in Our Time
by Robert C. MorganArtSeen
In November 2002, I was invited to do a series of lectures in the Republic of Korea, one of which was at Gae Myoung University in Daegu, the third largest city in the southern half of the peninsula.
The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings
by Thomas MicchelliArtSeen
The title of The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings is a bit of a feint: the artist’s works on paper, including his youthful caricatures, are cited in a number of monographs published over the past half century or so, from William Chapin Seitz’s Claude Monet (1960) to Paul Hayes Tucker’s Claude Monet: Life and Art (1995), not to mention Monet by Himself: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Letters, edited by Richard Kendall (1990).
Brooklyn Dispatches: Still Crazy: Unveiled Previews Unprecedented Collection at the Denver Art Museum
by James KalmArtSeen
ONE BILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF ART, yeah, that caught your attention, probably more than “great paintings,” “masterworks of Abstract Expressionism,” or “a unique opportunity for in-depth study of one artist’s oeuvre.” But that figure is not hyperbole; it’s an accurate estimate of the value of the Clyfford Still Estate, which will be housed in the Brad Cloepfil-designed Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.
Christoph Buchel
Training Ground for Democracy
by Thomas Micchelli
ArtSeen
This is not a review of Christoph Büchel’s Training Ground for Democracy at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art because, as of this writing, the exhibition does not exist.
Colectivo Chocolatera
by Warren FryArtSeen
After arriving an hour early to an event at the Grace Exhibition Space in Bushwick, which features performance work, I found myself chopping vegetables in the kitchen. It was another Performance + Dinner! Thursday, and the Dominican artists of the Colectivo Chocolatera were preparing Sancocho, a traditional festival dish; this, however was no intervention or audience participation piece—these folks needed help with the salad.
Richard Pousette-Dart
by Craig OlsonArtSeen
Death has many children, and there are Giants in the marshes still. You may not see them, perhaps—but they are there, and the only bulwark of safety is in a land of patient, faithful hearts.
Edwin Dickinson in Provincetown, 1912 – 1937
by John YauArtSeen
“Style,” the poet Robert Kelly wrote, “is death.” And the Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Guided by such forces as the marketplace and a herd mentality, the art world valorizes stylistic consistency over the maverick.
Edwin Dickinson: A Collector’s Notes
by Michael RubensteinArtSeen
The monumental landscapes of Song Dynasty China have their origins in reality; the classic boat trip through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River continually brings mental images of actual paintings to mind. So it is with Edwin Dickinson in Provincetown, 1912-1937 at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum through September 23rd, 2007.
Neo Rauch Para
by John YauArtSeen
As hermetic artists whose paintings pull the viewer inside, both Neo Rauch and Ad Reinhardt would likely agree on one thing; all art is political.
Lori Der Hagopian Strange Bird Productions
by Geoffrey Cruickshank-HagenbuckleArtSeen
While many lament the dubious quotas, super-size-me scale, showboat marquees and recycled red carpet art stars unwholesomely coupling with the hydra of bureaucratic curatorial diplomacy that clog, clot, and clumsily commandeer today’s more than 200 international biennalés, few have devised as covert an alternative as has Lori Der Hagopian with her Strange Bird Productions.
Gego, Between Transparency and the Invisible
by Kimberly LammArtSeen
Venezuelan artist Gego once wrote that she sought “transparency of volume” in her work, “so that a form could be appreciated fully from all angles.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
by Hrag VartanianArtSeen
Few art museums have the luxury of acquiring masterpieces one by one and then mounting an exhibition with an accompanying catalogue for each artwork, unless you are the Upper East Side’s Neue Galerie of Austrian and German Modern Art.
