Emvergeoning

Enough about money, it’s time for some poetry (the poorest art form around):

Existence

The man of dark politics
in a gold-buttoned boudoir
watched the untying of a black chignon
the hair rolled out like a torrent
in the torrent roses tumbled
and in one rose the mute insect
would not abdicate its existence
and clambered alone slowly
on the trembling petal of the flower
plucked from the ravines of death
in the course of a long day.

– Jean Follain (, trans. W. S. Merwin)

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Speaking of money, the Arts Writers Grant Program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation, is now accepting applications for their 2007 cycle (deadline is September 12). Categories include books, articles, short-form writing (1,000 words or less), and “new and alternative media”. But if you’re thinking about applying, keep this mind:

Though nearly every project given in the last round of this grant project is legitimate and deserving, the grantees are hardly an undistinguished bunch. Every single one has a university affiliation (except for the director of the Drawing Center), a quarter of them are editors at Artforum, and though I can’t be positive, I don’t think a single one is under 30, most over 40.

Tyler Green, linking to that post at The Expanded Field also comments: “Last year the foundation asked me to encourage writers who blog to apply. This year? I’d say don’t bother. After seeing who the grantees (and the panelists) were last year, I’m not.”

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A few days ago a friend sent me this article reporting that stock in Sotheby’s dropped in value by over 11% in two days due to concerns that the super-duper rich are now only super rich, and won’t be buying as much art. That is to say, market performance in general  impacts on the art market specifically. Now Todd Gibson, Tyler Green’s stand-in at Modern Art Notes, points out that the art market has been growing too quickly, and was due for a realignment anyway.

This is probably true, but in my opinion, the art market will continue on a long-term upward trend. As China becomes more liberalized, we will see its economy grow substantially, and a new upper-class elite, participating economically and culturally with the Western world, will start buying up more and more art. Similar trends could emerge in India and other countries as well.

But I’m also interested in what the economic situation does to the actual art. There has been concern lately that the overheated art market is leading us to a point where the art follows the money, rather than the other way around. The importance of critics and curators is ebbing as value is determined more by major private collectors than major art institutions. So if these concerns are valid, then perhaps a cooling of the market will lead to more meaningful work as the artists try to create markets rather than following them. It’ll be interesting to watch, in any case.

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I knew I had to find the antidote to that Hall & Oates video, and I think this is it. Mike Cooper has been one of my favorite musicians lately, embracing blues, free jazz, experimental electronics, and even exotica — and yet his recordings never sound contrived. Here’s a video for a recording he did back in 1984 with Tim Hill, Gary Jones and Paul Burwell (as Beating Time). This fits somewhere in the No Wave / Free Jazz Fusion territory…. Be sure to check out too.

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The Dark Matters show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts stunningly displays contemporary artworks that puncture complacency and give us a glimpse into clandestine military operations, death and starling migrations . Initially, I plotted an epic post full of everything I saw in San Francisco. However, the work was so different and so in depth that I’m just going to write reviews seriatim to keep things succinct and accessible.
David Maisel is a photographer that I can’t stop thinking about. The artist’s initial interest stemmed from this question:
What happens to our bodies when we die? And, too, what happens to our souls?

These copper canisters contain the unclaimed remains of patients that inhabited the Oregon State Insane Asylum [in the days before euphemisms like "San Antonio State Hospital"]. Maisel said he was photographing the corroding urns when a prison worker assigned to clean up at the facility leaned into the room and whispered “The Library of Dust…”

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This is the initial post on a series of artists I discovered at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts current Dark Matters exhibition. Joachim Schmid Selected Photo Works 1982-2007 is a mid-career retrospective for the Berlin based, self described “professional looker.” It features found photographs that the artist ripped, carefully framed or shredded and reconfigured like the postcard inspired example below.

Finding photographs at the largest flea market in Berlin, Schmid appropriates the dismissed evidence of other people’s artifacts. The shredded pieces reminded me of Jessica Barnett DeCuir’s cut up record album covers as well as the CutUp Collective occasionally documented on Wooster…You can read more about Schmid’s work in the companion monograph.

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An 8 foot tall Lego man was pulled out of the sea by the employees of a beach-side drink stall in the Netherlands yesterday. The words “No Real Than You Are” are printed on his chest, and the name “Ego Leonard” and the number 9 can be found on his back. A little googling turns up pictures of the Lego man at a music festival called Dance Valley in Amsterdam. Apparently it’s all the handiwork of an artist collective called “Ego Leonard” which is somehow connected to Du Fois. Here’s some video of the sculpture on the beach (his head turns!). Another mystery solved by the internet.

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[Note: this post is part 2 in a three-part series on the work of Alberto Mijangos. Part 1, on his Chones series, can be found here.]

Alberto Mijangos was not a religious man. Although his wife is active in her Episcopal church, even singing in the choir, Alberto always maintained a skeptical distance from organized religion of all kinds. This attitude towards religion went hand in hand with his distrust of authority and his wariness of tribalism. Yet in the mid-80s Alberto started working on what he called the “T-Shirt Series”, which explores the form of the T-shirt as it relates to the Christian cross. Having associated the cross with the grand cathedrals of Mexico City, where his grandmother took him as a child, this form helped Mijangos deal with both the grandiose and the quotidian. As a form on which to base an exploration of abstraction, it is perfect: simple and direct, yet still able to express the dual nature of man. At the same time, the t-shirt relates directly to the human figure, which is where Alberto had spent most of his time as an artist. More than anything, the image of the cross was a bridge for Alberto: it allowed him to confront the spiritual and the physical; the abstract and the representational.

His use of this image may have been inspired by the work of Antoni Tapies, whose paintings, which make extensive use of the cross, Alberto greatly admired. Like Tapies, Alberto began exploring the use of inexpensive, common materials with the t-shirt series. These paintings may include house paint, sand, wax, glue, fabric, or other found materials. Just as he used the common t-shirt to approach weighty ideas about human nature, he employed common materials to give an air of earthiness to transcendent imagery.

None of this, of course, was new in the 1980s. In fact, to begin exploring abstract expressionism and arte povera in 1985 could be considered rather quaint in an art world obsessed with the new and the shocking. And yet the power of these pieces, and the later Chones series which developed out of the T-shirt Series, is undeniable on a personal level, even if they have clear historical precedents. For in the process of exploring these techniques and styles, Alberto was not just exploring formal possibilities, but he was inhabiting and reinterpreting the philosophical foundations of de Kooning, Tapies, and others. It is a testament to the power of these ideas that they can bring real meaning and awareness to the life of a man who toiled in a spiritual void as a migrant farmer, a man who was deported for being a communist, although he never really believed in communism either. Here is a man who only believed in art, in the creative process. It was, for him, the only path to redemption. To put a mark on the canvas was in fact an act of supreme faith for Alberto — the only kind of faith he could understand.

And this faith involves real peril. As Martin Buber wrote — and I think this is as good a description of Alberto’s relationship with his art as any –

“The deed involves a sacrifice and a risk. The sacrifice: infinite possibility is surrendered on the altar of the form; all that but a moment ago floated playfully through one’s perspective has to be exterminated; none of it may penetrate into the work; the exclusiveness of such a confrontation demands this. The risk: the basic word can only be spoken with one’s whole being; whoever commits himself may not hold back part of himself; and the work does not permit me, as a tree or man might, to seek relaxation in the It-world; it is imperious: if I do not serve it properly, it breaks, or it breaks me.”

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A friend recently returned from conducting sociological research on the Zapatistas in San Cristobal de las Casas. While he was there, he documented some intriguing stencil art. Justin made an immediate connection to local miscreant Scotch!

I’m in San Francisco working on a recap of some phenomenal shows at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA and a tiny weird nail salon turned hipster gallery called Queen’s Nails…more soon!!

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Time to pull those summer fonts out of the closet.

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Here’s a sneak peek of Judith Cottrell’s new exhibit gel meets slope at Blue Star’s Gallery Four.  Also worth checking out this month is the show denature in the UTSA Satelite space.

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