Emvergeoning

A few photos of Manny Castillo’s casket being painted by his friends and colleagues in the local art community:

See also: San Antonio Express-News blog post with a number of murals facilitated by Castillo’s San Anto Cultural Arts; the Express-News obit; the San Antonio Current’s just before his death.

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Gallery Nord

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Obama’s Inauguration is slated officially as a 4 day affair starting on Sunday and ending on Wednesday but he will arrive by train on Saturday. Not sure how Emvergeoning is going to celebrate yet but would welcome suggestions from local San Antonians who want to get together. Here is TPR’s Inauguration day schedule.

Imposing pic found on BarackObama.com

Sunday, January 18th
President-elect Barack Obama will kick off the schedule of official inaugural activities in Washington, D.C., with a welcome event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday afternoon. The event will be free and open to the public.

Monday, January 19th – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
In 1994, to further commemorate a man who lived his life in service to others, Congress transformed the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday into a national day of community service.  To honor Dr. King’s legacy, the President-elect and Vice President-elect and their families, joined by Americans in communities all across the country, will participate in activities dedicated to serving others in communities across the Washington, D.C. area.

That night, on the eve of the Inauguration, there will be a youth concert at the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, D.C. The concert will be free, but tickets are required.

Tuesday, January 20th – Inauguration Day
The President-elect and Vice President-elect and their families will participate in the traditional inaugural ceremonies and events. For the first time ever, the length of the National Mall will be open to those wishing to attend the swearing-in ceremony.  Festivities will commence at 10 a.m. on the west front of the U.S. Capitol and will include:

•    Musical Selections:  The United States Marine Band, followed by The San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus
•    Call to Order and Welcoming Remarks: Senator Dianne Feinstein
•    Invocation: Dr. Rick Warren
•    Musical Selection: Aretha Franklin
•    Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will be sworn into office by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, the Honorable John Paul Stevens
•    Musical Selection: John Williams, composer/arranger with Itzhak Perlman, (violin), Yo-Yo Ma  (cello), Gabriela Montero (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet)
•    President-elect Barack H. Obama will take the Oath of Office, using President Lincoln’s Inaugural Bible, administered by the Chief Justice of the United States, the Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr.
•    Inaugural Address
•    Poem: Elizabeth Alexander
•    Benediction: The Reverend Dr. Joseph E. Lowery
•    The National Anthem: The United States Navy Band “Sea Chanters”

After President Obama gives his Inaugural Address, he will escort outgoing President George W. Bush to a departure ceremony before attending a luncheon in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. The 56th Inaugural Parade will then make its way down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House with groups traveling from all over the country to participate.

Later that day, the Presidential Inaugural Committee will host ten official Inaugural Balls.  More details about the Inaugural Balls will be released at a later date.

Wednesday, January 21st
The newly-inaugurated President and Vice President of the United States will participate in a prayer service.

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Bettie Ward: “Optimism and Horror”

McKay Otto: “ever self ever”

• Address
• Phone

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From artpace’s website:
The first in a trio of films selected and presented by artist Guillermina Zabala. Hiroshima mon amour, 1959. This film by Alan Resnais focuses on the intimate affair between a French actress and a Japanese engineer and politician in Hiroshima. The contrast between this private relationship and the very public effects of the war creates an ambiguous blend of personal and global tragedy. 90 mins. Free admission.

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Paul Richards’ article in the Washington Post advocating for a Disney-based museum show has inspired some interesting responses around the blogosphere. Greg Allen makes a plausible case that it’s nothing more than “a fanboi/critic [trying] to turn some offhand party chatter about the worst show ever into a mouse-eared museum manifesto.” Kriston Capps, in a more even-keeled post gets a bit closer to what I see as the real problem with the idea:

To admit Disney would be to open up a massive new genealogy in visual art that includes all the things that are visual but aren’t called art. So it wouldn’t be Disney and Murakami or Disney and younger fine artists but Disney and the makers of Final Fantasy or Disney and the Coca Cola designers. That might all be defensible, but it would get very confusing very quickly.

Just because something is important does not make it visual art and at the end of the day, just because something is visual art does not mean that it is represents the most important visual thing. Rather this notion of visual art you find at museums offers a streamlined conversation within visual culture, one that (one hopes) influences and is influenced by other conversations in the broader culture. But museums cannot hope to archive all those other conversations, too.

But I think it’s not just a question of what is deemed visual art or what is deemed important. The issue comes down to a more practical question of access. Museums allow us to see genuine, rare works of art from a field that was founded on prizing the unique object. When you start to show Mickey Mouse cartoons, interesting and important as they may be to visual culture, you’re showing people things they can already see in the comfort of their homes. It’s not that the material is inappropriate for the museum, but that museum treatment isn’t necessary. Without the museum, many of us would never get to see a Frank Stella except as a reproduction; but if all the museums in the world disappeared, we could still participate in the visual culture of cinema, more or less in the way it was intended to be viewed.

Maybe we’re past the point where we refuse to consider Disney or Alfred Hitchcock or Matt Groening to be “real artists,” but that doesn’t mean that the public would be well-served by seeing their work in museums.

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Death Messiah logo by Christophe Szpajdel

I was tipped off (by Design Observer) to an interview in Vice magazine with Christophe Szpajdel, who Vice calls “The Dark Lord of Logos” (but who Design Observer has dubbed “The Paul Rand of Metal”) — the designer responsible for the logos of over 7,000 metal bands.

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LoneStar Art Collaboration

See Rodriguez post below

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Did anyone catch Jeff Koons‘ cameo in Gus Van Sant’s highly recommended film ‘Milk‘? His screen time was only about four minutes as San Francisco politician Art Agnos but it was interesting to see Koons actually kinda hold his own against such heavyweight actors as Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, James Franco, Diego Luna, and, of course, Sean Penn. It’s his first featured film (with his clothes on at least) and I’m wondering if this is a new direction for him or how exactly he got the role. I’ve googled around and nothing really comes up. Please comment below if you have any inside info. Oh, did anyone see ‘Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy’? – it’s listed on his IMDb page.

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huachuma

ayahuasca

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The grandeur of your epaulet is inspirin’, Colonel. Please inform the Quartermaster that Miss Lillywhite has got her underpants in the mud. However, she does not require assistance as she has come prepared with a pair of zircon encrusted tweezers. Her golden brow is festooned about with thoughts becomin’ such a child. Later she will join us on the veranda.

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Here is an Austin blog that focuses on the fine art of camera tossing. Our neighbors to the North are part of a recent fad that can be found popping up around Flickr which involves breaking the cardinal rule of protecting your camera at all costs. Most of these particular examples remind me of the iTunes visualizer and who knows where this type of movement will lead to but I think it’s safe to say that it will be around forever as cameras just get cheaper and more disposable. Next time a telemarketer or your ex calls on your cell – just be sure the camera is on before you throw it across the room.

camera toss

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Just saw ‘Doubt‘ and it’s definitely worth a trip to the theater but I’m interested in Winkleman’s response to the film and his concern with the word doubt and how artists are suffering from a lack of certainty as well as religion – “Consider this an open thread on vital religious/spiritual impulses, art making, and whether or not any of this is new.”

Indeed, this is not new, and doubt has always been at the root of philosophy. The father of Western philosophy, Socrates, once famously agreed he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew that he knew nothing. Cartesian doubt was named after the father of Modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, and his credo to “doubt everything” (”de omnibus dubitandum est”) in an attempt to find a foothold of certainty on which his philosophy could firmly stand. Descartes noted that, more often than not, things are not the way they appear to be and that our senses often fool us – a stick might seem bent under water or we often awake from dreams that we mistaken for reality and, in the end, we could never truly know if Surrounded by all this uncertainty, however, we can never doubt the fact we are doubting and this naturally led to his bedrock “I think, therefore, I am.” Eventually, Critical Theory would derive its name from Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason‘ (and Judgment) in his criticism of possible knowledge and in a response to David Hume’s radical skepticism.

Winkleman notes “how debilitating uncertainty is” but doubt has proven itself the greatest ally to artists. Marxist theory contends that the primary function of art is social criticism and it is certainly true that art perpetually doubts the ideology of the reigning majority. Indeed, Kierkegaard points out that the word ‘doubt’ is etymologically related to the word ‘double’ – our meaning is always duplicitous – there is always two sides to every story, two sides to every coin, and as Nietzsche would write “there are no facts, only interpretations.” Even the sacred realm of science is not immune from the clutches of doubt and prevailing Theories of Relativity and Quantum Theory actually contradict each other and are probably both wrong. Indeed, our everyday trust in science is a lot closer to a religion than we like to admit. Science is a modern religion of high probability but it can never fully erase doubt. Karl Popper would attack the ultimate futility of science when he harshly pointed out “Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and… in time, corrected” and “all we can do is search for the falsity content of our best theory.” Indeed, Einstein agreed with this final assessment and concluded, himself, that “Only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.” Daring speculation just happens to be the primary realm of the artist. Doubt has certainly been around for a long time, but only in our most enlightened moments.

Texas Public Radio will have a more comprehensive review of “A History of Doubt” at 10am on Sunday. Tune into 89.1 FM to hear the radio show “Speaking of Faith” with poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht.

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Check out work addressing the struggles between man and nature, and visa versa, by John Fleischer, Stephanie Nadeau, Casey Roberts, and Tim Roby.

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Michael Cannell has an interesting article in today’s NYT about economic depression bringing about a resurgence in good design and architecture:

In the lean years ahead, “there will be less design, but much better design,” Ms. Antonelli predicted.

There is a reason she and others are optimistic: however dark the economic picture, it will most likely cause designers to shift their attention from consumer products to the more pressing needs of infrastructure, housing, city planning, transit and energy. Designers are good at coming up with new ways of looking at complex problems, and if President-elect Barack Obama delivers anything like a W.P.A, we could be “standing on the brink of one of the most productive periods of design ever,” said Reed Kroloff, director of Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Michael Beirut shows us what this will look like from the designer’s perspective in a post at Design Observer:

The modern design studio can’t help but subscribe to the cult of asap. But while working at full speed is great for profit margins, it’s not so good for quality control. A design solution almost always benefits from a second, third or fourth look. Take advantage of the slower pace of a recession by remembering what it was like in design school to spend a full semester on a single project. What seemed then like torture may now feel like a luxury, and your work will benefit. And don’t forget that recessions are a great time for the kind of research and development that manifests itself in self-initiated projects, work that takes a longer view than the next deadline.

UPDATE: Design Observer posts Murray Moss’ take on the issue. Being a dealer in the high-end design that Cannell decries, Moss seems pretty pissed off (and defensive) about the NYT article. A quick read of the comments by DO readers gives a good idea of the polarization this idea is generating.

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from artpace’s website-

Join us for the debut of the 09.1 Hudson (Show)Room exhibition featuring New York-based artist Kehinde Wiley. His paintings depict African-American men from the streets of New York City in paintings that adopt the conventions of Old Master portraits. His conflation of art historical tradition and contemporary subject matter makes for oddly familiar and vibrant works of art. On view through May 3.

Also check out the new Window Works opening by Adam Bork.

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Various artists slappin’ you in tha’ face.

Live Painting & Bring your own custom stickers to contribute to an on-site art installation.

LoneStar Studios

107 Lone Star Blvd.

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Edward Winkleman posted a short essay on Saturday, which, in short, claims that the future of the art world is in fact the present of the art world. Citing Barack Obama, Winkleman ties the conventional wisdom about the impact of the internet on contemporary society to the current diaspora of the art world. While the underlying premise is not particularly new or insightful, it was a point that needed to be made: art world observers still looking for “the next big thing” need to take a deep breath and accept that fragmentation is here to stay; and this is, in fact, “the next big thing.” This isn’t a crisis, it’s just a way of being. Winkleman catalogs the effects our database-driven culture is having on the art scene, from curating to collecting to artmaking, and announces that these ripples will only expand as time marches on. What this means is that those looking for a new style or idea to dominate contemporary art culture will be disappointed. Poststructuralism is here to stay, and we’ve only begun to tap its implications.

Fair enough, but I think there’s another point to made here (which is perhaps just a shift in emphasis). Winkleman’s essay focusses on the anachronism, contrasts, and tension bred by a process that revels in referencing the Old Masters alongside contemporary pop culture, in drawing improbable threads through history. He emphasizes the information gathering, the cataloging, the futile but fascinating battle against being overwhelmed by the shear amount of information available to us.

But I think what’s most interesting about our current moment is the ways in which it potentially frees us from these obsessive chases, and actually opens up space for more genuine personal interactions. That might sound counter-intuitive at first, but the fact that there’s no longer a dominating formal or conceptual framework allows us to experience art on more personal terms. As a society, we may no longer reject certain styles of work as “unserious” — we may be forced to accept abstract expressionism alongside minimalism alongside realism alongside surrealism ad nauseum; but as individuals we are more free to just focus on the work that reaches us, rather than struggling to understand paint splatters because Greenberg told us to. And whatever style happens to appeal to you, whether it’s Mark Bradford, Walt Disney, Johathan Ive, Cecil Taylor, Bernard Leach or Outkast, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to make personal connections with others who care about the objects of your quirky taste. We can be more sincere about art if we allow ourselves to be.

So while Winkleman moves toward the conclusion that “art by concensus” will come into vogue, I’m more interested in how much more habitable the long tail is becoming: there are those of us interested in making the connections between styles and disciplines; and there are those whose myopic focus we leach off of to make our broad connections. For both groups, the world is becoming a , if more fragmented.

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This is a little late notice  but after you’re done checking out the shows at First Friday tonight, go to your computer around 9:30 p.m. central time to see Jump-Start’s Web cast that will feature artists from various locations around the world. It should remain true to its namesake and be on-line until about 9:30 tomorrow. It can all be seen at http://24hours24artists.com or better yet go see the performance live starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday at Jump-Start Performance Co. at 108 Blue Star, SA, Tx. First Thursday was pretty dead overall last night due to the New Year’s Day Holiday but also check out “All Ladies Video Review” at UTSA Satellite Space and Susan Oaks’ work at Fiber Artspace.

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Unit B press release:

“In their collaboration, Smoke and Mirrors, artists Alex Rubio and David Vega created intricate individual depictions of a personal vice, then broke up the two harsh images into innocuous fragments, diffusing and intermixing the ambiguous pieces and collectively forming an amorphous cloud of their indulgences.

For the closing reception the artists have returned their individual fragmented contributions to their original states revealing the artists’ negative habits. And in the spirit of vices and indulgences, vodka and hot dogs will be served. Don’t miss this “welcome to the new year” good time.”

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Aliza Shvarts wins Andrew Sullivan’s “Poseur Alert” award with 28% of the vote. A sample of her award-winning prose:

This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body. The artwork exists as the verbal narrative you see above, as an installation that will take place in Green Hall, as a time-based performance, as a independent concept, as a myth and as a public discourse.

It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.

I wonder what that says about (probably hasty) the conclusion of this post?

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