Emvergeoning

Christopher Knight at the LA Times asks whether an as-yet-unrealized Felix Gonalez-Torres sculpture should have been chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale (hat tip MAN). The two primary concerns are whether Gonzalez-Torres really needs the exposure, and whether it is appropriate for a curator to undertake the realization of a new work for which there are only notes and sketches. MAN took up the second issue back in early March, and asked Michelle Reyes to address it in a brief interview. According to Reyes, who is the director of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and the Andrea Rosen Gallery:

This is fully formed, completely, no questions. But as per Felix’s working practice, there were parameters for the flexibility intrinsic to the work – there is a choice of two sizes and a choice of materials. As with the majority of Felix’s work, it will look different each time it is installed. There is no one true installation. This is one of the core aspects of the nature of all of Felix’s work.

If, as Sol LeWitt said, “the idea is a machine that makes the art,” there shouldn’t be any problem using the concept and sketches to realize a piece posthumously. But to what extent did Gonzalez-Torres subscribe to this idea of art-making? Although Gonzalez-Torres often built (endless) reproduction into the concept of his pieces (as in the piece Untitled (For Jeff), displayed around San Antonio on billboards to “welcome” the Alameda), and encouraged curator involvement in the production process, it is a question worth asking.

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This afternoon comes another great loss for the arts in San Antonio: Linda Pace died in hospice care. Although I didn’t know Pace personally, her dedication to contemporary art touched all of us involved in the art community in many ways. Her most ambitious project, Artpace, brought San Antonio into a dialogue with the national and international contemporary art world that has changed the way the city as a whole views art. Since 1995, Artpace has been a paragon of arts organizations in San Antonio: the quality of the work, the involvement with the community, and the professionalism of the organization have been consistently impressive. Beyond Artpace, Pace has contributed to the community in innumerable ways, through her own body of artwork as well as her support for other organizations.

I have heard that Pace left her collection to form the basis of a new museum, which will be a lasting legacy to her love of art and of the city of San Antonio. As I learn more about the form this will take, I’ll let you know.

I would encourage those that knew Pace better than I did (and there are a lot of you out there) to leave your thoughts on her life and her work in the comments.

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Mr. Bichelbaum hits the Oil Industry with a doozy of a presentation, proposing that the key to fueling the petroleum industry is found in burning human beings. This new magical fuel, called Vivoleum, will solve all of life’s little energy crises. Lots of their website links are broken, maybe because they are under serious Homeland Security surveillance. The Yes Men sure know how to pull the wool, though nothing seems quite as incredible as their DOW chemical acceptable risk calculator stint.

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Back in April I saw a reference on Glasstire to a major ceramics donation to the MFAH by Garth Clark and Mark del Vecchio. The size of the donation (375 pieces) and the stature of the donors (Clark’s New York gallery is one of the finest ceramics galleries in the country) piqued my interest, but at the time there wasn’t much more information to be had. Today I came across the press release for the donation, which offers some additional details. Artists mentioned in the release include many truly important ceramic artists (Peter Voulkos, Kawai Kanjiro, Marek Cecula, and Beatrice Wood among them) as well as sculptors who did significant work in ceramics (such as Sir Anthony Caro, Claes Oldenburg, and Lucio Fontana). There also appears to be a lot of depth to the collection, especially in the area of contemporary American ceramic arts. The collection will be fully unveiled in an exhibition slated for May, 2008, which will easily be worth the drive to Houston.

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Hello friends. All apologies for slow posts this week. Ben flew out of town and I’ve been preoccupied with Bunnyphonic projects. I just finished reading Miranda July’s new collection of short stories. Get thee to a library, oh, which by the way finally has wi-fi here in San Antonio. So, here’s a list of things to do this week:

* Read “” by Miranda July

* Go see Gary Sweeney’s new work at Parchman Stremmel [ no relation to Hammacher Schlemmer]

* Read the entire article on The Splasher in the New York Magazine, it’s all about the vandalism of vandalism in busy NYC.

* Practice drawing blind contours. It’s good for your constitution. This one is from EEfje in the Netherlands.

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It is with sorrow that I write to say that Alberto Mijangos died in the hospital last night. When I last saw Alberto, he was weak, and was preparing himself for death. He asked me about reincarnation, and wondered why people would want to come back to this world. Why not go somewhere else? Those who knew Alberto well saw his attachment to this life and the beauty of this world — to which he dedicated his life — but also sensed his longing to transcend the mediocrity in which he saw most people living. In his work he strived to critique the failings of humanity, without “pointing the finger,” as he said. He saw himself struggling to rise above the fear, the insecurity, the shit of being human. Through it all, though, he always had faith in the possibility of transcendence. The last years of his life were deeply dedicated to the exploration of Taoist philosophy; not so much as a scholar, but as a practitioner, living out the principles of the Tao as well as he knew how. During my last visit with him, I read a poem to Alberto which concludes with the lines: “On the door it says what to do to survive / but we were not born to survive / only to live.” One could say many things about Alberto and his work, but perhaps his most important gift to the world was his ability to simply live. His death can do nothing to diminish that.

UPDATE: For those of you who did not know Alberto or his work, I plan to do a little retrospective on Emvergeoning in the coming weeks. Also, here is the poem I referenced above.

SEE ALSO: For more on Alberto’s life and work, see our posts on his Chones series and his T-shirt series.

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If you were to interrogate me to try and find the origin of this post, well, I would sound like Alberto Gonzales. I don’t remember. But I do know this stuff is pure gold, so in the esprit de corps of Gay Pride Month, I present the opening theme to Rainbowman: Warrior of Love.

In addition, I found the true weapon of mass destruction that would solve the Iraqi civil war if we left it in the right hands [i.e.- the enemies of our enemies are our friends]. Chances are that any YouTube video with eleven question marks dwells in the interstitial space of strange, delightful entertainment and quizzical absurdity.

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Phill Niblock film of Sun Ra’s Arkestra from 1966. A 16-minute version of this film has recently been released on DVD, and is . Niblock did a similar film of Arthur Russell, but it’s these days…

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[Note: Yes, there are spoilers below.]

I wish I had something incredibly insightful to say about the conclusion of The Sopranos, but so much critical commentary is swirling around that it’s hard to feel like I can catch up with it all, much less make a contribution to the conversation.

Timothy Noah has a pretty good round-up of the current critical state of play over at Slate. I agree that the ending was nothing like City Lights (or The Graduate, for that matter); there was no epiphany, no resolution, not even an implied one. In some ways it revisited the endings of earlier seasons, with the intimate family dinner. In fact, A.J. makes a direct reference to the final lines of Season 1, while the family dined in Vesuvio’s during a rain storm (Tony: “I’d like to propose a toast, to my family. Someday soon, you’re gonna have families of your own, and if you’re lucky, you’ll remember the little moments, like this… that were good.”). In the final lines of Season 6, we are taken back to this moment:

Tony: It’s an entry level job. Buck up.

A.J.: Right, focus on the good times…

Tony: Don’t be sarcastic.

A.J.: Isn’t that what you said one time? Try and remember the times that were good?

Tony: I did?

A.J.: Yeah.

Tony: Well it’s true, I guess.

I think this reference is much more telling and meaningful than the “blackout” theory floating around. A lot of people wanted a resolution, and the ultimate resolution would be the death of Tony Soprano. But the show has never really been about that kind of resolution. It’s always been the resolution of finishing a day at work and having a few hours with your family before the next day begins.

So why the tense build-up and awkward drop-off of the final scene? Perhaps it’s a refusal to give us the comfort of an even remotely tidy ending. The show stopped not because the story was over, but because we can’t go on watching it forever (the last words we hear come from the Journey song playing on the jukebox: “Don’t stop…”). In this way, David Chase was able to succeed in conclusively not ending The Sopranos.

And he gave us all something to talk about.

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During the whole Paris Hilton jail saga (which is maybe a little unfair after all…), I saw this photo by Nick Ut which really made an impression on me as a powerful image:

As it turns out, this guy has taken some notable photos in the past — including this one from the Vietnam war. One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers notes that the two photos were taken 35 years apart to the day. Amazing.

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