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03 | HOT & COOL ART
REE FREE FRE
HIROSHISUGIMOTO
Scottish National Gallery
of Modern Art
Main sponsorDeutsche Bank
Media partner
Kerlin, DublinAnton Kern, New YorkPeter Kilchmann, ZurichJohann König, BerlinDavid Kordansky, Los AngelesTomio Koyama, TokyoAndrew Kreps, New YorkKrinzinger, ViennaKukje, Seoulkurimanzutto, Mexico CityYvon Lambert, ParisLehmann Maupin, New YorkMichael Lett, AucklandLisson, LondonLong March Space, BeijingKate MacGarry, LondonMai 36, ZurichGiò Marconi, MilanMatthew Marks, New YorkMary Mary, GlasgowMeyer Kainer, ViennaMeyer Riegger, KarlsruheAndreiana Mihail, BucharestVictoria Miro, LondonThe Modern Institute, GlasgowMurray Guy, New YorkFranco Noero, TurinGiti Nourbakhsch, Berlin Lorcan O’Neill, RomeOffice Baroque, Antwerp Pace, New YorkMaureen Paley, LondonPeres Projects, BerlinPerrotin, Paris Francesca Pia, ZurichPlan B, ClujGregor Podnar, BerlinEva Presenhuber, ZurichProduzentengalerie, HamburgProject 88, MumbaiRaster, WarsawRaucci/Santamaria, NaplesAlmine Rech, BrusselsRegina, MoscowAnthony Reynolds, LondonRodeo, IstanbulThaddaeus Ropac, ParisAndrea Rosen, New YorkSalon 94, New YorkAurel Scheibler, Berlin Rüdiger Schöttle, MunichMicky Schubert, BerlinSfeir-Semler, BeirutStuart Shave/Modern Art, LondonSies + Höke, DusseldorfFilomena Soares, LisbonSommer Contemporary Art, Tel AvivReena Spaulings Fine Art, New YorkSprüth Magers Berlin London, BerlinStandard (Oslo), OsloLuisa Strina, Sao PauloSutton Lane, LondonT293, NaplesTimothy Taylor, LondonTeam, New YorkThe Third Line, DubaiTina Kim, New York
Participating Galleries
303 Gallery, New YorkJuana de Aizpuru, MadridHelga de Alvear, MadridAndersen’s Contemporary,CopenhagenThe Approach, LondonBaliceHertling, ParisLaura Bartlett, London Catherine Bastide, BrusselsGuido W. Baudach, BerlinMarianne Boesky, New YorkTanya Bonakdar, New YorkBortolami, New YorkIsabella Bortolozzi, BerlinThe Breeder, AthensBroadway 1602, New YorkGavin Brown’s enterprise, New YorkDaniel Buchholz, CologneCabinet, London Canada, New YorkGisela Capitain, CologneChina Art Objects, Los AngelesSadie Coles HQ, LondonContemporary Fine Arts, BerlinPilar Corrias, LondonCorvi-Mora, LondonChantal Crousel, ParisSorcha Dallas, GlasgowThomas Dane, LondonMassimo De Carlo, MilanElizabeth Dee, New YorkEigen + Art, Berlinfrank elbaz, ParisKonrad Fischer, Dusseldorf Foksal, WarsawFortes Vilaça, Sao PauloMarc Foxx, Los AngelesCarl Freedman, LondonStephen Friedman, LondonFrith Street, London Gagosian, LondonAnnet Gelink, AmsterdamA Gentil Carioca, Rio de JaneiroMarian Goodman, New YorkGreene Naftali, New Yorkgreengrassi, LondonKarin Guenther, HamburgJack Hanley, New YorkHauser & Wirth, LondonHerald St, LondonHollybush Gardens, LondonHotel, LondonXavier Hufkens, BrusselsIBID Projects, LondonIngleby, EdinburghTaka Ishii, TokyoAlison Jacques, LondonMartin Janda, ViennaJohnen, BerlinJuliètte Jongma, AmsterdamAnnely Juda Fine Art, LondonCasey Kaplan, New YorkGeorg Kargl Fine Arts, ViennaMagnus Karlsson, StockholmPaul Kasmin, New York
Vermelho, Sao PauloVilma Gold, LondonVitamin Creative Space, GuangzhouWaddington Custot, LondonNicolai Wallner, CopenhagenWallspace, New YorkBarbara Weiss, Berlin Fons Welters, AmsterdamMichael Werner, New YorkWhite Cube, LondonMax Wigram, LondonWilkinson, London Christina Wilson, CopenhagenXL, Moscow Donald Young, ChicagoZeno X, AntwerpZero, MilanDavid Zwirner, New York
Frame
Aanant & Zoo, Berlin Channa HorwitzAncient & Modern, London Paul JohnsonBischoff/Weiss, London Raphaël ZarkaThe Box, Los Angeles Judith BernsteinCasas Riegner, Bogota Bernardo OrtizD+T Project, Brussels Elena BajoFreymond-Guth Fine Arts, Zurich Megan Francis SullivanFrançois Ghebaly, Los Angeles Patrick Jacksonhunt kastner, Prague Eva KotatkovaInga, Tel Aviv Shai AzoulayKolonie, Warsaw Katarzyna PrzezwanskaKOW, Berlin Tobias ZielonyWilfried Lentz, Rotterdam Rossella BiscottiIgnacio Liprandi, Buenos Aires Pablo AccinelliMaisterravalbuena, Madrid Paloma PoloMarz, Lisbon Nicolás RobbioTake Ninagawa, Tokyo Aki SasamotoOne And J., Seoul Jung LeeRaebervonStenglin, Zurich Kilian RüthemannRamiken Crucible, New York Andra UrsutaRampa, Istanbul Nilbar GüresRevolver, Lima Ximena Garrido-LeccaSilverman, San Francisco Susanne M. WinterlingRob Tufnell, London Joel Croxson Jonathan Viner, London Elias HansenAlex Zachary, New York Ken Okiishi
Regent’s Park, London 13–16 October 2011frieze.com
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EDITORMichaela [email protected]
PUBLISHERKarl [email protected]
EDITORIAL DIRECTORMike von [email protected]
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AD EXECUTIVESElsa JamesJames Manning
CORRESPONDENTS
Clare HenryJeremy HuntIan McKayWilliam VarleyClifford Thurlow
BUREAU CHIEFSLyle OwerkoNEW YORK
Anne ChabrolPARIS
David TidballBERLIN
William WrightSYDNEY
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DISTRIBUTION & SUBSCRIPTIONSJulie [email protected]
PUBLISHED BYState Media Ltd.LONDON
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STATE MAGAZINE is available through selectedgalleries, libraries, art schools, museums andother art venues across the UK.
Totally free, STATE is about newmanoeuvres in painting and the visual arts – combined with f22, a supplement on developments inthe fusion of art & photography.
It is not a review magazine – it is about PEOPLE worth seriousconsideration; PLACES that are hot and happening; and PROJECTS developing in the international art world.
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www.state-media.com
3 Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo but received his BFA at the Art Center College of Art & Design, LosAngeles. His work invariably focuses on the conflict between life and death. Sugimoto’s use of an 8×10 large-format camera with lengthy exposures has earnedhim a reputation for outstanding technical standards.
MASS HYSTERIACircus in a Very Big Tent08 | MARINA ABRAMOVIC
A Remarkable Personal Journey10 |
BARK AND BITEA Very English State of Affairs16 |
MANHATTAN FACELIFTThe New York Armory Fights Back12 | FOURTH ESTATE
Books for the Enquiring Mind18 |
HOT & COOL ART
>> I N T H I S I S S U EI N T H I S I S S U E
OUR MAN IN Venice went AWOL (he actually skipped
the Giardini all together, there’s willpower!) and visited
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny.
A self-portrait of this intriguing Japanese photographer
makes the cover of our third issue.
The UK hasn’t seen the work of the American theatre
producer Robert Wilson for a while but in July his
collaboration with Serbian performance artist Marina
Abramovic took the Manchester International Festival
by storm. It was the result of the combination of Wilson’s
surreal vision and the emanating vivacity of the artist,
who has in this case unusually assumed the role of a
choreographed performer. In a profile on Abramovic ,
we sum up over thirty years of her work and
extraordinary life, both of which inspired the MIF
production.
STATE is continually expanding with new places
wanting to stock the magazine. If you wish to pick up a
copy from your local arts venue and it is not yet on our
list, email us and we’ll contact them. Supplied absolutely
free to recognised venues, but individuals can have the
magazine delivered by mail every two months (simply
go to www.state-media.com/BY-POST)
Michaela Freeman
EDITOR
We couldn’t pretend there was no Biennale in Venice this summer, but as we have a no-review policy at STATE, you can at least open this magazine assured we will not bore you with yet anotherlengthy dissection.
COVERIMAGE
EDITORIAL
HIROSHISUGIMOTOSelf Portrait
www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 76 | STATE 03 www.state-media.com
Yoko Ono Wins the 8th Hiroshima Art PrizeThe Hiroshima Art Prize has been awarded every three years since 1989 by the City ofHiroshima to mark out ‘the achievements of artists who have contributed to the peace of humanity in the field of contemporary art’.
Wearable ArtInnovation at MoCA’s major graffiti survey: Art in the Streets
Back in Time in LAYou Weren’t There is a new concept of artnights that ‘celebrates transitory momentsof cultural brilliance’. Each edition of thiscurated cabaret of film, music, literature,and performance, focuses on a specific era and can be described as a multimediaséance that transports participants backin time.
Protect Me From What I WantThe American artist Jenny Holzer has beenusing text for the last 30 years. ‘Text has different effects in different materials,’ says Holzer who has projected work ontobuildings, rivers and oceans.
3 Claudia Müller, a TV journalist with a back-ground in German literature, filmed Holzer over10 years. Her 52-min-long documentary film
(finished in 2009 and released by Microcinemain June) offers a unique insight into the artist’spractice and career. The DVD also includes twoextra films: Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (3:40min) and Xenon Projections (16:30 min).www.microcinemadvd.co.uk
Naval GazingDavid Kohn Architects and artist Fiona Banner have won the Living Architecture andArtangel's competition with a joint commission to create a unique, one-bedroom placeto stay in London.
3 PART OF LONDON 2012 Festival, the temporary building called A Room for London:
Roi des Belges, will resemble a boat, ‘perched, as if by retreating floodwaters’ on the roof of Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. A flag will be pulled up when the ‘boat’is occupied and the logbook available for guests to write in. In addition to public reservations, selected artists and writers will be invited to stay. Book from 8 Septemberfor January-June. July to December on sale in January. www.living-architecture.co.uk
Pick up a Penguin
Which One Are You?M•A•C Cosmetics have wholly embraced the work of Cindy Sherman, master of disguise,when they invited her to design her own line of make-up.
1 © Yoko Ono. Photo by Keiichi Moto. Courtesy of Hiroshima MOCA.
RESTATE
HOT&COLD
3 TV CRITICS
ALISTAIR SOOKEEnough Already
3 ART
THE NEW CONCEPT ARTAka Intellectually Bankrupt
3 GALLERY
GALLERY OLDHAMUnrealised Potential
3 COLLOQUIALISM
BACK IN THE DAYFootball Commentators & Morons
3 TV CRITICS
BEN LEWISWe Believe Him
3 ART
SCULPTURE FROM INDIAThe New Africa
3 GALLERY
THE ICAA New Broom
3 COLLOQUIALISM
FIVE SIGMABeing definitely sure
AN ARTNEWS MONITOR
LINKSEDITIONSTECHNOLOGY
‘Bad artists always admire each other’swork. They call it being large-mindedand free from prejudice’ OSCAR WILDE{ } ‘There really is no such thing
as Art. There are only artists.’Professor ERNST GOMBRICH{ }
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QUOTEUNQUOTE
‘Robert [Fraser] was advising Paul McCartney whatart to buy and I think he tookhim to meet Magritte. Robert
got that little picture of anapple that says “I’m a pipe”orwhatever, and took it to Paul’s
house – and that’s where the idea for the Apple symbol,
for Apple Records, came from.’
PETER BLAKEreminiscing to Hilary Whitney
for The Arts Desk
‘What happens if one of us falls under a bus? Fear
not – we always cross the road together...’
GEORGE PASSMOREto Mark Lawson on a possible end
of art duo Gilbert & George
‘It wasn't until I'd seenMagritte's work collected
together in an exhibition at theTate, at the end of the 1960’s I think, that I realised just howincredibly funny his stuff was.’
TERRY GILLIAMwhen asked about Magritte
3 YOKO ONO is a valid candidate. Famous forher anti-war activism and key involvement inthe Fluxus group, she gave speeches and supported peace campaigns since her marriage to John Lennon in 1969.
The prize comes with a solo show inHiroshima for Ono. Previous winners includeShirin Neshat, Krzysztof Wodiczko and RobertRauschenberg.www.hcmca.cf.city.hiroshima.jp
3 THE SPIRIT is recreated from archivefootage, poems as well as contemporary takes.The October launch event in LA is called Paris1929: La Révolution Surréaliste with a specialscreening of the restored Luis Buñuel’s film Un Chien Andalou (Pictured).
Everyone dreams of living in another era, say the organisers, who are seeking patronsthrough an online fundraising body IndieGoGo.
Future events will beorganised with evenmore intriguing themessuch as Dallas 1963: The Carousel Club; New York 1977: Punk Vs. Disco; and Saigon 1969: All Along TheWatchtower.www.indigo.com
3 A FAMILIAR literary look about this stainless steel flask with its faux-leather sleeve and classic Penguin cover design featuring the Kerouacnovel. Room for two with a 500ml capacity. Price: £16.95. Or a similar notebook for £6.95. www.wildandwolf.com
3 SHERMAN created three fictitious characters(colour stories) that inspired: an ‘off-kilterHitchcock heroine,’ ‘Park Avenue PlasticSurgery Maven’ and ‘Fresh Corpse’.
The colours are vivid and bold, of course,and the campaign decidedly anti-make-up(can you identify with any of these characters?).But M·A·C consider the Sherman conceptsymptomatic of our times: ‘people of all
persuasions have become bolder than everabout the ways they choose to express themselves: with a colourful palette of possibilities, You are the Artist, You are yourown Subject, and no matter how fearfully youbegin, You become fearless in the process.’Available from 29 September. www.maccosmetics.co.uk
Art in YorkshireSupported by the Tate and developed by Axis, this iPhone app functions as an online resource and a ‘year-long celebration’ of visual art in 19 art galleries in Yorkshire.
3 YOU CAN SEE current, upcoming andpast exhibitions, filter them by theme, dateor artist. You can ‘Like’ the entries insidethe app and ‘Share’ on social networkingsites. If you visit any of the participatinggalleries, you can also use the number codedisplayed there and comment a specific art-work inside the app. An interesting pilotproject to reinterpret exhibition listings.art.yorkshire.com
MEANWHILE a new generation of computers and smartphones could berolled up like a pencil. Electrons travelfaster in the ultra-thin material Graphenethan they do in silicon. Discovered at theUniversity of Manchester in 2004,Graphene is a single atomic layer of carbon atoms bound in a hexagonal network. Graphene paper, a compoundbased on graphite, is said to be lighter,stronger, harder and more flexible thansteel, the material of the future.
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3 Apart from Banksy’s notecards, LosAngeles MoCA is also offering limited editionleather jackets, commissioned as a joint project between MOCA and Levi’s®. Eachcomes in a box with a stamp of the artist’stag and a print of the artwork as on the jacket (9x12 inch). Designed by street pioneers like Crash, Mr Andre, Steve Powers, Kenny Scharf and Lady Pink. It’s a tough call – to store in pristinecondition or wear? www.mocastore.org
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8 | STATE 03 www.state-media.com www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 9
A EUROSTATEVENICE BIENNALE
1 Still from Christian Marclay’s The Clock
AVE YOU ever seen art celebrity behaviour in action? I have. Imagine a renowned international sculptor walking though a garden while being interviewed,with a TV cameraman reverently walking
backwards in front of him and attended by a retinue ofcredulous disciples. It’s the nearest thing to a religious ritual, minus the incense, in these secular times. Thenimagine that on a mammoth scale, with hundreds ofinstallations and tableaux concentrated on one site withthousands of devotees, and you’ll have something like theVenice Biennale. To capture its absurdities you wouldreally need a master satirist such as Garrison Keillor inthe subversive mood of his Jack Schmidt: ArtsAdministrator stories.
A more serious analysis of its venality though was provided by Julian Stallabrass in a preview of the Biennalein The Art Newspaper. In The Hollow Triumph of
Contemporary Art, he skewered ‘the lubricious culture of celebrity’ and the mutually back-slapping symbiosis of ‘branded artists’, collectors, curators, dealers, quangosand museums, which collectively ‘sanctify’ the brands atfestivals such as Venice. Of course the chief back-slappersare the media whose invincible faith in the myth of theavant-garde and the determined marginalisation ofdoubters enables them to perpetuate the spurious glamour of the transgressive.
As a sceptic myself I know the Venice farrago for what itis, but in such a huge show there are bound to be somethings worth seeing, so on this occasion I ignored themain drag, the Giardini, and headed for my favouriteplace in the city, the Palazzo Fortuny. You probably knowall about Mariano Fortuny, who was a protean all-rounder.Inventor of pleated silk, he was also a painter, sculptor,theatre designer and photographer. Allergic to horses, hemoved from Paris to Venice in the 1890’s because, usefully,horses had been banned there since the 14th century. At
times during the year, when it isn’t holding temporaryexhibitions, the Fortuny is the most extraordinary timecapsule. Dark and hung with his fabrics, it also contains the tripods, step ladders and lights from hisphotography studio. They resemble nothing so much as mediaeval siege towers. The view from the top floorwindows, incidentally, gives on to the best chimney pots in Venice.
The Biennale exhibition there is titled Tra (‘art’ backwards) which in Italian means between. The sub-title is The Edge of Becoming and the catalogue’srhetoric invokes the past communicating with thefuture. To an extent that is true: there is everythingthere from Australian aboriginal carvings to work fromtoday’s artists. Indeed the temporal boundaries are sofluid that at one point I took a group of fired clay skullsby Miguel Barcelos to be centuries-old tribal pieces.More than anything, though, the exhibition’s themeseems to be an excuse to pay homage to Fortuny himself. It’s entirely appropriate therefore that the exhibition within an exhibition, of work by the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, should echoFortuny’s marvellous photography.
I’ve long admired Sugimoto’s conceptual/minimalistseries of Seas and Theatre Interiors, so the current exhibition came as something of a surprise. Its title isSeven Lightning Fields and indeed these white on blackimages resemble forked lightning and several otherthings besides: capillary systems, the dentritic patternsof tree branches, aerial views of river deltas orangiograms (my medical friends tell me).Fundamentally, they are patterns of life rather thanlightning because they were made by transmitting anelectrical current though photosensitised paper. Onecould reasonably call this ‘likeness by like processes’insofar as they are mini-dramas of light and energy.
A companion exhibition to this one will take place atthe Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art during theEdinburgh Festival. It will be accompanied by radicallyenlarged versions of negatives originally by Fox Talbot,the great pioneer whose images have preoccupiedSugimoto for years. There is one remaining facet ofLightning Fields, however, that invites speculation: theplacement of those molten tendrils within the rectangle.My inclination is to see them as Japanese calligraphy,poetic signs of the unforeseen and the unforeseeable. z
William Varley is a former correspondent for The Guardian and
writer specialising in the visual arts of Northern England.
Art as Entertainment. When the vivacious turns vacuous for the
gilded young artists at the Venice Biennale. COMMENT JERRY SALTZ
Creative celebrity of another kind is on hand at the Biennale
if you deviate from the party planner. COMMENT WILLIAM VARLEY
GENERATIONBLANK
WHEN ART HAD A CAPITAL A[FOR AUTHENTIC] IN VENICE
NOTES1) Christian Marclay's 24-hour video work The Clock was awarded
the Golden Lion for best artwork in the 54th Venice Biennale.Marclay sampled thousands of film excerpts indicating the passageof time. Spanning the range of timepieces, from clock towers towristwatches and from buzzing alarm clocks to the occasionalcuckoo – edited together to form a 24-hour montage unfolding inreal time synchronized with the local time of the exhibition space.The Clock was exhibited at the Paula Cooper Gallery in Januaryand February 2011; in London at the Hayward and White CubeGallery; and at the Los Angeles County Art Museum, where it wasrecently acquired for the permanent collection. Christian Marclay(born 1955 in California) has exhibited his work for more thanthree decades in museums around the world.
NOTESHiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields at the Palazzo Fortuny, Veniceuntil 27 November 2011, and at the Scottish National Gallery ofModern Art, Edinburgh, 4 August - 18 September 2011.
I
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1 Hiroshi Sugimoto Lightning Fields 226
5 Hiroshi Sugimoto Lightning Fields 190
7 Hiroshi Sugimoto Leaves of Paeony, June 1839
1 Mariano Fortuny Nude Study 1895 Portrait: Mariano Fortuny (Right)
WENT to Venice, and I came back worried. Every two years, the central attraction of the Biennale is a kind of State of the Art World show.This year’s, called Illuminations, has its share of high points and artistic intensity. Frances Stark’s
animated video of her online masturbatory tryst with ayounger man hooked me; Christian Marclay’s The Clock,which captivated New York earlier this year, rightly wonthe Gold Lion Prize for BestArtist (1). Yet many timesover I saw the same thing, ahighly recognisable genericinstitutional style whosemanifestations are by nowextremely familiar. Neo-Structuralist films withoverlapping geometric colors, photographs about photographs, projectors screening loops of grainy black-and-white archival footage, abstraction that’s supposed to be referencing other abstraction – it was all there, allstraight out of the 1970’s, all dead in the water. It is workstuck in a cul-de-sac of aesthetic regress, where everyone isdeconstructing the same elements.
There’s always conformity in art – fashions come in and go out – but such obsessive devotion to a previousgeneration’s ideals and ideas is very wrong. It suggeststhese artists are too much in thrall to their elders, excessively satisfied with an insider’s game of art, not really making their own work. That they are becoming a Lost Generation.
Our culture now wonderfully, alchemically, transformsimages and history into artistic material. The possibilitiesseem endless and wide open. Yet these artists draw theirhistories and images only from a super-attenuated genepool. It’s all-parsing, all the time. Their art turns in onitself, becoming nothing more than coded language. Itempties their work of content, becoming a way to avoidinterior chaos. It’s also a kind of addiction and, by now,
a new orthodoxy, one supported by institutionsand loved by curators whoalso can’t let go of the same glory days.
Consider the most celebrated younger artistson hand in Venice. A wall
label informs that Ryan Gander’s color squares on thefloor derive partly from Mondrian’s. This not onlydefangs Gander’s art; it makes it safe for consumption. Itis art about understanding, not about experience. RashidJohnson’s mirrored assemblages have luscious physicalitybut are marred by their reliance on familiar mementosdrawn from the recent past. Unlike his influence, CarolBove – whose Venice installation of modernist-lookingobjects opens uncanny windows on seeing, scale, andmemory – Johnson uses those objects merely as a crutch.Seth Price’s glossy paintings with rope look like aslick cross between Martin Kippenberger and MarcelBroodthaers, ready-made for critics who also love parsingout the isms of their elders. A feedback loop has formed;art is turned into a fixed shell game, moving the same
pieces around a limited board. All this work is highlycompetent, extremely informed, and supremely cerebral.But it ends up part of some mannered InternationalSchool of Silly Art.
Art schools are partly the villain here. This generation ofartists is the first to have been so widely credentialed, andits young members so fetishise the work beloved by theirteachers that their work ceases to talk about anything else.Instead of enlarging our view of being human, it containssafe rehashing of received ideas about received ideas. Thisis a melancholy romance with artistic ruins, homesicknessfor a bygone era. This yearning may be earnest, but itstunts their work, and by turn, the broader culture. z
Jerry Saltz is a leading cultural commentator for New York Magazine,where a version of this essay was previously published.
‘Their art turns in on itself,becoming nothing more than coded language.’
www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 1110 | STATE 03 www.state-media.com
OBERT WILSON’s latest theatre production The Life and Death of MarinaAbramovic, a biographical piece about thefamous pioneer of performance art at The Manchester International Festival (MIF) in July, staged her funeral. But
Abramovic is very much alive, stunningly beautiful at 64 who even starred as her mother in the show.
Born in Belgrade to a respected high-ranking army family, with an extremely controlling mother,Abramovic's first performance was achildhood attempt to break her hatednose so it could be remodelled.
She studied art, starting as a painter,but soon swapping the brush for theuse of sound, her body and audienceparticipation. Richard Demarco mether on his visit to Yugoslavia in 1973,invited her to the Edinburgh. Shestayed in Scotland for 6 months, creating her violent knife finger-stabbing piece, Rhythm 10, first in the series of using her own body inchallenging experiments (screaminguntil losing her voice, brushing her hairuntil bleeding, dancing to the sound ofAfrican drums until falling exhausted).
In 1975, she went to Amsterdam to film her Lips ofThomas performance, inspired by a self-mummificationmethod of Tibetan monks, for Dutch TV, and met a fellow artist, Ulay.1 It was an instant attraction and theylived and worked together for the next 12 years, includingnine months with Australian Aboriginals.
In their endurance performances, often appearing naked,they slapped themselves, threw their body against a wall,holding the breath to the point of fainting, and braidedtheir hair together for a day. Most famously, in Night SeaCrossing, they simply sat down, facing each other, still andsilent, for various length of time (16 days at most).
Their intense relationship ended at a spectacular walkingpiece in 1988, The Great Wall of China. Starting fromopposite ends of the wall and watched by Chinese govern-ment officials all the time, they walked for up to 15 hours
a day. When they met in the middle after three months,instead of the wedding originally planned to mark the end of the journey, they split up.
Abramovic went on to produce solo works with increasedaudience participation. She also persistently promotesPerformance Art, which she's never stop evolving andreprising, unlike some of her 1970's colleagues. In 2005,
The Guggenheim Museum in NYChosted a seven-day event where sherepeated seminal performances byBruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, ValieExport, Gina Pane and Joseph Beyus.'Performance makes sense if it's live,not as documentation,' she says. Her Marina Abramovic Foundation forthe Preservation of Performance Art is due to open next year in Hudson,New York, with an artists-in-residency facility.
In 1997, she was kicked out of the ex-Yugoslavia pavilion at VeniceBiennale, and her controversial pieceBalkan Baroque (a 4-days long cleaning of 6,000 pounds of bloodycow bones – a reminder of the Balkan war) was shown at the mainexhibition instead, winning her theVenice Biennale Prize.
In 2002, a year after her move to New York, Abramoviclived without food for 12 days inside three furnished openwooden cubes (rooms) at the Sean Kelly Gallery. TheHouse with the Ocean View performance made it into themainstream in a TV episode of Sex in the City.
Regretting the amount of props she used in this piece,she decided for a more minimalist set-up for her longestever performance at last year's major retrospective of herwork at New York’s MoMA, Artist is Present. During theentire exhibition, 736.5 hours in total, she sat at a woodentable, visitors taking turns to face her concentrated starefor as long as they wanted. It was very demanding, but she said at the time: 'The concept of failure never entersmy mind'. There were special guests too, including otherperformance artists and at one point, Ulay too, in anemotional silent reunion.
Thirty-five performers were trained by the artist in anintensive 4-days long performance boot camp. Theywould recreate five of her works at MoMA includingthree collaborations with Ulay, such as Impoderabilia(a naked couple standing in the doorway facing eachother, forcing visitors to pass in between). In this age of political correctness though, there was offered analternative way to get in too!
Abramovic performances are intense, raw, full of perseverance, strength and energy. Inspired by Easternphilosophy, she challenges the boundaries of her bodyand mind, in pieces that are both personal and intimatebut also inviting and communicative. She explained in aNew Yorker interview last year that all the aggressionsshe does to herself in her art, she wouldn't do in reallife. 'I cry when I cut myself peeling potatoes... In performance I become, somehow, not a mortal, andmy insecurities... aren't important'.
Robert Wilson and Marina Abramovic have knowneach other and wanted to do a project for many years, but when she asked him to direct a piece on herlife, initially, he couldn't imagine how their differentaesthetics could merge: 'As our careers developed, Ibecame more interested in theatricality, illusion andartificiality. Marina's career was as a performance artist,
where she wanted everything to be a real experience.' Butinterestingly, she vowed to leave the entire choreographyto him and perform in his theatrical way of presentingwork. 'She had to rethink how to walk and speak onstage, how to be formal, how to dress, what it was like towear make-up and create an illusion. The surprisingthing is that she did it, and she did it quite well. She istruly an amazing artist.'
Life and Death of Marina Abramovic was co-producedwith The Lowry and Madrid’s Teatro Real Madrid wherethe show is due to tour in 2012 beside other Europeantheatres and possibly the USA. z
State is indebted to the Sean Kelly Gallery, Calum Sutton PR and Clare Henry for invaluable help in preparing this feature.
The dynamic of Performance Art strikes a chordwith the me generation weaned on self image
and extreme expression.TEXT MICHAELA FREEMAN
R
7 The Life and Death of MarinaAbramovic premièred at theManchester International Festival in July 2011. Conceived and stagedby the director Robert Wilson withappearances by Abramovic herself, the American actor Willem Dafoe,and the avant garde singer AntonyHegarty (of Antony and theJohnsons).
The show featured scenes fromAbramovic’s life and career, from her Serbian childhood to her work as a performance artist. With original and traditional music, including songs written and performed by Hegarty, it combined the worlds of theatre, art and music to striking effect.
Wilson’s entertainment is based onAbramovic’s life, it is his work, nothers. She gave Wilson letters, photosand diaries, agreed to appear in thefinished piece. However, her key collaborations between 1975 and1988 with Ulay (Frank UweLaysiepen) are barely mentioned.
Images: LUCIE JANSCH
NOTES1) Real name Uwe Laysiepen. Born in a German bomb shelter in 1943. In 1976, Ulay stole a painting by Carl Spitzweg, The Poor Poet, from the National Gallery. He went on to hang this work (Hitler's favourite painting) in the home of Turkish immigrants, and contacted the museum’s director to come andview the painting there. He was sentenced to 36 days in prison. The painting disappeared again in 1989 and hasn't been seen since.
1 Balkan Baroque 1997 Courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, NY
A REINSTATE PERFORMANCE ART
WHO IS MARINAABRAMOVIC?
'In performance I become, somehow, not a mortal, and my
insecurities... aren't important'
12 | STATE 01 www.state-media.com
EW YORK’S posh Park Avenue on the Upper East Side is not an obvious placeto look for a major avant-garde arts venue, least of allin a Victorian armory which still reeks of 150 years of military, regimental
bravado. Yet this enormous five-storey crenelated redbrick building, complete with vast 85 ft high hall, isthe scene for Manhattan's newest, most surprising,dynamic – often controversial – non-profit culturalinstitution, whose space is on a par with Tate'sTurbine Hall or Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof.
Superb, large-scale visual arts commissions (byBrazilian Ernesto Neto, Boltanski and Japan's RyojiIkeda) a collaboration with the Whitney Biennialgroundbreaking opera, theatre and dance, have allreinstated the Park Avenue Armory to New York's cultural map. Unprecedented, this summer the RoyalShakespeare Company is in residence for 6 weeks.
The 2011 art commission is a huge spectacular electronic light and sound installation by the internationally celebrated Ikeda. His inspiration ismathematics and the binary code. He divides the Drill Hall with a 40 x 54 ft screen carrying black andwhite digital projections which reflect on an 80 ftfloor. Two sets of horizontal bar-code stripes scrolldown accompanied by loud music. On the other side,a vast complex grid of ever changing numbers remindsone of stock market data. Nine small TV monitorsbroadcast more subtle statistics. Dramatic and technical wizardry.
Any rebirth, or transformation, is never withoutteething troubles. For most, the Armory is associatedwith art and antique fairs. For over 50 years theseshort-lived, elaborate but well attended, eventsenlivened an increasingly empty, dilapidated space, thetemporary booths and expensive exhibitions hidingdirty walls, damp ceilings and dangerous electricalwiring.
Despite being listed by the World Monuments Fund –its many stunning period rooms, some by Tiffany andStanford White, acknowledged as 'the single mostimportant collection of 19th century interiors intact' –the savage neglect continued. What to do with suchan important but decrepit building in a prime locationoccupying an entire New York block? Happily its wellheeled neighbours began a rescue mission. One such,Wade Thompson, gave $50 million to kick off therestoration. By 2006, after years of bureaucratic struggle, the building was handed over from theDepartment of Military and Naval Affairs to the new arts centre.
‘They actually gave us the big old iron keys!’laughs President Rebecca Robertson. This year’sIkeda project exemplifies her unconventionalapproach. ‘Rebecca is willing to take risks’, says TomEccles, a director at Bard College, who was advisorycurator for the first five years. Robertson's previousjobs include executive director of the Lincoln CenterDevelopment Project, and spearheading a $1.8 billiontransformation of 42nd Street. Some might say this$200m restoration, plus an $8m operating budget and $2.6m for programming this year, is small beerfor her.
Robertson describes the Armory as ‘part palace, part grand industrial shed’. Others might term it a Victorian neo-gothic monstrosity. Robertson's vision to transform its cavernous spaces into a cultural gift to central Manhattan is ‘filling a criticalvoid in the cultural ecology of New York City’,she says. ‘And collaboration is a big part of what we do.’
NA $200,000,000 vote of confidence in the historic Armory building opens new chapter
for the venerable Manhattan space. TEXT CLARE HENRY
www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 13
PARK AVENUEGRANDE DAME HAS
FACE LIFT
7 Peter Greenaway Leonardo's Last Supper 2011 Image: James Ewing
P UNITED STATES NEW YORK
1 Silver Room, Armory Image: Herzog de Meuton Inc.
LINKSwww.armoryonpark.org
NOTESThe building was designed by architect Charles Clinton in theGothic Revival style and dedicated in 1880. The main facadeof the administration building faces Park Avenue between66th & 67th Streets, with the large vaulted space for the drillhall in the centre of the block. The interior masterpiece of theArmory building is the Veterans Room, also known as theTiffany Room, with hand-carved wood panelling and cofferedceiling. Other significant craftsmen with work in the buildinginclude Alexander Roux, Francis Davis Millet, and the HerterBrothers. It is the only armory in the United States to be builtand furnished with private funds. Originally it served as theheadquarters and administrative building for the 7th NewYork Militia Regiment, known as the Silk Stocking Regimentdue to the disproportionate number of its members who werepart of the city's social elite. After much press speculationabout a possible collaboration, the NYC Frieze Art Fair willlaunch next Spring in Manhattan's Randall's Island Park. It is scheduled for 3 May - just prior to the 2012 dates for theannual Armory Show and the slew of satellite art events thatoccur simultaneously.
The income from an average ten annual art and antiquefairs is a vital part of this equation. Rentals have increasedfrom $8000 a day under the old system to $32,000. Is thiswhy Frieze is not coming to the Armory, Manhattan's mostobvious central location? Naturally the dealers are notpleased, especially in a depressed economy. ‘It's now a quarterof a million dollars a show’, Sandy Smith, head of SanfordSmith Associates told me. He's been involved with Armoryart fairs for 25 years. ‘At $32,000 a day, it's stretching it’,he says, ‘But at least the washrooms have improved!’
Another important part of Robertson's new visionare seven artists-in-residence studios, all for invited artists.The old basement rifle range makes two spaces. Upstairscurrently contains a new music quartet, an opera singerand Tom Sachs. Not one studio is luxurious. ThinkSpartan, dingy, dark, male and full of stags’ heads. Here theShen Wei dance company rehearses and the award-winningBrit mask maker and puppeteer, Julian Crouch, works withENO, the Met, and Royal Court. There's also an educationprogramme. And to complete this uniquely weird set-up,100 disturbed, homeless women are housed on two floors;
while the New York Army National Guard (plus Veteransof the 7th Regiment) for whom the Armory was originallybuilt in 1880, still celebrate Memorial Day – or a triumphal return from Iraq – here.
Grand spaces demand grand projects. In 2010 ChristianBoltanski filled the 55,000 sq ft Drill Hall with a full-sizecrane, mounds of old clothing and a soundtrack of reverberating heartbeats. This installation might be judged predictable and repetitive – he is less known in the US –but as Tom Eccles points out, it ‘allowed the Armory tocollaborate with the Grand Palais in Paris where Boltanskihad a parallel work’. Meanwhile, Peter Greenaway'sLeonardo's Last Supper was judged a critical disaster by all.
Ernesto Neto's huge 2009 installation, Anthropodino,appeared more successful. He filled the entire space with a gigantic canopy and tented labyrinth of pale translucent fabric and 60 ft long aromatic stalactites packedwith 1700 lbs of spices – cloves, ginger, cumin and blackpepper. Accessible to kids and adults alike, encouragingsniffing and lolling on a squishy soft floor of lavender pillows, this interactive delight was sexy, sensuous, engaging. One wonderful night, the superb Shen Weidancers wove amongst the visitors and sculpture.A $200,000 Rockefeller Innovation Grant launched the series.
Where will the Armory be in five years? Its huge potentialis undeniable, but Tom Eccles sees a problem looming withtoo much crossover of visual arts and performance. ‘Operais opera. Art is art. Their audiences are different. Thereneeds to be distinct, separate programming.’ RebeccaRobertson comes from a performance background andunsurprisingly to date performance is winning.America's curators and visual artists should fight hard forserious representation. An obvious if small solution would
be to designate one period room solely for visualarts. Watch this space – literally. z
Clare Henry is former arts correspondent for the Glasgow Herald and
Financial Times, currently a cultural commentator resident in New York.
1 PowerLESS at the Tune-in Music festival Image: James Ewing
1 Veteran's Room, Armory New York Philharmonic. 2009Image: James Ewing
1 Christian Boltanski No Man’s Land 2010 Image: James Ewing
1 Top: Ernesto Neto Anthropdino 2009 Image: James Ewing
1 Peter Greenaway Leonardo's Last Supper 2011 The cult British Director whose work is always intellectually challenging was a surprise flop with the American audience. Image: James Ewing
14 | STATE 03 www.state-media.com www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 15
PARK AVENUE GRANDE DAME HAS FACE LIFT
‘COLLABORATIONIS A BIG PART OF
WHAT WE DO’Rebecca Robertson
P UNITED STATES NEW YORK
1 Park Avenue Armory between 66th & 67th streets, New York City
16 | STATE 03 www.state-media.com www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 17
P REAL ESTATE FORESTRY
HEN THE government announced that it was planning to sell off some of Britain’s prime
forestry land, it was on the cards thatMiddle-Englanders everywhere would getthemselves in a bit of a lather. Nothing, itseemed, could raise the ire of the middleclasses more than the idea that the core of Britain’s national identity – what somemight term its heart of oak – was to be rentapart. Of course, much of the timberresources and land going under the hammer wasn’t the ancient broad-leavedwoodlands of Olde England at all, but vast conifer plantations of alien and exoticspecies that originated as far afield as thewestern states of the USA. Nonetheless, it seemed that the government had hit the cultural nerve of the nation and disregarding the finer detail, battle lineswere drawn.
From a cultural point of view, you onlyhave to look to the writings of WilliamGilpin, godfather of the picturesque, torealise that tampering with the relationshipbetween Britons and their woodland was abig mistake. While the 18th century landedgentry might have gone in for a bit ofcapability browning, Gilpin had strongviews on what did and didn’t constitute a‘natural vista’. Not for him a regimentedgrove of trees; Gilpin liked to mix it up abit and, as he wrote in his now famousRemarks on Forest Scenery of 1791, in a natural forest ‘the trees are casually large or small, growing in clumps, or standingsingle, crowding upon the foreground, orreceding from it, as the wild hand ofnature hath scattered them’. Here was therecipe for the picturesque rural idyll.
Gilpin was not just an author, he was alsoa schoolmaster, artist, and for many yearsthe vicar of the small village of Boldre fromwhere he was responsible for putting theNew Forest on the cultural map. With acomplex history that stretched backbeyond the Norman invasion of Britain to the ancient Saxon forest landscape ofYtene, this unkempt wilderness capturedthe imagination of the nation then, just asit does today. Little wonder that when,over 300 years later, the governmentannounced its plans for a sell-off, the NewForest was viewed as Britain’s woodlandscene in microcosm.
Gilpin was not alone in responding to the New Forest in terms of its artistic
inspiration though. Throughout the 18thand 19th centuries, artists set up shop orholidayed there, sampling the pleasures ofone of the last ancient forests of England.In the modern era, the New Forest was stilla draw for artists, offering an escape fromthe pretensions of the metropolitan centresand modernist cliques. Such an artist wasSven Berlin, who rejected his place in theartistic community around St Ives, leavingin 1953 to live among the gypsies of theNew Forest in a horse-drawn caravan.Berlin being born in 1911, the St BarbeArt Gallery on the southern edge of theForest is this year celebrating his centenarywith a retrospective.
Painter Kurt Jackson met Sven Berlin as achild when Berlin and his wife, Juanita,were living in the gypsy compound ofShave Green Wood. Jackson’s memories ofShave Green were to become the reason to
return in 2005, when he came back towhat is now a hauntingly silent place.About his memories of Shave Green, hesays that even today he feels the presence ofthose who once lived there, and who wereto be brutally evicted. ‘Today, Shave Greenhas reverted to just another part of thewoodland Forest,’ he says, but at one timeit was one of the largest compounds tohouse the Gypsy community. ‘Root aroundand you can still find traces of them; anold jam jar, or a single boot.’
For artist Sonia Shomalzadeh, who willshow her work in the New Forest this winter, the Forest is a place that is viewed aspart of the much wider timber processingindustry. ‘I am considering the journey of a tree throughout its lifetime and beyond,’she says. ‘These giants of nature have beenfelled and processed, the productions of
this final journey scattered on our streets asflimsy, temporary items with seemingly littleor no value once discarded.’ Her works,many of which are made of discarded cardboard boxes, return that material to aform reminiscent of the tree from which itwas extracted; a poignant reminder of along and not altogether healthy relationshipbetween the Forestry Commission and theNew Forest.
As recent critics have observed, the hugebiodiversity of Gilpin’s New Forest is atrisk from a conifer plantation monoculturethat is extremely damaging according tothe conservation charity the New ForestAssociation, and as the Hampshire WildlifeTrust has recently stated, their experience isthat the Forestry Commission has not risento the challenge of managing a publicestate in a manner befitting the Forest.While Shomalzadeh’s work comments onthe never ending cycle of life, that cyclecan only be stretched so far. At no point in
our history have our forests been so overstretched in terms of the demands we put upon them, for both industry andleisure. In recent years, while the NewForest has proved an inspiration for artistsas diverse as photographer Adam Burton,painter Kurt Jackson, and sculptor SoniaShomalzadeh, there will come a pointwhen, in the words of TV naturalist ChrisPackham, ‘these trees finally succumb toold age and there will be no trees in theNew Forest at all, nor precious little in theway of its historically rich and variedwildlife either.’ In 2011, the InternationalYear of Forests, that’s a sobering thought. z
Ian McKay is an author based in Hampshire.
His book A New Forest Reader was published
by Hatchet Green earlier this year.
Links: www.newforest-notebook.com
1 Adam Burton In the Company of Giants: New Forest, Hampshire 2011. Archival Print. © 2011 Adam Burton Photography
1 Sonia Shomalzadeh Forest Floor 2011. Digital print 5 Sonia Shomalzadeh pan 4: Logs 2011. Digital print
1 Kurt Jackson Shave Green 2005 Mixed media on canvas
W
‘Tampering with the relationship between Britons and their woodland was a big mistake’
BRAVE NEW FORESTIn the UN International Year of Forests, and at a precarious time for Britain’s forestry future,
Hampshire’s New Forest continues to provide an inspiration for artists and writers. TEXT IAN MCKAY
1 William Gilpin's A Natural Forest Vista from Remarks on Forest Scenery 1791
1 Sven, Juanita and Jasper Berlin in the New Forest, 1954. (Photo: Graham Finlayson. Courtesy St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery)
18 | STATE 03 www.state-media.com www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 19
BOOKS YOU JUST HAVE TO READEdited by MIKE VON JOEL
T STARTS WITH a useful timeline of important political and cultural milestones in theEast Europe’s history, from the 1930’s to the present, followed by Boris Groys’
introductory essay, Haunted byCommunism. He argues that evenafter over 20 years since the fall ofCommunism, memories of thisshared experience still influence theart made in the region. Some are tooyoung to remember the hardship ofmaking art under Party rules, insteadthey draw their influence from theenvironment and traditions whichmight still have traces of a past, notfully expurgated. Others are openlyborrowing from the originalCommunist ideology to critique thepresent capitalist conditions (such asthe work of artists groups LifshitzClub and What is to be done?).
This tendency goes back to the1970’s when Russian artists (including Vitaly Komar andAlexander Melamid) called their
art ‘Sots Art’. They appropriated theSoviet propaganda's visual language,in their own take on Western Pop Art.At the same time, Polish duoKwieKulik also explored the officiallanguage, incorporating it into theirperformance and installations. When their son was born in 1972, for the next two years, they used
photographs of his actions to further investigate the relationship betweenart, science and the linguistic theoryof signs.
The rapid inclusion of EastEuropean artists in the Western artmarket occurred in the early 1990’sand has been a traumatic experiencefor some. The previous evaluationsystem of art relied not on commercial worth but on a
‘symbolic economy’ with rules basedon social recognition and politicalrelevance – applied to both officialand dissident art. The Communistpast ‘haunts’ Eastern European andRussian art, even if the artists chooseto ignore it, suggests Groys.
Serbian Milica Tomic ’sphotography,video and performance highlight the
questions around the nationality,identity and ethnicity, all still verysensitive issues in the formerYugoslav countries. In the I am MilicaTomic video, she repeats her nameand nationality 64 times, replacingthe nationality each time and causinga new wound to appear on her bodyas a consequence of each declaration.
Katerina Sedá,an up-and-comingartist from Czech Republic, examinesfamily relationships as well as
It is easy to imagine that interior design became a general obsession for the English only in the 20th century – whereas it had previously been the domain of the aristocracy and those rich enough to affordsuch indulgences.
HE INTERIORS BUSINESS is currently a dominant sector of the magazine industry, selling to aspirational hopefuls from all walks of life. But in fact, the English zeal for trade, exploration and war had created an
awareness of multi-cultural art and other decorative stylessince the Crusades. And none captured the imagination ofPatrons and designers more than the ‘exotic’ East.
For the English, the spectacle and sensuous arts of Chinawere the pre-eminent influence. The 18th century tea tradehad precipitated a love affair with chinoiserie and its influence extended into architecture, furniture, decorationand particularly wall coverings and the new passion for wallpapers. Although a relationship with India was reinforced by colonialist expansion and other 19th centuryadventuring, its influence never matched that of China onthe decorative arts of Britain. When Japan revealed itself tothe West in the mid 19th century, japonisme also never hadthe wider impact of China, aside from the furniture trade’sappetite for lacquer and cloisonné enamel.
The arts and crafts of other ‘exotic’ countries had moreimpact on Britain’s near neighbours. France, with its closeproximity to Spain and thus North Africa, embraced Moorishculture and French artists had a celebrated relationship withJapan through printmaking (Ukiyo-e). Spain itself had an historic relationship to the non-figurative abstraction ofIslamic design which, especially in the south, ran parallel –andmostly in harmony with – the Gothic Catholicism of the country.
With a glorious array of colour illustrations, Galliard andWalter examine in minute details the impact of the ‘Orient’on Western sensibility, from grand architectural schemes to the smallest objet d’art, profiling some of the great champions of the exotic imagination – the Prince Regent;Pierre Loti – along the way. Rock’n’roll excess has nothingon some examples they locate and present to fascinate the reader. Fabulous!
LONG WITH Leonard Cohen, Dylan was one of the greatest poets of the 20th century who
sang his words out loud and now itturns out that he was also paintingfor all those years too.
There is an unexplained reluctanceto accept cross-border artists, especially those who have excelledin the one discipline then go ontowork in another. High profile musicians are notable for their penchant for painting, although whythis is a surprise is a mystery as verymany emerged from an art schoolbackground. Their efforts are rarelyworthy of serious consideration bythe critics although the art markettends to appreciate the ‘saleability’factor. Some prominent musiciansdo deserve critical acclaim – Donvan Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)produced paintings worthy of anygallery wall; Police guitarist AndySummers has a solid reputation as aserious photographer – but the likesof Paul McCartney, Ronnie Woodand Tony Bennett rarely last longerthan the media buzz that surroundstheir self financed exhibitions.Although Wood’s actual drawingsare not at all without merit.
Dylan makes no exaggerated claimsfor his work and why should he. Hehas made his mark in life and hasthe luxury of complete freedom tocreate the pictures he wants. Theproblem is, of course, that once youhang a painting on the wall and put
a price on it you are competing inthe market alongside the greatestartists that ever lived. At 70, Dylan is not of the YBA generation, yet hehas to grateful to the MarleneDumas’ of the world who enabled‘bad’ painting. And Dylan’s paintingis, overall, bad. His strong suit, fauvist landscape and interiors in a Matisse/Bonnard idiom, are notwithout merit, but his figure workmerely reveals his lack of thedraughtsman’s skill or eye for form.
However, Dylan being Dylan, twovery big guns from art world academia have been retained to provide enough waffle to make Bob appear a key component in contemporary American painting.Both John Elderfield (chief curatorMoMA, NYC) and Danish art historian,Kasper Monrad, contextualiseDylan’s paintings, created between2008 and 2010 and based on hisexperience touring Brazil. However,Dylan’s poet’s eye is still as acute asever, and if these works excel it is inthe subject matter selected by therolling stone as he travels the world.One for the fans.
general social alienation in hergame-like experiments. She drawsnot just members of the public butwhole communities into her work, providing ladders to a group ofneighbours, for example, to helpthem overcome fences betweenthem, in both physical and psychological way.
Thinking big is also PolishKrzysztof Wodiczko who projectshistorical images onto significantbuilding facades and monuments,including Nelson's Column inLondon, The Lenin Monument inBerlin and Arco de la Victoria inMadrid. More recently, he’s beenfocusing on issues of communica-tion and authority in the society.
Groys compares the current EastEuropean art scene to an early 19thcentury Europe, in the aftermath of the French Revolution andNapoleonic wars, whenRomanticism evolved with its alternative and dreamy scenarios.Today’s equivalent in the post-Communist countries would be thesignificant multitude of participatoryart and radical political attitudeprojects.
Included in the book are alsoartists that have lived abroad butwhose work remains informed bytheir East European upbringing.Such is the case of Christo, living in the USA but originally fromBulgaria, who together with hisFrench-born wife Jeanne-Claude
made their name with larger-than-imaginable installations. One oftheir most monumental projects isthe 'wrapping' of 11 islands nearFlorida in 1980-1983, where theyused 585,000 square metres offabric.
All in all, fifty profiles of EastEuropean artists are arranged hereby medium and style, not by theircountry, in an attempt to ‘transcendgeographical and regional pre-conceptions’. They range fromfamous practitioners, such asChristo and Jeanne-Claude, Miroslav Bałka and Ilya and EmeliaKabakov, to those that are perhapsless notorious. It’s these less familiar discoveries and numerous illustrations that makethis volume a truly valuableresource for anyone interested inexploring this region’s contemporaryart scene. Michaela Freeman
GO WEST YOUNG MAN
DREAMS OF ANOTHER WORLD
BLOWING IN THE MIND
Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe, the third title from Black BookPublishing’s ArtWorld series, surveys the Eastern European region.Whether it’s truly possible to unify the art of such a vast spread of different cultures and language is questionable, but raising, not avoidingthe question is one of the positive contributions of this book.
5 Christo and Jeanne-Claude Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida 1980-83
©Christo, Photo by Wolfgang Volz
7 Miroslaw Balka Untitled 2000
Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe
IT
A
‘To understand the notion of Eastern Europeanart as a post-Communist art allows it to be seen
as a unified phenomenon’
FOURTHESTATE
1 Sortie-de-bal fashioned in 1870 from an intricate Kashmir shawl of 1820.
1 Bob Dylan Rainforest, 2009-10 Acrylic on canvas Courtesy of Prestel ©Bob Dylan
When Larry Gagosian, the international über-dealer, announced the legendary Bob Dylan had joined his rota there was much ado in the rarefied environs of the art world. Two legends together at last.
CONTEMPORARY ART IN EASTERN EUROPEEd. Nikos Kotsopoulos BLACK DOG PUBLISHING Hb. 240pp. 240 illustrations £29.95 ISBN 13: 978-1906155841
BOB DYLAN The Brazil SeriesJohn Elderfield & Kaspar MonradPRESTEL Hb.192 pp. 180 illus. £35ISBN-13: 978-3-7913-5098-1
A TASTE FOR THE EXOTICEmmanuelle Gaillard/Marc Walter THAMES & HUDSON Hb.240 pp. 223 colour illus. £50 ISBN-13: 978-0-500-515976
^ ^
www.state-media.com STATE 03 | 21
Daphne GuinnessValerie Steele & Daphne GuinnessThis beautiful book, accompanying amajor New York exhibition, showcases the inimitable style and spectacular haute-couture collection of British fashion iconDaphne Guinness. Stunning fashionphotographs and paparazzi shotsdemonstrate why she is an inspirationalfigure in today’s fashion world. In aninterview with fashion historian ValerieSteele, Guinness explains the origins andcharacteristics of her style and discussesher friendships with other fashion creatives.
Published in association with The FashionInstitute of Technology, New York100 colour illus. £30.00
Ron MueckDavid HurlstonWith essays by Lisa Baldissera, Nicholas Chambers,James Fox, Kelly Gellatly, Ted Gott, Susanna Greeves,Philip Long, Angela Ndalianis, Justin Paton, Craig Raine and Angus Trumble
Ron Mueck is known for hisextraordinarily lifelike sculptures ofpeople in fragile, naked states. Thisbeautifully illustrated book is the first-evercomprehensive look at Mueck’shyperrealist figurative sculpture, offeringdetailed insight into the artist’s ideas andmethods. Essays by leading scholarshighlight the depth of his practice andfurther affirm Mueck’s importance.
Published in association with the National Gallery of Victoria2 b/w + 75 colour illus. Paper, £19.99
Kosta AlexFlorian Rodari“Kosta Alex is a cosmonaut”, wroteMan Ray in 1970. ”He breaks the two-dimensional barrier/Liberating himselffrom the force of gravity/He peoplesspace with many new heads/Withoutever losing his own head.”
This handsomely illustrated monographis the first on the life and work of Greek-American artist Kosta Alex,whose collages and groundbreakingcollage-reliefs of the postwar decadestested the boundary between the secondand third dimension.
Distributed for Editions Hazan, Paris30 b/w + 100 colour illus. £40.00
Tony CraggSculptures and DrawingsPatrick ElliottBritish artist Tony Cragg, winner of the1988 Turner Prize, is one of today’smost celebrated and popular sculptors.This retrospective survey, made inconsultation with the artist, focuses onCragg’s artistic output of the last tenyears. Colour illustrations demonstratenot only the diverse styles and materialsthat he employed during this time butalso other aspects of his practice, suchas his earlier works and his alluring,little-known watercolours.
Published in association with the National Galleries of Scotland90 colour illus. £19.95
YaleBooks tel: 020 7079 4900www.yalebooks.co.uk
£9.95
£38.00 £32.00
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MITH TAKES the idea of contemporary art and analyses its gradual rise to an all pervading power in the culture, and the art market that first gave it its impetus.
As modern communication and what might be called financialism(our word) encroached on every culture in the world, the concept of ‘contemporary’ began to dominate all aspects of vernacular life. Whenthese cultures shared a common market – as in the exhibition and sale of art – then a consensus prevailed that became an international precept.Add to this the multiplicity of expression that constitutes art today and one begins to understand the immensity of Smith’s challenge.
Terry Smith’s acute historian’s eye pans the world from North and LatinAmerica to Russia and Eastern Europe. The key developmental movementsin European art are discussed (post-modernism; conceptualism; theTransavant-garde; etc.) and the text groans with -isms and art critic jive.But that said, this is a fascinating and cohesive overview delivered withauthority and should offer a vital stimulation for anyone involved in the art of today – as well as providing a useful reference tool, for Smith deliberately cites artists not immediately familiar. What is revealed is theingenuity, creative force and occasional star burst of genius in today’svisual arts where the idea is the quintessential ingredient – and the latentdanger this disguises.
World Currents concludes with an examination of the new media and how artists using these apparatus are indirectly manipulated in the direction their work takes by its innate capabilities. Instant communication in real time is a powerful tool for an art that demandsinstant recognition, response and interaction from its audience. One is really only left with an unanswered question: is it possible there can be a saturation point, and if so, are we rapidly approaching it?
N MANHATTAN, three loosely associated creatifs were to epitomise the cutting edge that slashed at the 1960’s
establishment which had itself oncesubverted the dominance of theAbstract Expressionists. ‘New York in the early ‘70s was Paris in the‘20s,’ recalled Laurie Anderson, thesculptor and sound artist.
In fact, all three of the ‘pioneers’discussed in Lydia Yee’s book haddeveloped ideas found in the ‘60samongst practitioners of performanceart, environmental sculpture andaudio visual experience. The talentedWest coast dancer, Trisha Brown, hadmoved East to New York to developher modernist routines at the JudsonMemorial Church, site of past experimental actions by Allan Kaprow(so called father of the Happening’)Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine.Gordon Matta-Clark had been borninto a privileged art world family –his godfather being Marcel Duchamp– and whilst at Cornell studyingarchitecture had assisted with conceptual ‘land art’ pieces byDennis Oppenheim and Jan Dibbets,who along with Robert Smithson andHans Haacke were forging new pathsin muscular engagement with landscape architecture/sculpture.
Pioneers of the Downtown Sceneis a useful reminder that what has latterly dissolved into cheap-shotsensationalism for 21st centuryartists, once had an intellectual rigour and humanist spirit whichmade it a valid and multi-disciplineart form. It is the range of creativeactivities appropriated by the loose
collective of artists based south of Huston Street (SoHo) that is impressive. In the early ’70s SoHowas a desolate neighbourhood withonly two restaurants and one gallery(Paula Cooper). One of those eateries,Food on Prince Street, was operatedby Matta-Clark along with TinaGirouard, Rachel Lew and others(1971-73) as a diner-cum-art project.Co-founder, Carol Goodden, recollects it‘supported 300 artists during our reign’.
Whilst all three artists are majoredin this book, it is hard not to seeMatta-Clark as the dominant entry.He tragically died of pancreatic cancer in 1978, aged only 35, but hisinfluence on contemporary sculptureand interventionist art lasts to thisday. In fact, at the recent Barbican
show for which this is effectively thecatalogue, it was a Matta-Clark glassbrick that got stolen during the take-down. His interventionist architecturalconcepts, which became known as‘building cuts’, made headline news.For example, at the Biennale de Parisin 1975, he made the piece entitledConical Intersect, cutting a large cone-shaped hole through two 17thcentury townhouses in the historicLes Halles market – due for demolitionto make way for the Centre GeorgesPompidou.
In the pre-internet age, artists documented their transient workswith film, video, and photography.One can only regret that 21st centurymulti-media communications were30 years away and wonder what fabulous uses the Downtown collectivewould have made of them. This is a bookthat should reinvigorate the knowledge-able and educate the ignorant whothink that it is the YBAs who repre-sent originality and avant-garde ideas.
WHEN THE IDEA WAS THE MESSAGE
A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
The 1970's Punk sensibility that redefined music – and swept away a decade old generationwhich had proclaimed itself radical and avant-garde – also had a profound effect on art.
Academic and author, Terry Smith, the Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh deserves such animpressive title if this book is his judge, for it is an impressive survey.
1 Gordon Matta-ClarkSplitting 9, 1977 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Fundacio Museu d’artContemporani de Barcelona© 2011 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark
LAURIE ANDERSON, TRISHABROWN, GORDON MATTA-CLARKPioneers of the Downtown Scene,New York 1970sEd. Lydia YeePRESTEL Hb. 240 pp. 180 illus. £35ISBN-13: 978-3-7913-5122-3
CONTEMPORARY ART: World CurrentsTerry SmithLAURENCE KING Hb.248 pp. 377 colour illus. £30ISBN-13: 978-1-85669-716-3
I
S
‘Matta-Clark's influence on contemporary
sculpture and interventionist art lasts to this day’
1 Laurie Anderson The Pillow Speaker, 1978-79 (detail) Black-and-white photograph Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York ©Laurie Anderson
1 Zbigniew Libera Lego 6772, 1996 Contemporary Art - World Currents
5 Wang Guangyi Great Criticism - Coca Cola 1993 Contemporary Art - World Currents
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