Armory Showby Justin Langdon

“I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

Laying down to rest last night, I depressed the worn play button on my ipod. In return an electrical current flowed through a pair of wires that eventually trans-lated into the musical composition of Johann Sebas-tian Bach. I found myself mesmerized. Each rise and fall of the music was matched with a correspondent rise and fall within me. With eyelids closed I visually represented each note within my mind’s eye. I didn’t want the experience to end. I know nearly nothing “of” classical music yet I was so engrossed that this mat-tered hardly. It was a love with my “inside,” with my “stomach” that I felt. An emotional reaction within me that was precipitated by a work of art. All this while my intellect languidly sat idle.

What is the purpose of art? There is no clear answer. To some it is a distraction from the morose void of nihilism, to others it is a superfluous luxury, and to some it is the manifestation of something altogether transcendental. To these latter folk, art and the fun-damental beauty it imbues cannot be sufficiently qualified by language. It is something better left to the realm of unspoken inner experience.

I think that perhaps art serves all of these purposes. But no matter one’s view it is undeniably meant to provide humans with pleasure, a pleasure that can be both intellectual and emotional. What Bach impor-tantly reminded me last night is that a “loving with one’s stomach” is just as valid as a loving with one’s mind. That sometimes you don’t have to rationally un-derstand a work to derive the pleasure it is meant to evoke. Sometimes you just feel it.

I start with this abstraction because my recent ex-perience at the Armory Show left me wondering simi-lar questions about art and its purpose. Walking up to Pier 94 one might be skeptical to believe that be-

yond the industrial exterior lay a vibrant microcosm spanning exhausting lengths and inhabited by today’s biggest names in contemporary art (and fortune). Pry away the decrepit veneer and one exposes an opulent display of beauty, a pearl inside the tarnished oyster.

The Armory Show, established in 1994, boasts roughly 60,000 visitors from all corners of the globe. Widely considered New York’s biggest annual art event, the fair is in vogue for all participants in the art stratum. The Angel Orensanz Foundation is no ex-ception as we are an active partner and sponsor of the event. Our quarterly publication, Artscape Maga-zine, can even be seen neatly on display in the Media Collection area of Pier 94, giving material credence to this support. With names like David Zwirner, Sprüth Magers, and Lee Ufan all in attendance, it is the event not to be missed by art lovers and buyers alike. But as my experience there would have it, I can’t help but wonder which of the two demographics the event truly had in mind.

They say first impressions are everything. Upon entering, the first words jotted down on my notepad were “commercialized” and “international.” Words not necessarily at odds with one another, but ones that tend to carry different connotations. The former is generally used disparagingly and the latter in a more favorable sense. The extent of the art fair’s commer-cialization was shameless. Whether it was the expan-sive Pommery Champagne Bar that eagerly greeted art-goers who felt a little too temperate for the occa-sion, the Illy Coffee Bar tower painted a garish taxi-cab yellow, or the Bade Stageberg Cox designed floor plan which seemed to emulate a shopping mall more so than anything else, there was no deficit of corpo-rate interests at play. The international aspect (as its connotation would have it), came rather as a positive observation. The scope of the galleries spanned most cultures and the geographic barriers separating them, providing an encompassing display of the human po-tentiality.

I studied economics in college and am somewhat reluctant to bash capitalism and its corporate prog-enies without reason. Ideologically, I guess you could say I am neutral. I always try to band with the side I think has the best logical basis, wherever that may place me. But the corporate undercurrent saturating the Armory Show came at a cost greater than provid-ing an easy target to skewer by the left. It detracted from the show’s fundamental purpose: to be a display of art. It inhibited my ability to reach any significant emotional connection with the works on display. And in result, a downed glass of Pommery Champagne was perhaps the only thing to receive a “love from my stomach.” It felt contrived, it felt affluent, and at no point did it feel like it was actually about the art.

At one point I explored the “Nordic Lounge.” It is here that one encounters a slew of contemporary Scandinavian Galleries, among which I found myself most drawn to a multimedia exhibit by artists Simon Goldin and Jacob Senneby titled “The Discreet Charm of Meta-Finance.” The piece, that’s name is an hom-age to Luis Buñuel’s film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, consisted of a model replicate of itself within the Armory, and displayed through a projec-tor a slide show of images taken of the model as if it were life size. In the background aired a faux-lecturer speaking on the financial crisis, solidifying the illusion of being in the audience of a real lecture taking place right there in the booth. The idea here is that the work of art is completely self-referential, sort of caught up in this state of perpetuating its own existence, just as finance is purported to be within our economy. “It’s all very meta” mentions the gallerist to me. Very meta indeed, but another (and perhaps unintentional) layer of self-reference could surely be added after a quick glance around revealed a venue replete with bankers

and business tycoons looking to diversify their port-folios. Yes, even the art world in all its sanctity can be permeated by the social forces it attempts to deride.

I arrived at the venue hoping to feel awed, but left feeling dizzied. The unabashed attempts to induce consumption were at ends with my simple goal of aesthetic appreciation. Perhaps I just needed the proper expectations going in, or maybe I’m being too sensitive to the ambiance, but at the end of the day, “sensory overload” was the final phrase scribbled in my pad... and that’s excluding my taste buds.

Norfolk Film SeriesYoung Directors in NYCby Sandra Martin Garcia

On February 20, 2012, Angel Orensanz Foun-dation presented “Norfolk Film Series”. This was the second time the foundation hosted a film se-ries. This cycle is based on presenting features of

both fiction and documentary, of young directors who live in NYC. The intention behind it is to cre-ate a cultural space that allows young artists to share their work with others and also, to give the opportunity to the public to participate actively in the visual experience.Landon Van Soest and Jeremy Levine present-

ed at the premier, their documentary “Good For-tune”, which was awarded with an Emmy in the year 2011.“Good Fortune” gives us a behind the scene

view, of the efforts of international aid dedicated to alleviating poverty in different parts of Africa.This documentary required 4 years of hard work

and constant communication with the locals who appeared in the film. It is a careful and brilliant documentary, summarized in an elegant edition.The main characters of this documentary show

us the battles lead by humanitarian agencies such as the United Nations or with private com-panies such as Dominion Farms LTD. These different groups attempt to convince peo-

ple by proposing alternatives to alleviate poverty, but if you look from the point of view of the lo-cals, this apparent generosity is just another way to achieve economic benefits. People of the film help us to know what is behind, the other side

Norfolk Film SeriesYoung Directors in NYCby Sandra Martin Garcia

of the coin in the process. These are real people with real lives who are being expelled from their homes and deprived of all their belongings with any promise of a better future.Change is necessary, but at what price? What

are the mechanisms used by aid? Are these mechanism needed? To what extent is a benefit to the people to which this aid goes? And finally, the most important question, what is the true end to be attained through these improvements? Definitely a film that is not lost.

The next screening will be lead by the Spanish director Raul Santos, with his documentary “The Rock.” This documentary won a Golden Giral-dillo for the best European documentary in the film festival of Seville in 2011.“The Rock” presents the drama experienced

between La Linea and Gibraltar (Spain), two

neighboring communities, almost sisters, that have to face the pain of confrontation because of political decisions. It tells the story of several generations of separated families and friends, isolated without communication. A beautiful documentary with high sensitivity that will un-doubtedly capture the attention of all.

Cindy ShermanConversations with the photographer

“My name is Cindy Sherman and I was born in New Jersey in 1954. I live in NY now. I have been here for 31 years and I am a photographer. I think my idea of an artist when I was a child was just somebody who drew caricatures; I never thought that this was some-thing somebody could do for a profession, especially as a women. It wasn’t until college that I took a real consciousness of art.

The moment I started taking these pictures of my-self was my turning point. It was weird because right before was the stock market crash. This is when I really felt like I had success, a time that I felt popular yet really guilty about it. This is too much popularity I thought, and it was too easy for me. Then the neces-sity of doing something bigger for the audience start ed to grow, and then I thought, I’m going to work re-ally hard to do something big.

My work is not about fantasizing about characters or situations, some people think that the characters I do are about me fantasizing about being a femme fatal or something like that, but it is not that. When

I am doing the characters I don’t feel like they are somebody growing from my own dreams.

In the college it became short of a habit to create my characters and going to the parties dress up like them. When I moved to NY I did that a few times but not in the same way, in the city I felt that I needed my own short of street harmony. I guess that there were already a lot of real crazy people in the streets who already looked like my characters and I didn’t want to be confused with them.

Whenever I have lived I have worked. When I was taking all my pictures in black and white I was always changing the furniture of place so that I could imitate the room of a hotel, or I worked in the lobby of my building. I always managed to not have to abandon my home. My home was my study. Even if I had to transform it completely for each picture.

Growing up in the 50s, women didn’t wear that much make up, and the 60s and 70s were all about being natural so I felt I was missing something. So

I started playing in my room to see what make up could do, just to become a character. The clowns appeared because I wanted to make the real person behind appear within all that make up. Clowns are hired to entertain, but there is something behind that face I don’t trust. There is a whole world of clowns as if there was another dimension of clowns, another planet just for clowns.

The advantage of being in an image myself is that I can play around. When I experiment with other peo-ple like friends or family, I don’t know what to tell them to do cause I don’t know it until I see it. So I think it is less frustrating to do it myself and with myself cause I don’t know what I want to do until it’s done. I only have the sensation that I got it once I look at myself in the mirror and I cannot recognize me anymore. It’s like the materialization of an inner desire. It is never planned, on the contrary it sud-denly reveals itself like an apparition.

I used to have an old trunk full of old clothes and played to try them all. I have a picture when I was 10 years old where you can see me dressed up like an old lady. I remember I put two socks to my ribs to make it look as if I had my tits hanging. And then I covered myself with make up to look like a real old lady. I don’t think I ever had the concept of getting dressed up like the rest of the girls of my age had. I always liked to look for the perverse way of the costume. I never looked for the idea of becoming a beautiful model or a ballet dancer.

My inspiration comes from the media; my genera-tion was the first one that grew up watching TV. So it has been a really important reference to me. At the beginning I wanted my pictures to serve as a remind-er of images shown on television. I think about my pictures as a part of a story but I never thought about compiling them into a complete sequence. I never went further than one simple image. My idea when I created all these pictures was to create images that observers could contemplate the story behind them, what happened to these characters before and af-ter.”

Any woman during that time was a model, not in the positive way but bound by a frustrating stereotype of what the rest of the world was expecting from you. Cindy Sherman represents the whole Hollywood atmosphere with her portraits of women with really blond hair and with clenched fists, standing in an anger and frustrated with sensation. Hollywood is a juxtaposition of glamour and cholera hiding.

The photographs of Cindy Sherman create in men contrary sensations. They can see beautiful women in a really desperate situation, but these women are victims even though they are portrayed as really beautiful. Cindy Sherman wanted to enhance the shame of not having a clear conscience.

“I think this is the only time I thought conscience in the masculine point of view,” she says. “As a person I am too insipid to consider myself as an activist fem-inist.” She has a feminist facet, maybe not voluntary, and sometimes very subtle, but it pervades her work nonetheless.

Sherman is currently exhibiting at MoMA museum of NY until June 11th 2012.

The exhibition will explore dominant themes throughout Sherman’s career, including artifice and fiction; cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tale; and gen-der and class identity. Also included are Sherman’s recent photographic murals (2010), which will have their American premiere at MoMA.

In 1943 the Metropolitan Insurance Company em-barked on one of the most ambitious urban projects in New York history. Peter Cooper Village and Stuyves-ant Town sought to improve the shortage of housing for the returning World War II troops. The Met Com-pany bought up block after block of the area between 14th and 23rd Streets, and from First Avenue to Av-enue C. This area included the Immaculate Concep-tion Church, rectories and school buildings. In a large swap of real estate and urban redesign, a whole com-plex of Catholic church buildings was swapped with a set of Episcopalian Church buildings right across from 14th East that served the exiting Episcopalian church. Obviously this is not the only swap of reli-gious buildings in New York. In fact this has been an implicit rule of thumb for the last two hundred years. It is now a norm both in New York and in the rest of the United States. The end of the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County,

California and the acquisition of the colossal glass structure by the Catholic Diocesis of Orange County exemplifies this trend. Orange County, CA., has a His-panic population of a reported nine million. This spe-cific example marks the dance of architecture and re-ligious and cultural change in America. The history of American church buildings since the early 19th cen-tury has marked the process of urban movements, social directions, and demographic changes within the country. The Crystal Cathedral is a hallmark of the architect Philip Johnson, the master architect of many

American urban landscapes in New York City as well as the rest of the country. It was hailed as a major development of Evangelism and public architecture in America. For various reasons this all has been crash-ing down in the last couple of decades.

One of the reasons could be the demographic chang-es that are taking place right now in an accelerated mode throughout country. These changes include greater Hispanics, Orientals, and the new collective attitudes of the younger generations. The standard mode of the older generations was the discovery of the transcendental through a sudden, invasive epiph-any of the isolated self.

The Crystal Cathedral brought to self experience a dimension of communal, universalist encounter with the whole world and with the entire universe through the cosmic closeness with surroundings, the skies, the distant urban landscape, and the arts.This happened before, right here in the Lower East

Side of Manhattan, and in Manhattan as a whole, dur-ing the 19th and early 20th centuries. Church build-ings changed hands from confession to confession to accommodate new populations and new needs coming from new waves of immigrants, new forms of religiosity and new cultural expressions. The Crystal Cathedral’s senior pastor announced

Sunday that she was leaving to start a new church, a move that appears likely to split the congregation.

Crystal CathedralThe permanent crisis and redemption in American Religious Architecture By Al Orensanz

“This is the last Sunday we will be worshiping in this building,” Pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman told con-gregants during an emotional 11 a.m. service in the 10,000-pane glass cathedral, designed by architect Phillip Johnson.

Schuller Coleman’s announcement came one day after her parents, church founder Robert H. Schuller and his wife, Arvella Schuller, resigned from the Crys-tal Cathedral’s board of directors, which oversees the ministry’s trademark “Hour of Power” broadcast. The future of the show and the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral Ministries is unclear.

Schuller Coleman said she was leaving because of her family’s “adversarial” relationship with the board. She pointed to the recent firings of her sister and brother-in-law, Jim Penner, who served as the execu-tive producer of “Hour of Power” since 1999.

“My entire family has been experiencing a hostile work environment,” said Schuller Coleman, who was temporarily removed as chief executive officer of the ministry last month.After the pastor’s surprise announcement, the Rev.

Bill Bennett assured congregants that Crystal Cathe-dral Ministries would hold services next Sunday.

“The congregation can basically stay where they wish to stay,” Bennett said later.

He said the Garden Grove church would revert to what he called a more “traditional” style of service, with hymns and music. It is unknown who will take over as senior pastor. The church was sold to the Ro-man Catholic Diocese of Orange in February for $57.5 million, and the ministry has three years to find a new home.

He said Crystal Cathedral Ministries has nothing to do with Schuller Coleman’s plans for the Hope Center of Christ. In a video posted on the new church’s web-site, Schuller Coleman, sitting next to Penner, said a location for her church would be announced within the next two weeks.

Sunday’s announcement immediately created a di-vide among congregants.Mike Abbott, a 47-year-old mechanical engineer from

Highland, said he would move with Schuller Coleman.“It’s a shame to see a church split like this,” he said.

“I think this is the birth of a new ministry.”

But Shirley Zink, of Yorba Linda, said she was excited to see Schuller Coleman out of the pulpit.“We need to make everyone aware that Crystal Ca-

thedral Ministries is continuing right here,” said Zink, 67. “I’m looking forward to a traditional church service with a choir, musicians and a great message.”

Although Schuller Coleman said during the service that her decision was made with the “complete sup-

port of my mother and father,” the two will not be offi-cially involved with the new ministry, said Carol Schul-ler Milner, who serves as the family spokeswoman.The elder Schullers commended their daughter for

her decision in a statement released Sunday after-noon.

“We will bless her faith pursuits as we have blessed all our children, but we will not be moving with her to the new location nor are we willing, at this time, to commit to participating in worship at the Crystal Cathedral,” according to the statement. “How we will express ourselves in worship remains up in the air.”The couple are facing their own conflicts with Crys-

tal Cathedral Ministries, resigning from the board af-ter a breakdown in negotiations over financial claims against the church. The elder Schullers, along with Schuller Milner and her husband, Timothy, allege that the church owes them money for copyright infringe-ment, intellectual property violations and unpaid con-tracts.

The creditors committee has opposed the claims, which have delayed $12.5 million in payments to

some church creditors.James Kirkland, a longtime congregant who orga-

nized an online blog about the Crystal Cathedral, said he is pleased with Schuller Coleman’s decision to leave.

“This is the first step toward restoring the Crystal Cathedral and the ‘Hour of Power’ to its traditional roots,” he said.

You can read more about it here.

JOIN our mailing list at

joinlist@orensanz.org

VISIT us at

www.orensanz.org

FIND us at

facebooktwitter

A N G E L O R E N S A N Z F O U N D A T I O N , Inc ©