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lacayo on rothko and the water lilies

Via Modern Art Notes, Time's Richard Lacayo on the connection between Monet's Water Lilies and Mark Rothko made real at Tate Modern.

Going back and forth between the two canvases, you could understand in an almost physical way how Rothko's picture operates, how its vertical orientation and near human-scale dimensions, its direct address to your eye, brain and body, condenses the visual field of Monet's horizontal image and untethers it from its last connections to the visible world.

Yeah, art speak. I know. But if you're at all a Rothko fan, you'll get it. (Lacayo's piece has the images to prove his point, so, y'know, click through.)

little rips in the urban fabric

Brooklyn Bridge Falls, originally uploaded by Fists With Your Toes.

Roberta Smith in the New York Times on Eliasson's water falls: "The experience of Mr. Eliasson’s artful addition to the urban landscape depends on everything around it — the city’s changing pace, light and (real) weather. And on you. The falls can be looked at from near or far, alone or in groups, on foot or bike, from boats and bridges, in snatched glimpses on the move or staying-in-place contemplation. They fake natural history with basic plumbing, making little rips in the urban fabric through which you glimpse hints of lost paradise and get a sharpened sense of Whitman’s, the one you already inhabit."

key lesson: act fast

I continue to be super excited for Jen Bekman and what she's doing with 20x200. I just clicked through on today's message about the latest piece from James Rajotte titled Auditorium, and the 200 run edition of the smaller piece had already sold out.  (Damn!)

rauschenberg on erased de kooning drawing

I went looking for a bit of Rauschenberg on YouTube this morning, and came across this quick four and a half minute piece on one of my favorites of his, the Erased de Kooning Drawing, from 1953.

I love this bit, about a minute and a half in...

"I kept making drawings myself and erasing them. And that just looked like an erased Rauschenberg. You know, it was nothing. So I figured out that it had to begin as art. So it was going to be a De Kooning. It was going to be an 'important' piece. You see how ridculously you have to think, in order to make this work?"

Michael Kimmelman's obit in the New York Times also captures this great Rauschenberg quote:

"I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly," he once said, "because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable."

olafur eliasson

olafur eliasson at the sfmoma, originally uploaded by Agent Kira.

We took the kids to see the Olafur Eliasson show at SFMOMA this weekend. First impressions are everything, and long after we left they were still talking about what happens when you step out of the elevator on the fifth floor.  Simply mind blowing; highly recommended.

the mystery box

Timed perfectly for the pre-Cloverfield marketing cycle, TED.com has posted J.J. Abrams' talk from last year's conference:

J.J. Abrams traces his love of the unseen mystery -- the heart of Alias, Lost, and the upcoming Cloverfield -- back to its own magical beginnings, which may or may not include an early obsession with magic, the love of a supportive grandfather, or his own unopened Mystery Box.

I'm queuing that one up for the weekend.

Relatedly: Over the past several years, Bay Area painter Squeak Carnwath has routinely contributed Grab Bag Mystery Boxes to fund-raising art auctions. Here's the description of one from a 2002 di Rosa Preserve auction:

The object contained inside this box is presently a mystery to all. You, the bidder, are now taking a risk similar to the creative risks that artists take when they make a work of art. You, dear auction bidder, are experiencing the UNKNOWN. For the artist, making art is an exercise in trust. Trust that the unknown will reveal insight. You, like the artist, do not know what your desire will reveal to you. The item contained herein could be an artwork of my own making, studio archeology, an artwork by another artist, a grocery list, a sculpture, a drawing, jewelry, photos, materials to make your own artwork, a lock of hair, etc. etc.

software design as performance art

Kai Krause answers John Brockman's question What Have You Changed Your Mind About with an interesting take on the nature of software design.

I used to think "Software Design" is an art form.

I now believe that I was half-right: it is indeed an art, but it has a rather short half-life: Software is merely a performance art!

A momentary flash of brilliance, doomed to be overtaken by the next wave, or maybe even by its own sequel. Eaten alive by its successors. And time...

This is not to denigrate the genre of performance art: anamorphic sidewalk chalk drawings, Goldsworthy pebble piles or Norwegian carved-ice-hotels are admirable feats of human ingenuity, but they all share that ephemeral time limit: the first rain, wind or heat will dissolve the beauty, and the artist must be well aware of its fleeting glory.

(That link there? To the Goldsworthy images? That's what they call "added value.")

arbus archives go to the met

  Arbus-at-the-Met 
  Originally uploaded by Aaron Edwards

From The Times, news that The Met has been gifted the complete archives of Diane Arbus' estate, including "hundreds of early and unique photographs; negatives and contract prints of 7,500 rolls of film; and hundreds of glassine print sleeves that she personally annotated before her death by suicide in 1971."  And they've also purchased 20 of her signature photographs from Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.

I love this quote from Jeff Rosenheim, a curator of photography at the Met...  "These pictures ask more questions than they answer. When you look at them, you almost feel as though you are having an interaction with the subject and the picture maker simultaneously. You are in a place where there is a lot of intimacy being shared.”

well? shall we go?

Saturday's Times profiled artist Paul Chan and his work in New Orleans, especially his outdoor stagings of Waiting for Godot in the Lower Ninth and Gentilly neighborhoods. I loved the description, though of the signs Chan put up all over the city, in advance of the performances...

Sometime in October, new words began to appear. Printed on small cardboard signs, they consisted of the same three phrases: “A country road. A tree. Evening.” — an exact quotation of Beckett’s scene-setting for “Godot.”

The signs were designed by Mr. Chan and posted all over the city, in a distribution pattern that had a rhythm of surprise. Drive through a “good” neighborhood or a “bad” neighborhood and you’d spot one. At a traffic light, another one. On the boarded window of an abandoned shopping mall, another.

After a while the signs came to feel like a shared secret, or some bounteous but anonymous civic gift, the way Keith Haring’s subway paintings felt in New York in the early 1980s. They added up to a visual network, art as a connective tissue for a torn-apart town.

The whole piece is worth reading, as is this one from Doug MacCash and David Cuthbert of the Times-Picayune.

miami!

The Times Travel section covers Art Basel Miami Beach and the satellite fairs that will invade Miami next week. There's so much going on that the director of Art Miami advises visitors to "make a spreadsheet and write in what shows they want to see and hours and locations in order to plot their course." If you're not familiar with the spectacle that's Miami Basel, it's not your typical open studio weekend. For proof, check out the list of event sponsors. (Think NetJets, Cartier & UBS.)

If you're one of the lucky tens of thousands who'll be there, make sure to visit the Aqua Wynwood satellite fair and stop by Traywick Contemporary. Lots of great work's been packed up and shipped for your visual pleasure; tell the wonderful gallerist I sent you.