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Judging a Book By Its Number
I first met collector Philip Aarons thanks to a mutual interest in the artist Wallace Berman. I was studying the work of Berman and had received a grant to pursue my interest further; Aarons read about my project in a newsletter and reached out. Entering his apartment it turned out he had an (extensive, and generous) interest not just in Berman, artist-publications, or the West-Coast avant-garde, but all things rambunctious and contemporary in art. I subsequently worked with him on an exhibition and catalogue of queer artist-made publications primarily the Aarons' collection, both called Queer Zines, which launched at the 2008 New York Art Book Fair.Read More
Connecting the Dots of John Baldessari
Visitors to the John Baldessari retrospective at Tate Modern will be surprised by the artist's variegated output. While Baldessari is as household of a name as one gets for an artist with a conceptual practice, he's primarily known for his colorful sequences of film stills, and found photographs in which the figures' faces are blotted out with painted dots. The retrospective evidences the diversity of Baldessari's work, beginning with his experimentation with land art, text works, and installation.Read More
In Search of Wallace Berman
New York dealer Nicole Klagsbrun recalls her first time seeing a work by Wallace Berman, in the 1980s when she was running the storied, now-defunct Cable Gallery. The work in question was a reproduction of one of the artist's black-and-white "Verifax" collages (so-called for the primitive copy machine Berman used to produce them) published in a magazine: "The image just struck me, and the writing. I didn't know what it was, but I wanted to and I kept trying to find it. Of course there were no annotations; there was nothing to guide me."Read More
Rob Pruitt, Master of Ceremonies
One important thing to know about Rob Pruitt's first Annual Art Awards at the Guggenheim this Thursday, is that the artist likes award shows–so the ceremony isn't meant as any kind of affliction for an art world given over to popular insincerity. Asked to narrow award shows down to his favorite, he says, "I like the Teen Choice Awards, and the MTV Music Awards and MTV Movie Awards and the Oscars and the Grammys, and the Tonys."Read More
A New Picture at Artists Space
A New York art world unwilling to ackowledge its declining hegemony is the same one hesitant—or unable—to re-formulate its infrastructure and exhibition structures. With gallery sales less than assured, one would think that public institutions might come out of hibernation, and adapt their programming to reflect a less object-oriented, de-professionalized art market. That's not to say that non-profits and not-for-profits are immune from the recession—of course they require donations and annual benefit auctions that can sap their staff resources and often look for funding from the same people who generate sales. But alternate models of exhibition do reflect a de-centralized mode of production in which the sale isn't the end-game, and new ways for artists to enter productive structures.Read More
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Collage and acrylic on paper, thread, string, plastic lid
48 x 30 ¼ in.
