I want to say thank you to Whitney Gardener, creator of HeyWhitney@blogspot.com , for brainstorming with me and helping me come up with this idea for the blog.
While at the Met for the closing weekend of the Francis Bacon show we were able to start this out. "Guard Talk" is a section of the blog that is going to be dedicated to the people who have to live with the work day in and day out in the institutions, the guards. Those people who tell you to step back and that there are no photos in the museum finally are going to freely voice their opinions. Which is great because there are a lot of guards in this town who are artists to begin with. Some famous artists started out as museum guards, like Brice Marden who used to guard at the Jewish Museum. He said he learned so much from looking at a show of Jasper Johns' work in the 60's. Without that time to just sit and look at the art who knows what he would have done.
"Guard Talk" presents: Met Museum guard Carl and his opinion of the Francis Bacon show as well as a candid point of view about another favorite spot for him to guard. He had this to say, and I am paraphrasing, that the "Bacon show is a great and fun exhibition but dark and disturbing at the same time. There is probably no better time for this show to be up." As for Carl's most favorite place to guard at the Met, it is the roof garden. The current sculpture installation is a work by the artist Roxy Paine. You can see an installation video on the Met's YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/metmuseum). Carl said that he likes it up there because of the view and fresh air but he had to, on opening night, tell people who had a little too much to drink not to do chin ups on the sculpture. Lesson one for all sculptors: make sure that your work can with stand a lawyer in tux on his third martini trying to impress his date by showing her/him how strong they are. Thanks Carl for the great story.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Iconography Obsession
Iconography Obsession: A Response to Ken Johnson’s “A Museum’s Mission in Artists’ Statement”
In a recent article in the New York Times, Ken Johnson wrote about an exhibition at the Newark Museum entitled Unbounded: New Art for a New Century. He begins with a truth that I see a lot in the museums that I work in which is collecting contemporary art from collectors who might not be getting the best advice on what to buy leads to contemporary collections made up of bad art. Mr. Johnson begins his article as such “For museums, collecting contemporary art is a crapshoot.” With that statement I am in total agreement. Who knows if the artists that are getting big gallery shows are going to have a lasting importance upon the history of art or if they are just fashion plates representative of a timed aesthetic? The critic then continues on to make a comparison based upon geography that:
“Just across the river, several big museums collect and exhibit contemporary art for a huge, international audience that is interested in all things new, experimental and provocative. Not to know the once proud, now down-at-the-heels city of Newark, but why would anyone come here to see cutting edge art when it’s so easy to do in Manhattan?”
This statement made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In hearing a lot lately about unique architecture along with biographies on the radio of Merce Cunningham and Andy Warhol, these stories have just really brought into sharp focus the driving force of the ambitions of this city: iconography. New York City itself is an icon on numerous facets, from Elise Island to the WTC, from the Yankees to Lincoln Center. This is a city obsessed with iconography. Many of the buildings listed in a recent article on cutting edge architecture were in Manhattan, the Guggenheim and the New Museum both, being raved about for their iconic additions to the architectural fabric of Manhattan. While listening to a biography on Andy Warhol, there was a statement made about how he arrived at the Campbell’s soup can works. Basically he was in search of something in front of him to give him some inspiration. Leave it to a designer turned “artist” to lock on to Campbell’s soup. For someone who later would outshine his own work it is fitting that Warhol built his ladder of fame out of the iconic status of an already American icon.
With all of these collisions coming to a head right now, seeing New York City’s obsession with being an icon of culture in America has just never been clearer. This city collects and lays ownership over icons in a manner similar to kids going after baseball cards of players like Sammy Sosa, Derek Jeter or Babe Ruth. Even when they can’t have the iconic person themselves they retain the object that makes the icon an icon. Where would the Met be with out Hirst’s “Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”? It would still be an icon of cultural collecting but now it spans all of time from the ancient to the contemporary.
If New Yorkers are only obsessed with the fashionably avant-garde then where does the real thought provoking work end up?
In a recent article in the New York Times, Ken Johnson wrote about an exhibition at the Newark Museum entitled Unbounded: New Art for a New Century. He begins with a truth that I see a lot in the museums that I work in which is collecting contemporary art from collectors who might not be getting the best advice on what to buy leads to contemporary collections made up of bad art. Mr. Johnson begins his article as such “For museums, collecting contemporary art is a crapshoot.” With that statement I am in total agreement. Who knows if the artists that are getting big gallery shows are going to have a lasting importance upon the history of art or if they are just fashion plates representative of a timed aesthetic? The critic then continues on to make a comparison based upon geography that:
“Just across the river, several big museums collect and exhibit contemporary art for a huge, international audience that is interested in all things new, experimental and provocative. Not to know the once proud, now down-at-the-heels city of Newark, but why would anyone come here to see cutting edge art when it’s so easy to do in Manhattan?”
This statement made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In hearing a lot lately about unique architecture along with biographies on the radio of Merce Cunningham and Andy Warhol, these stories have just really brought into sharp focus the driving force of the ambitions of this city: iconography. New York City itself is an icon on numerous facets, from Elise Island to the WTC, from the Yankees to Lincoln Center. This is a city obsessed with iconography. Many of the buildings listed in a recent article on cutting edge architecture were in Manhattan, the Guggenheim and the New Museum both, being raved about for their iconic additions to the architectural fabric of Manhattan. While listening to a biography on Andy Warhol, there was a statement made about how he arrived at the Campbell’s soup can works. Basically he was in search of something in front of him to give him some inspiration. Leave it to a designer turned “artist” to lock on to Campbell’s soup. For someone who later would outshine his own work it is fitting that Warhol built his ladder of fame out of the iconic status of an already American icon.
With all of these collisions coming to a head right now, seeing New York City’s obsession with being an icon of culture in America has just never been clearer. This city collects and lays ownership over icons in a manner similar to kids going after baseball cards of players like Sammy Sosa, Derek Jeter or Babe Ruth. Even when they can’t have the iconic person themselves they retain the object that makes the icon an icon. Where would the Met be with out Hirst’s “Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”? It would still be an icon of cultural collecting but now it spans all of time from the ancient to the contemporary.
If New Yorkers are only obsessed with the fashionably avant-garde then where does the real thought provoking work end up?
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