The Generational: Younger Than Jesus

From left, Laura Hoptman, Massimiliano Gioni and Lauren Cornell, curators at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Posts have been a bit thin this month as I was finishing up my tenure at Arbus magazine (I am now freelance again) and begin work on a couple of new projects, both of the written word and the drawn image.

I am also preparing for a road trip, which I hope to blog about...more details on that will be forthcoming.

Until then, here's a piece about The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC. What I find truly interesting isn't just the ages of the artists (all under 33), but the method in which the curators chose to glean entrants.

From the article, "Reflecting the tough economic climate it is a low-budget endeavor. The show was only a year in the making. Rather than trotting the globe visiting artists, the curators relied on their Internet savvy, reaching out to 150 writers, teachers, artists, critics, curators and bloggers worldwide, for recommendations. From around 600 suggested names, the curators whittled the group down to the final 50."

International in scope, I also found it interesting that many of artists consider themselves, "post-medium." It's something I also see happening with many of my artist-friends...an evolution away from one-form as their "correct" form, and towards the right solution for the {self-imposed} problem at hand.

Said Ms. Hoptman, one of the curators: “None of these artists are constrained by what they make their work out of, or how they make it. And that’s very new.”

Tan Lines

A couple of months ago, I posted about the Dan Colen, Dash Snow show Hamster Nest at Deitch. In that post, I made a brief mention of Ryan McGinley. McGinley became famous with a body of work that has been compared to that of Nan Golden (i.e shocking, confessional). But in his recent body of work, I also see a similarity to Slim Aaron’s photographs of the very rich, privileged, and beautiful of the ’70s.

Staged yet intimate the pictures provide an idealized glimpse into an exclusive world. For the past two summers, McGinley has embarked on a cross-country road trip with gaggle of models and assistants. The idea? To create multiple settings that were reminiscent of nudist magazines from the early ’70s. He shot 20-30 rolls of film a day, believing less in composition/waiting for the moment and more in editing. Incidentally the entire project cost McGinley about $100,000 per summer.

“His subjects are performing for the camera and exploring themselves with an acute self-awareness that is decidedly contemporary. They are savvy about visual culture, acutely aware of how identity can be not only communicated but created. They are willing collaborators,” said Sylvia Wolf, in the New York Times. She is the former curator of photography at the Whitney, who organized his show there (he was 24 at the time) in about 2000.

However, looking at his work, I can’t help but thinking of two things: the first, the Lomographic images that one sees on the eponymous site, and a series of watercolor drawings that local artist-turned-nightclub impresario Ryan Rummel was making three or so years ago. Rummel’s imagery was populated with the same waif-thin, androgynous, sexually-charged imagery. So I can’t help but think that not only has this been done before, but also it has been done better.

The Times further quoted McGinley saying, “My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful,” he said. “They are a world that doesn’t exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living.”

The sepia-toned, cyan-infused over-and-under exposed prints, though undeniably lovely, are nostalgic and seem a little like Polaroid outtakes from a college photography class. Though they are staged, and there is something inherently decadent and privileged about them, I still find myself liking them more than I dislike them–-or even the premise of the project. Then again maybe I just like tan lines.

The project, I Know Where The Summer Goes, is on view at Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street, cross streets Wooster and Greene, on the ground floor until May 3. And unlike paintings, sculpture, or installation I’m pretty-sure photographs are fair-ish game for online commentary.

One last note: He will be honored as Young Photographer of the Year next week at the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards dinner.

*click on the title to go to his website.

Cry Havoc

"Cry havoc and let loose the hounds of war!"

This is taken from Marc Antony's famous speech in Julius Caesar.

Reading Shakespeare can be confusing, an exercise in frustration as his words are meant to be spoken. So it it appropriate then, that a spoken-word poet, retranslates one of Shakespeare’s most famous (many of us were forced to read it in high school) plays, the aforementioned Caesar as the play/poetical Julius X. It is a recasting of Malcom X’s final days through the framework of Julius Caesar.

Al Letson is known across the country and here in Jacksonville as a powerful, clever, and insightful poet. I also have the good fortune to count him as a friend. He has been working on the form he calls a poetical, for several years now. I saw his first effort, Chalk, and I have steadily watched the progress of the poetical Julius X.

Julius X debuted this month in Jacksonville at Players by the Sea. Last weekend, I went out to catch it, and was, with very few exceptions impressed. The cast worked together, transitioning seamlessly between Letson’s words and those of the Bard with clarity and ease...one often forgot that this performance was two ideas become one.

Using minimal sets that echoed the shapes of Harlem, ancient Rome, and Mecca, the director, Barbara Williams (who has directed Letson many times before) created an atmosphere tense and melancholy. There was no promise of a happy ending here, but Williams managed to make the journey to the final tragedy compellingly terrible--laced with betrayal. The result was a play that the audience could not tear their eyes from.

There were a few dissonant notes, the seers, while effective in conveying the terrors ahead in the Ides of March were, at times, a bit too dramatic, verging on camp. But praise certainly goes to David Girard’s Cassius; as Cassius, Girard seemed to savor his own cunning evil, holding it in his entire form the way others experience a fine wine.

Brutus was played with convincing anguish by actor Larry Knight, who realizes only too late, that perhaps Juius X must not die. Cast in several smaller parts (Marullus/Caius/Reverend), Ryan Sinclair emanated gravitas and wisdom; even if that wisdom (as Malcolm X would surely argue) was misplaced. And Renee Freeman as the Soothsayer is clearly that being who thrives on others' misery.

Letson’s play covers the few months between X’s return from Mecca and his death. It chronicles the man’s epiphany that Islam—as he experienced it--is a religion of inclusiveness, and his own personal transformation in regards to race relations in America. It is also an effective glimpse into the power-struggle that was occurring inside the Nation of Islam.

But more than anything else, the play reminds the audience--whether one agrees with the title character’s views or not--of the imperfect nature of humanity, the lessons that history carries, and the lengths that the power-hungry will go to to condense and maintain that power.

It is also worth mentioning that the 43rd anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination has just passed, February 21. This year, he would have been 83. One wonders what the organization he formed after breaking with the Nation, the Muslim Mosque Inc., would have accomplished. That of course, assumes another assassin’s bullet would not have found his heart.

On a personal note, it aroused enough curiosity in me to finally sit down and read Malcolm X's autobiography. More than just the tale on one man's life, it is an anthropological snapshot of a time consigned by the history books as *literally* black and white, when in reality there were many, many shades of grey.

Je ne sais quois

I’ll be out of town for a few days, but I thought I’d leave this snippet of the most recent Deitch-sponsored art parade for people to ogle over.

The parade, which seems to be equal parts (male and female) nudity and performance work I think espouses a certain overarching NYC aesthetic. I say this, because it isn’t the first time I’ve had this thought…and it seems to manifest itself again and again.

The first time it struck me was the first time I visited NYC, I was eighteen and prepared for a world of blaring black, of arched-eyebrow sophistication combined with a certain gritty je ne sais quois. I was wrong, the NYC of 1993 was filled with glittering club-boys and girls, tromping through the streets in impossible platform sneakers and boots, puffy-jacketed thugs in Timberland boots with insane grills, and neo-hippy, vegan, piercing aficionados.

In short: less sophistications, more neon colors and outré-ness for its own sake. (It might also bear mentioning that as I was taking in these sites my hair was cropped close to my head a la George Clooney, I wore tight boy’s tee-shirts, big jeans, and shoes that looked like Frankenstein’s cast-offs).

Even now though, that hallucinatory ethos seems pervasive: a certain lack of subtlety, an embracement of fake fur in faker colors, glitter, and general carelessness. I see it too in the art, jewelry, and clothing being made, as if every voice is screaming to be heard. And, succinctly: I see it in this video.

Or perhaps I’ve lived in the comparative peace and quiet of Jacksonville for too long now.

That being said, the general absurdity and temporal nature of the parade reminded me of the heyday of the Limelight, the Tunnel, other ridiculous clubs of the day, and of a drag performer I once knew named Soigne; it made me smile.