Donut Holes and Art Basel

This December I finally made it to Art Basel, Miami. For the past five or so years I have been traveling when Basel comes to town, so I missed it. Heading down south this first time, I must confess to a kind of country-mouse-going-to-the-big-city-nervousness. I must also confess that I fully expected I95 southbound to be clogged with travelers headed south to Miami. But then, a friend reminded me that as important as Basel is, it is still “just art…” Suffice to say my assumptions were incorrect on both parts.

The main reason I wanted to head south was to goggle at Jenny Rubell’s donut installation. I’d read about her food/opening/installation for the Performa 09 Biennial: an “interactive culinary experience,” based on the book of Genesis. The goal was: Five hundred guests moving through three floors, eating a course on each. Honey will drip from the ceiling onto 2,000 pounds of barbecued ribs (think: God creating woman) and guests were asked to destroy and consume chocolate facsimiles of Jeff Koons's bunny sculpture (made by Jacques Torres).” Interspersed in the exhibit were 1,000 lbs of peanuts in the shell, drinks served in assorted Mason jars, and full-sized apple trees felled for the exhibit.

When I first read about this great festival of consumption and destruction, several thoughts occurred rather simultaneously:

1. She’s using food that though uniquely American, is regionally Southern. Ribs, peanuts, Mason jars, even honey evoke a specific image of a non-specific place.

2. It’s the time of year when people turn towards large, communal feasts…the desire to dress in spangles and glitz at odds with the primary activity of the season: eating and drinking.

3. The communal, almost primitive nature of gnawing flesh of ribs, of licking honey of fingers, melting chocolate in hands and bits of peanut clinging everywhere as in direct opposition to the “white walled” gallery.

When considering these elements, I really like (there’s no other word for it) the concept. My only objection (and this probably reveals more about myself than the artist or the work), is the point of departure. That is, I feel as if the use of Genesis as explanation is a little on the nose. The use of food often associated with the Bible Belt, to evoke a deeper sense of Americana seems like it might not need the added presence of Genesis. But, I wasn’t there. And Rubell’s own statement, “the idea of being human is more important than the idea of being perfect,” is elegant and inherently forgiving…perhaps seasonally appropriate?

So it was with great excitement that I scurried into the Rubell collection, and upon spotting the donut installation, “Old Fashioned,” at the back of the space, headed in that direction, in the process almost bowling over Val Kilmer, to snatch my piece of interactive installation glory. The donut was kind of stale. And I liked the back of the exhibit better than the front.

Though “Old Fashioned” had a kind of digital gridlike appeal, balanced against the myriad imperfections of the donuts themselves…it lacked the oomph I was hoping for. However, I can’t be too dismissive, Rubell had fresh donuts brought in every day before the collection opened to the public, and had to find an edible solution to a problem that included Miami heat, the hoi polloi, and blue-chip art. So though it may have lacked the pomp and circumstance I was looking for, as a kind of gentle, sideways nudge in her NYC direction, it was successful.

Printed v. Posted...a few rambling thoughts

I’ve been thinking a lot about how blogs function…more specifically, the people for whom they function. When I was working full-time in an office, my blog—and the blogs of others were a way for me to feel connected to a greater community, to feel like I wasn’t actually isolated in an office, but instead, thinking important thoughts about interesting things. Then to use the online forum as a way to sort out my thoughts, or to post observations I’d made at shows.

However, since I no longer work in an office setting, my connection to the online world is more sporadic. When I write, I of course spend time scuttling back and forth between the job at hand and, say, the NY Times. But as far as reading material goes, I find myself returning to the printed word. To those items you hold in your hand, mark with whatever paper is handy, and perhaps jot down notes.

Then, when Josh Jubinsky began creating a Zine collection for the library, I was forced to consider the matter of the printed word vs. the online word. And though I’ll never decry the ease, convenience, and speed the interwebs grants us, I must confess to a knee-buckling weakness for the printed word.

Even Zines, with their often scrawled, hyper-articulated screeds are inherently more interesting and successful than the most erudite and elegant web page. And not just because it is something you hold in your hand, but because it takes a kind of fearlessness and confidence to commit things to the printed page. Especially, when it’s a self-funded project printed by a Xerox machine on hot pink paper, accompanied by shaky line drawings.

I’m curious to see if, in the following few years, we (as a culture) see a ressurange in self-published documents and manifestos. Then again, I might be romanticizing the whole thing (and Kindles will take over the world).

The Baroness

In an aviator's cap and striped suit of her own design, circa December 1915.
Posing/performing circa 1915-16.
Portrait of Bernice Abbott, circa 1924.
Brittany Murphy as the Baroness in a shoot for the New York Times Magazine, circa 2002.

Orpheus reference, circa 1915.

It’s funny, just I am being called out for letting my blog limp along… I’ve been working on a more cohesive essay. It certainly is true that since this summer, my posting has been {ahem} sporadic. But there were quite a few things going down that I needed to tend to. And though I’d like to think that my recent activity prefigures a return to writing, in truth, I can make no such claim.

All I can do is what I’ve always done: advocate for working, thinking, and telling jokes.

This summer, instead of steadying my outward gaze after things shifted, I began to look inward. I began a slightly compulsive and utterly self-indulgent journey through art time. That is, I started with Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and moved my way through several biographies and biographical sketches of many of the people living in post WWI Paris, characters who’d been referenced in “Feast.” Individuals who now are so deeply entrenched in the canon of 20^th Century Art (caps intentional), that is almost impossible to think of them as living, breathing people.

But they were. And they were as deeply flawed, perhaps more so than the rest of us. And so, not only is it instructive from the art historian’s perspective, it’s instructive for actively practicing artists to see that things like living situations, money, recognition, and the struggle to find balance between vision and market are issues modern artists have always been forced to deal with.

But I digress.

In the course of reading many of these biographies, one person’s name kept popping up as an aside, as a kind of internal joke, cited as equal parts inspiration and damnation.

The Baroness Elsa von Freytag Lorninghoven, was born in 1874 in Swinemude, Germany. She was older than many of her later friends and lovers, and writer Irene Gammel cites her as a living example of “decadent old Europe.” While discussing “old Europe’s decadence,” it is worth noting that Elsa married her title—she was not born to it. But even after she divorced the Baron, she kept the title.

Gammel’s book, Baroness Elsa: Gender, DaDa, and everyday Modernity, examines von Freytag-Loringhoven’s life through the lens of feminist theory with gender overtones. That is to say instead of letting the Baroness’s work (poetry and assemblage for the most part) and “performances” speak for themselves, Gammel goes as far to equate Elsa’s voracious, aggressive sexuality with a conscious prefiguring of the role of women in the 20^th century.

Baroness Elsa, filled as it is with biographical details, photographs, and poetry is a valuable, if curious source of material that presents a decidedly less favorable view of some of art history’s favorite heroes. But therein is the crux of my disagreement with the book…while creating in the Baroness a figure of sexual heroism and freedom, Gammel’s book also seems to inherently take to task those surrounding Elsa. While at the same time, revealing that Elsa herself, after seducing or “sexteaching” her companions then took this as a sign/agreement that they would support her, and continue to do so even after they split. Opportunism anyone?

While overall the book is extraordinarily researched, and makes one reconsider the origins of some of Duchamp and Man Ray’s breakthrough pieces (she is rumored to be the model in his 1921 Coat Stand and there is circumstantial evidence that suggest she sent Duchamp his urinal), as well as the importance of DaDa and the origins of the Little Review, it does seem to vacillate between a shrilly self-righteous tone and one of hero worship. Consider this passage describing a photograph of the aging Baroness en costume*:

“Her Joan of Arc helmet of hair is decorated with an oddly feminine headband like the one she wore in Lechter’s Orpheus. Surprised by the camera in midpose, her body is bent over; her self-made chiffon dress reveals the nude body underneath. The viewer gleans a look at her strong athletic legs and her extended back; her feet are tightly wrapped in ballet shoes laced around her ankles, the right foot posing on the toe, as if she were a ballerina. Her studio surroundings look makeshift, as if to announce that creative élan arises in the midst of chaos […] here we find the paraphernalia of her performance art, evidence that by December 1915 the Baroness was performing herself. She has already fully developed her trademark personality: caustic, vitriolic, daring, pushy, confrontational, shameless, shocking, and aggressive.”

*pictured above, labeled Orpheus reference.

Insofar as the very act of writing about something is a tacit acknowledgement of it’s power, this passage, especially when contrasted with the image to which is refers seems like a stretch.

The image could just as easily be read as an aging, mentally ill woman descending deeper into her own psychosis. Living in chaos and filth and because of her personality traits, combined with her list of talents friends, has drawn someone onto her own pathology…if even for an afternoon to photograph her. Of course, it is equally possible that an enterprising photographer sought to capture her on film because of her extraordinary circumstances...high drama and banal craziness all in one.

Consider the description with which Gammel follows up her interpretation of the Baroness posing in a chiffon curtain: “Louis Bouche tells us that during this early period, the Baroness ‘lived in total disorder in the Lincoln arcade buildings with an assortment of animals, mostly mangy dogs and cats.’”

It is not von Freytag-Loringhoven’s creative output (especially her poetry) or her streetside “performances” that are being taken to task here, or even questioned. Rather, it is the tendency of writers and art historians to elevate the mundane and unpleasant facets of an individual’s life…to give them undue, unwarranted significance thereby undermining the very institution (academe) for which they stand.

Certainly it is true that Baroness Elsa prefigured performance artists like Leigh Bowery, Michael Alig, and Soigne Deluxe. In addition to breezing through the lives of the “Paris set,” (but first in NYC) who eventually found themselves to be international darlings, she no doubt struck a blow for feminism, art, and fasion. But in ascribing noble motives and heroic strength to her every move, it devalues what she actually did, turning her—and by extension the writer--into a parody of feminist thought/action.

Atlantis

I found this image on my friend Yvonne Lozano's Facebook page, from artist Mary Atwood. I love how the grandeur of the smoke/exhaust contrasts with the small determinedness of the shuttle itself.

Of all the things our government wastes money on, I am down with NASA.

Foundness

I found this on youtube, from one of my favorite young photographers: Dana Goldstein (here). It reminds me of roller skating backwards.

(forward to the one minute mark for the impatient).

OUCH or painting is ever the challenge; the goal

Damien Hirst's new paintings are being panned left and right. Without proper access to them (or to a good magazine reproduction, it's hard for me to say what I think. Though I think I like some of the ideas and direction...the paint handling itself seems tight and fussy, and not in a good way (but that judgement s made through online slide-shows...not the best representations).

Either way, reading the press surrounding the new stuff (especially the vitrolic British press) is satisfying in a biting sort of way.

Here are the fun-filled links:

The Guardian

The Observer (via The Guardian)

Time

Art Institute Photo Show

I love photography because it is the world, but different. Come out and check out a show with some of Jacksonville's leading and emerging commercial/editorial photographers.

Featuring:
Jeanne Caisullo
Walter Coker
Laura Evans
Natalie McCray
Garry McElwee
Eric Staniford

Thursday, October 8, 5-9 p.m.

Art Institute
8775 Baypine Rd
Jacksonville, FL 32256-8528
(904) 486-3000

Above image by Natalie McCray.

New Work At JIA

Cabeth over at the JIA arts Commission was kind enough to invite me to show works in the kiosks at the airport. She asked for more three-dimensional works, and since I had been kicking around this vitrine/vessel idea, it was good incentive for me...often I am really, really good at the talking parts of ideas.

That being said, I produced some new pieces I am rather pleased with, and since I do not expect people to go out to the airport to ogle my work, here are some samples.

The works are found object, acrylic vitrine, and balsa wood (though I think in the future, I'll use birch plywood and a jigsaw). They are prototypes and I hope to watch them evolve.

The Sixties Aren't Dead, Just Evolving: Sonia Sanchez at the Ritz

“All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, ‘Something’s wrong, let’s change it for the better.’ That’s what my life has really been about.” –Sonia Sanchez

Last Thursday I went to see Professor Sonia Sanchez at the Ritz Theatre. Before being invited, I had never heard of the radical poetess who confronts social and economic disparities in her work.

Alternately an integrationist and separatist, Sanchez began teaching in San Francisco in 1965, developing black studies courses; while, her poetry addressed the conditions and ramifications of being a person of color in America.

“we are sudden stars
you and i exploding in
our blue black skins.”

When Professor Sanchez spoke, she read some poems and told stories of youngsters in crisis, of how so many kids still can be “filed” under/written off because they are underprivileged, underserved, and utterly forgotten. Of how they’ve never had someone to love them, to care whether they lived or died, and of how humor and compassion can be used to send them a lifeline.

These used to be the kinds of things I thought about a lot. And not just because I too was a public school kid, getting by on scholarships and financial aid. But as those days get further and further behind me, I find myself settling into a kind of middle-class stupor. Cushioned with all the comforts of home and stability, my once commentary work has instead turned personal and arcane.

Though there might not be too much I can do to change the trajectory of what I do and what I write about, I can, as Professor Sanchez suggests, make phone calls and write letters. Especially in my own community.

Professor Sanchez talked about the time she and her sons were watching a baseball game. And the batter made a magnificent hit, the kind of hit that no outfielder should be able to catch, but one player, running faster and harder than all the rest, leapt up and caught the ball. It was breathtaking and she and her kids were high-fiving one another until the announcer voiced over saying, “Wow Jim, didya see that monkey run?!” Immediately the jubilation in their home was replaced by anger and Sanchez went to the phone.

She called the station, and kept calling until she spoke to someone to whom she could voice her disgust. Ultimately the sportscaster issued an apology. Of course, it probably didn’t change the way he thought, but it did force him to acknowledge that you can’t say things like that because people are listening…and they’ll say something.

Listening to the very words people say is another tactic Sanchez advocates, because it is there that you find out what they are thinking. Of course, it also bears mentioning that the Professor advocated the entire audience refrain from gossiping for a week in order to clarify their urine…but that’s another topic for another time (she is 75 and a little crazy after all).

The lesson to take away? Stop just sitting on the sofa, one need not be out protesting in the streets to affect change…letters and phone calls work too. The important thing is to pay attention.

Shameless Self Promotion Alert!

This Friday: join me and a bunch of other artists at Jane Gray Gallery for a look at contemporary work made in the past year. I'll have two new pieces in the show, and also "There to Here," (pictured) which was featured in the July issue of Water's Edge Magazine.

Cake Spotting

A few weeks ago I decided to bake a cake whose recipe I’d been looking at and thinking about for a week: Ruth Reichl’s Apricot Upsidedown Cake. Taken from her 1971 cookbook, Feastiary, this would be the second Reichl recipe I’ve tried since discovering her writing.

Reichl was the food critic for the NY Times, until she was offered editorship of Gourmet magazine. She’s known for a deliberately democratic approach to food writing (she was the first Times critic to ever assign three stars to noodle restaurants and other eateries not firmly in the European/French tradition). She is also known for the kind of writing you wish you did (or at least I wish I did): i.e. funny, warm, succinct, and mildly nostalgic.

In preparing the recipe, I was struck not just by the flavors, brown sugar, butter, and apricots…but by the simplicity of it. I imagined a meadly of toasty caramel flavors, set off with a simple golden cake underneath…and the apricots all turned to candy.

Was I wrong.

Imagine instead gloppy sugar-butter topping, too moist fruit (so I used peaches instead of canned apricots—none to be found in Jax), and a cake with too much sugar, so it scorches the top (which will be the bottom). After I pulled the cake out of the oven and tried to peel the burnt part off, I thought the cake might be rescued if I cooled it…turning it (maybe) into more of a bread pudding-like desert.

Nope.

After trying it again, two hours later, it still tasted like something from Reader’s Digest circa 1977…before America realized it didn’t have to eat like it was still the war and things in cans weren't so good for you.

Baking is a science. So although I think I could see my way to creating something with these flavors, only a more subtle, fresh version, I am not sure I have the patience to try and try again.

I’m not sure what I take away from the whole experience other than beware of recipes from 1977…except maybe to remember that nostalgia is a dish best served sparingly…and probably cold.

Madeleine II: the follow up

So it's been a while since I posted anything here and that's because I have had a really rough summer...but I finally seem to be coming to the end of it (summer and rough times). Hopefully, in the next couple of days I'll post stories and processing I've done over the break I never meant to take.

Until then, know this: Ernest Hemingway's house smells like cat pee.

p.s. pic credit goes to Natalie McCray

Honor

My two grandfathers were friends their entire lives. And though I try to steer away from the maudlin or overtly self-indulgent on this blog, one of of my grandfathers has passed.

The other, 91 years old and walking with difficulty, wants to be a pall bearer. My heart breaks for his honor and dignity.

Call to Artists

This crossed my desk, and though it's pretty last-minute-ish, I thought some people might be interested. If you want the entry PDF, email me and I'll forward it on to you: madeleine53@gmail.com.

The LAB Gallery @ MOCA

JUNE 11TH – AUGUST 27TH, 2009

The LAB Gallery is located on the 1st Floor of The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, adjacent to the Museum Store. The informal display is intended to offer an exhibition and sales opportunity to emerging local and regional artists in a high visibility downtown setting. Two artists will be exhibited simultaneously in five exhibitions throughout the summer.

enigma and enthusiasm

I like Matt...I think he's funny and reflective (and not just because he wears shiny clothing). And on an certain level, his work is informed by absurdity....the great-great-great-grandchild of Dada.

For Brian..we love you man.

I don’t have health insurance. That doesn’t make me unique by far. And for the most part, I don’t really think about it. I don’t think about it until I am forced to. Luckily for me, the setbacks in my life have always been fairly small…however, that’s not the case for everyone.

Brian Hicks, one of Jacksonville’s most well-known, and well-loved musicians has cancer, again (I mistakenly thought it was brain cancer, it is not). Undoubtedly you’ve probably heard about the various and ongoing fundraising efforts for his medical bills. And so far, the community seems pretty committed.

Here’s another chance to help out a friend while checking out some new work. Mark George has organized a benefit, “I Love Brian,” on May 29, 6-9 p.m., at Flux Gallery.

Mark said, “Brian Hicks, well known in the riverside and San Marco community in Jacksonville is a very well accomplished musician that needs our help with his personal battle with cancer. He is suffering now for the second time in 3 years. His hospital bills are piling up, and benefits for Brian have been organized and generated a good amount of money already. Now is the time for us to pull together to help Brian in this very dark point in his life.”

flux galley
1011 Park Street
Jacksonville, FL 32204
in Historic Five Points

*according to Mark, all the proceeds go to Brian.
**for a sneak peek, go here.

New Cummer Director

Directly from the Cummer:

Edward W. Lane, III, chair of the Board of Trustees for the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, announced Hope McMath as the museum’s new Director.

McMath has served as Interim Director, Deputy Director of Programs, Director of Education, Associate Director of Education and Art Historian at The Cummer since 1994. She holds her Masters of Arts in Teaching and Bachelor of Fine Arts from Jacksonville University and is a prolific printmaking artist.

“Hope McMath has long been recognized as a creative and industrious arts educator, but she surprised and delighted the museum’s Trustees and staff with her strong leadership as interim director during the past several months. We are fortunate to have such a talented and accomplished individual lead The Cummer,” said Lane.

As a result of McMath’s leadership and vision, The Cummer’s educational programming and interactive arts center, called Art Connections, is known nationally as a model for arts education programs. During her six-year tenure as Director of Education more than 210,000 school children have visited the museum. The four-day VSA Festival serves children with disabilities and has grown exponentially under her direction. Since its beginning 14 years ago, it has grown to host 2,500 children annually supported by more than 1,300 volunteers and more than two dozen community partners. As Deputy Director of Programs she launched the Weaver Academy of Art, supported by a $1 million endowment from the J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver, to reach underserved students in Jacksonville. The program integrates the arts into the children’s education, homes and lives impacting entire families, schools and communities. “Art Connections is a nationally and regionally recognized leader in accessible, quality arts programming that engages and promotes a life-long love of the arts in all students. It is this leadership and excellence that initially encouraged us to endow the Weaver Academy of Art,” said Wayne Weaver.

As Interim Director she has worked with Museum Curator Holly Keris to reshape an exhibition schedule highlighting many of the museum’s collections and donors and is spearheading a three-year strategic planning process for the museum. “The museum’s donors, collection, programs and gardens are great strengths that are both unique to The Cummer and an exciting palette to work with – I am thrilled to lead the strategic planning process that will leverage and engage these assets to their greatest benefit for this community,” said McMath. “The magic that happens when our visitors engage with the art, the gardens and one another inspires me to blend strong Cummer tradition with a fresh vision for the coming years.”

“As incoming Chair, I am enthusiastic about working with Hope over the next two years. She is the right leader with a terrific set of skills that will see the museum through these tough times and position us to be a more dynamic and strong institution than ever before,” said Jim Van Vleck, vice-chair.

McMath replaces Maarten van de Guchte who resigned in April.

The Place We All the Loved Most

Bridenstein

So, I know my posting has been spotty lately and for the next week or so it'll continue to be. Tomorrow I'm getting married, and then we're heading out of town. It's a small affair, but the food should be great, and I couldn't be happier!

Wish me luck making it down the isle in my designer shoes.

I'll resume posting next week. In the meantime, I urge you to support the Brian Cancer II event at Eclipse this Sat., night. I'm donating a large framed piece from the new series, and starting the bidding low, low, low.

Show Brian lots of love.

small victories

I just got am email from Allison Graff, the Art in Public Places Program Manager (for) the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. As many of you probably already know Allison has been sick due to a virus that attacked her heart. Read more here.

We are pleased to welcome her back to her job, and look forward to seeing her smiling face at future events and just around town!