24 Nov - Hubert's Museum + Diane Arbus

LAUNCHPROJECTS - I found myself engaged in a bizarre and fascinating conversation while visiting a friend's law firm this week. One of the law partners began to describe an experience in the 1960's at Hubert's Museum in New York City involving well heeled audiences, poisoned darts, and a man called Voodoo Jungle Snake Dancer. A living "museum of freaks," Hubert's was established in the 1930's in the basement of what was then an extraordinarily unsavory Times Square. Retired circus performers and all manner of misfits performed, danced, and showed their freakiness to paying crowds. They swallowed fire, shot darts at the audience, wrestled snakes, directed Flea Circus', and strutted in drag. Hubert's closed its doors in 1965 but, to quote Jerry Eberle of Booklist, "Hubert’s seedy past remains culturally significant because it offers a peephole view of a less-sanitized America. Also, it was one significant artist’s portal and first foray into the world of freaks—photographer Diane Arbus".

In 2003, a rare bookseller came across a trove of "lost" photographs by Diane Arbus shot at Huberts in the 60's. With a bit of research I found the book Hubert's Freaks: The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus. The book relays the true story of this man's discovery of the photographs, his quest for authentication by Arbus’ estate and auction houses, and his simultaneous descent into madness and institutionalization.

After reading the unhinged and bizarre details of Arbus' life in Patricia Bosworth's Diane Arbus: A Biography I am eager to know more about Hubert's Museum and Diane Arbus' close relationship to its performers. Hubert's Museum was the physical manifestation of an intriguing and complex artistic underbelly of mid-twentieth century New York that captivated Arbus throughout her life and prolific career. Hubert's was a venue that celebrated the deviant and marginalized, "a mecca for millions, from the high-toned, tuxedoed Broadway theatre crowds of the 1920's and 30's ... and immortalized by A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, Diane Arbus, Lenny Bruce, Tiny Tim, Andy Kaufman and many others, Hubert's was a worldonto itself" (taken from Hubert's website).

22 November - Robert Motherwell: Open

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Robert Motherwell, who died in 1991, was the youngest member of the Abstract Expressionists who also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman. Robert Motherwell: Open, released this past April, is the first extensive examination of Motherwell's Open series. Motherwell began this series in 1967 and continued it throughout his life.

The Open paintings are fields of color marked with faint charcoal lines that seem to indicated a door or a window. These paintings are utterly pared down and minimal, and a significant rupture from his Elegies series, for which he is probably best known. This book contains previously unpublished paintings as well as works in public collections, this monograph--the most comprehensive and best-illustrated book on Motherwell currently in print is a gorgeous collection of some of Motherwell's most compelling and enigmatic pictures.

19 Nov - Roxy Paine at James Cohan Gallery

LAUNCHPROJECTS - The first time I experienced Roxy Paine's work was in 2003 when I was volunteering as a docent at SITE Santa Fe. His solo exhibition Second Nature featured computer-driven automated art making machines as well as his hand made mushrooms, poppies, and poison ivy. Smart and elegant, I immediately responded to his work at to this day it remains among my favorite SITE Santa Fe exhibitions (including Juan Munoz, Janine Antoni, Gary Simons, and the group show Uneasy Space curated by former SITE curator Norah Kabat Dolan).

Paine's latest project at James Cohan Gallery, Distillation is in Paine's words (from a New York Times Review by Hillary M. Sheets) "a meditation on seeking purity, the pure essence of something, but at the same time the piece is very impure...It also relates to the way I’ve always thought about my process. How ideas come in coarse and ferment in the brain, and eventually are distilled out of that brew. It’s a map of the way humans constantly flit between different frames of mind and fields of knowledge.”

Also included in the show is an elaborate mushroom installation and drawings, paintings, and a maquette of the Distillation installation. A gorgeous and thoughtful exhibition - Roxy Paine (who incidentally attended the College of Santa Fe) continues to grow and expand his original lexicon that straddles the lines of art making and automation, beauty and industry, perfection and rupture.

Pictured: Roxy Paine in front of a mushroom installation at SITE Santa Fe, Distillation 2010.

17 Nov - Steve Martin "An Object of Beauty"

LAUNCHPROJECTS - I acquired a preview copy of An Object of Beauty, Steve Martin's latest novel that focuses on the New York contemporary art world. An avid contemporary art collector (he sold Steve Wynn the Roy Lichtenstein that just sold at auction for $43MM), Martin clearly has the inside scoop on the Manhattan art scene. He describes uptown, Chelsea, SoHo, the art market and all of the inner workings of auctions, dealing, and art intrigue. It is a fluffy and fictionalized version of Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World with sex, scandal, and intrigue thrown in to constitute a plot.

Throughout the novel, Martin lists every restaurant, hotel, bar, and gallery in which the art glitterati dwell. Ben and I laughed as characters had cocktails at Boulud, partied at the Carlisle Hotel, and flitted to Chelsea for openings at Gagosian, 303, and Andrea Rosen. By page 200 the novel started feeling more like a Zagat guide to the Upper East Side than an actual work of fiction - the next time friends request the NYC art experience we will earmark pages from Object of Beauty for a perfect week of extravagant meals, elegant settings, and posh eye candy.

The book is unquestionably a fun read. Martin's access is real and he provides an astute assessment of both the pre- and post- 911 art scene in Manhattan. The book is also tedious and the characters are better described as caricatures. The "heroine" of the story uses her golden hair, sharp wit, and easy sexuality to climb her way to the top of the art world, burning the "nice guy," the "sexy French collector," "the struggling SoHo artist," and the "strong, silent detective" to get what she wants and never look back. Surely Martin could have come up with less predictable stereotypes and a more interesting story line to weave into his insight and experience in the art world. This book made me want to write my own tale of the scandalous and fascinating world of contemporary art... pure fiction, of course.

Images: In an art conversation at The Getty, Object of Beauty, with former partner Cindy Sherman

16 November - Bruce Nauman at Sperone Westwater

LAUNCHPROJECTS - While in New York we attended a private reception at Sperone Westwater for the latest Bruce Nauman exhibition For Children/For Beginners. The brand new Bowery space is a 25 by 100 footprint that includes 12 by 20 foot “moving gallery” - a very large elevator - approved as an "amusement ride" by the city of New York. The space is chic and a bit daunting to behold and the clean white interior worked well for Nauman’s site-specific audio and video installations.

Nauman’s installations enveloped the gallery, a projection of his hands filled the massive front wall with his voice calling out commands for his fingers to follow. I loved that it was his voice this time that commanded the room and his movements. The moving gallery was comprised three precarious (yet surprisingly comfortable) stools with only an elevator operator and the sounds of Terry Allen following Nauman’s instructions to play on the piano. The dynamic cacophony moved us slowly to the third floor where a clean white room held an audio installation of voices repeating over and over For the Children.

Nauman’s work perpetually poses challenges, creates tension, and heightens awareness through disorientation, frustration, awe, confusion, anger, and humor. The new Sperone Westwater exhibition space engages audiences in a similar manner. We found ourselves uncomfortably laughing at the opening as we heard voices and saw glimpses of people moving throughout the space, yet bodies and voices disappeared as we arrived to each floor to meet them. The gallery unquestionably boasts a white-cube Nauman/Hitchcockian mystique yet inherent in its design is a sense of isolation and frustration – even the staff has to have a surveillance camera base operator to find one-another throughout the day.

Fitting that the space dedicated to Nauman’s ongoing explorations dealt with the same limitations of space, comfort, and possibility; but it begs the question how other artists – painters, for instance – might manage such a maze of levels, heights, and vertiginous spaces.

Pictured: The gallery from the street; In the elevator with Juliet Myers, the installation from the second floor balcony

15 Nov - Christies, Sotheby's, and Phillips

LAUNCHPROJECTS - We returned last night from New York where we attended auctions, Bruce Nauman's opening at the new Sperone Westwater Gallery, met with clients, gallerists, and saw many great exhibitions and works of art. All three auctions were exciting and indicated that the market is truly in recovery mode, the three auction houses combined came to the sum of $632 million, almost triple the $216 million a year ago.

Phillips de Pury was the first of the three auctions and made the most stunning increase in sales over it's results last year, increasing its total nearly 20-fold to $137 million total. The stunner of the auction was a black and white painting of Elizabeth Taylor by Andy Warhol fetching $63.4 million, the second-highest price ever for a Warhol at auction.

At Christies, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 painting of a pouting redhead sold for an artist record $42.6 million - it seemed as though as buyers stuck predominantly with 1960s pop art. The evening was excruciating long (two hours, 75-lots), yet 93 percent of lots found buyers. At Sotheby's, a Warhol painting of a Coca- Cola bottle sold for $35.4 million yesterday, making the artist the star of New York’s contemporary art auctions across the board. As art advisor Mary Hoeveler told Lindsay Pollock reporting for Bloomberg, “Warhol has been the driver of the postwar- and contemporary-art market since the decline...The appetite at the very top seems insatiable. You can name your price.”

One of the most fascinating aspects of this week's auction was that much of the success of Phillips de Pury's auction can be attributed to collector and private dealer Philippe Segalot who curated “Carte Blanche,’’ a smaller section of the Phillips evening sale. Segalot stocked the sale with names he champions and lined up bidders in exchange for a cut of the buyer’s fees. With the success of the joint venture it seems likely that there will be more "curated" auctions in the future. Auction catalogs already look like exhibition catalogs with critical essays and art historical references - this new approach promises to further blur the boundaries of the gallery, museum, and auction worlds.

Pictured Above: Roy Lichtenstein's record busting "Ohhh...Alright..." at Christie's from seller Steve Wynn, Tobias Meyer with Warhol Coke bottle at Sotheby's press preview. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

8 Nov - Bruce Nauman+ NYC

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I leave tomorrow for New York to attend the contemporary art auctions, meet with clients, and attend the preview for Bruce Nauman's exhibition at the new Sperone Westwater space.

In my excitement, I have been re-reading Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman's Words. Although Nauman has granted relatively few interviews over the course of his career, he granted Janet Karynak and the MIT press almost complete autonomy and access in preparing this collection. It provides fantastic insight into his thought process, his opinion of the art world and his place in it, and his transformation from emerging artist to absolute between 1965 - 2001.

The following is the first paragraph of a paper I wrote on Nauman a few years ago (click on the link below for the entire essay).

One of the most influential and innovative artists of the century, Bruce Nauman (born in 1941), remains a distinct and critical voice in contemporary art dialog. Nauman explores the intersection of art and life through installation, photography, performance, object making, and video. Nauman’s work is a provocation, a call to attention, an intentional shifting of perspective. As art critic and curator Robert Storr describes Nauman’s effect on his audience, "If they're not puzzled, they're not getting it" (Moorehead).

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE ESSAY

6 Nov - We will miss you, Chuck Ramirez

LAUNCHPROJECTS - This morning Ben and I awoke to tremendously sad news. San Antonio-based Photographer Chuck Ramirez had a biking accident last night sustaining severe head trauma. He was taken off life support this morning and passed away at 47.

Ramirez processed and deconstructed everyday objects in large-scale photography, isolating and re-contextualizing otherwise discarded, dying, and overlooked materials such as filled garbage bags (pictured above), dying flowers, and battered, empty piñatas. As described by artist Franco Mondini-Ruiz, biennialist and Rome Prize winner, “he had a profound and tender sensitivity for special things that were overlooked in San Antonio by others, like his mother's kitchen,” he said. “He turned Tex-Mex grandmother's kitchen into international exhibits, and he did appreciate the vulnerability of life and the ephemeral nature of it” (quoted from mysanantonionews.com).

Bill FitzGibbons of the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center described Chuck as "one of the most innovative artists that I've ever known. His medium was photography and he brought a creativeness to photography that I've never really seen before, and feel that he was just in the midst of his career. He had great things ahead, and obviously (his life) was cut too short.”

Chuck's work was included in LAUNCHPROJECTS' debut exhibition, VIVID, in May of 2009 and was scheduled for a two-person exhibition this August with close friend and fellow photographer Rodolfo Choperena (the two pictured above, Chuck on the left). His work abstracted the mundane and overlooked in celebration and homage to the fleeting nature of human existence - and to the exquisite fragility of every moment. Chuck will be remembered by the joy and beauty he found in the broken, abandoned, and neglected and the unique lens though which he gave our world a bit more beauty, a bit more compassion.

2 November - Lives of the Artists

LAUNCHPROJECTS - I just read Calvin Tomkin's Lives of the Artists. This collection of artists profiles, originally published in the New Yorker over the span of a decade, is basically the the E! True Hollywood Story of some of the most famous (and incidentally rich) artists living and working today. It describes the quirks and fixations of Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Richard Serra, James Turrell, Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, and John Currin.

This book was panned in a 2008 Bookforum review by Martha Schwender. After she accurately points out that Cindy Sherman is the sole female profiled amidst a "depressingly narrow, predictable bunch...many are the spiritual heirs of Tenth Street—heroic white males—remade for the market/ media age" she goes on to assert that "it’s hard to imagine that an average working artist will actually feel good after reading Tomkins’s volume. I kept thinking of the psychologist I know who won’t put People magazine in her waiting room for fear of discouraging her clients, since its celebrity-obsessed message is that you’re a loser simply because you’re not famous".

Lives of the Artists is unquestionably the People Magazine of art books and is not a collection of art criticism. What the book does provide, however, is a uniquely intimate and honest look at some of the most iconic stars of today's art world. Yes, it details what they wore, how much they drank, and which stars have been seen at their openings and in their bedrooms. But the artists profiled have each in their own way fundamentally changed the way we view and discuss art. Tomkins provides an intimacy that is exciting, juicy, and occasionally insightful.

In the preface Tomkins remarks that "biography has informed our understanding of art. In my experience, the lives of contemporary artists are so integral to what they make that the two cannot be considered in isolation. If the work is interesting, the life probably is too." When I teach Art History, I incorporate some of the juiciness and scandal of artists' lives (of any era) to help the work come alive to students. Even the most famous works of art were not made in a vacuum, and the drama of every day life informs each and every work of art - whether it be Cindy Sherman or Leonardo da Vinci. This book provides exactly that context - the texture and shape of the lives of some of the most iconic artists of our times.

30 Oct - Jolene

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I attended a screening of the film Jolene last night at the Center for Contemporary Arts. The film was directed by Dan Ireland and the screenplay was written by Santa Fe's own Dennis Yares of Riva Yares Gallery. His mother Riva (pictured above) was the film's producer. The film is based on the short story Jolene found in by E.L. Doctorow's Sweet Land Stories (2004). The collection is a Faulkner-meeets-Poe narrative that, in the words of book critic Stephen Deusner "are straightforward only on their plainspoken surfaces, but they conceal a deep network of ideas that build on each other as the collection progresses. Doctorow’s characters begin to define themselves against the system and try—usually hopelessly—to work against it, not to bring it down but to halt its encroachment into their lives."

Over the course of the story the young heroine Jolene ranges from teenage wife, hitchhiker, tattoo artist, stripper, battered wife, and finally a mother robbed of her child. The story ends with Jolene only 25, a full life behind her, no notion of her future, and no one to share it with. In Doctorow's words “as alone as she had always been, a stranger in a strange land.”

The film is well done with a great cast. As Rex Reed described in the New York Times, "Sensitively directed by Dan Ireland, a co-founder of the Seattle International Film Festival who makes interesting, offbeat, critically praised movies ... Jolene has been carefully adapted by Dennis Yares from a short story by E. L. Doctorow." Reed goes further to discuss that he fears that due to Hollywood politics and distribution issues "a lot of people who crave fascinating departures from the normal Hollywood rinse cycle may never get a chance to see it. This would be a shame for many reasons, but most of all because Jolene introduces in the title role a captivating and totally original newcomer named Jessica Chastain. This movie boasts a terrific cast and Ms. Chastain not only holds her own corner of every scene, she’s the thing you want to watch. It’s a smashing debut." Be sure to track it down at a theater near you.

28 Oct - Irene Hofmann and Marcia Tucker

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Last night we attended a cocktail reception for SITE Santa Fe's new Director Irene Hofmann at the stunning home of Bill and Alicia Miller. When Hofmann stood before the small crowd to introduce herself she relayed an anecdote of her first week on the job. A SITE a staff member asked her whom she most admired as a role model. Her response was Marcia Tucker, the founder of the New Museum in New York. I caught my breath and felt a wave of excitement - I chose Marcia Tucker as one of three inspiring and intrepid women in the arts to be the subjects of my Masters Thesis this past year (the other two were Betty Parsons and Alanna Heiss). I selected women that I wanted to know more about and whom I considered role models for their courage, tenacity, and dedication despite bitter hostility and widespread unpopularity. Marcia Tucker spent a lifetime as a subversive, an adventurer, and never ceased to challenge the boundaries of contemporary art.

When initially presented, new forms of art and installation can incite fury and derision among art patrons, critics, and general audiences. New paradigms are unsettling and artistic breakthroughs can threaten belief systems people hold dear to their understanding of the art world and how it functions. Some of the most distinguished and iconic artists in modern history have found notoriety and recognition through years, even decades, of slowly evolving acceptance into the cultural mainstream.

In many respects, the curator or director who chooses to present original work to a frequently bewildered and uncomfortable audience shares quite closely the challenges that face cutting-edge artists. Curators and directors promoting distinctively innovative contemporary art meet with harsh castigation for the work they present. In their attempts to uncover “the nerve endings of contemporary art” (as described by Tate Museum curator Nicholas Serota) , forward-thinking curators continually question the way art functions in response to the modern world. The curator must translate into exhibitions, catalogs, and discussions, concepts and forms that have yet to be defined, much less understood.

Exposing and promoting the nerve endings of contemporary art demands participation outside of and attention beyond mainstream culture. Tucker called this “loving the margins.” “I always feel that the margins tell you more than the center of the page ever could. Loving the margins is risky, because you’re not only in unfamiliar territory, but often in hostile terrain as well” . The margins reflect independent thinking rather than the perpetuation of extant cultural structures. When new art is presented to contemporary audiences, historical facts and cultural consensus are not yet available to ensure the import of the work or to allay fear of the unknown. In the words of Betty Parsons, “You can’t put something that’s just been done into history; you’ve got to talk about its creative impact for the moment. A new work by a new artist is not history. It is the present.”

Here is to Irene Hofmann, Marcia Tucker, and all of the powerful women who have come before us to continue to take risks, incite audiences, and endlessly feel for the nerve endings of contemporary art.

images: Irene Hofmann, Bill Miller introducing Irene, Marcia Tucker

25 Oct - Total Disinformation Awareness

LAUNCHPROJECTS - November 4 will mark the opening reception of the Toronto-based collaborative Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borin's debut solo exhibition at LAUNCHPROJECTS, Total Disinformation Awareness. This exhibition of installation, sculpture, painting, and works on paper references the Total Information Awareness surveillance and information technology network utilized by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to prevent terror threats. Enormous computer databases currently exist to gather and store personal information including e-mails, social network analysis, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and ‘private’ data from myriad sources -- all harvested without permission, awareness, or authorization.

Furthering their stance on how total information systems impact culture, Marman and Borins will present the video surveillance and electronic art installation Google (pictured above). Playfully disguised within a cartoon-like set of eyes that follow the viewer within the gallery space, Google highlights the esthetic ambiguity -- and carefully veiled possibility of harm -- within the electronic information haze that surrounds us all.

Total Disinformation Awareness is misinformation aestheticized and packaged as fact, presented in the form of multiple installations and interventions within the LAUNCHPROJECTS space. The works in this exhibition are “obscured, hidden in caves, shredded to pieces, covered up and erased, concealed within facades, and burned” as mirror and critique of the constant surveillance systems quietly at work in both the

physical and the virtual reality of contemporary society.

Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins (Marmco.com) have practiced sculpture, installation and media art in Toronto since 2000. In 2009, Marman and Borins completed a commission for a large-scale interactive work for the Martin Prosperity Institute. In 2008 Marman and Borins participated in a group sculpture show at the National Gallery of Canada, Caught in the Act. Upcoming public projects include a sculpture commission for Downsview Subway Station received from the Toronto Transit Commission, and a commission for an outdoor sculpture at a high-rise building by the Toronto waterfront. Currently, Marman and Borins are exhibiting at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY which was named among the Top Twenty Museum Exhibitions in the United States.

14 Oct - Jerry Saltz, Peregrine Honig, and reality TV

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I went to the opening of Peregrine Honig's exhibition LOSER at Dwight Hackett Projects this past Saturday. The show was called LOSER because on August 10, with nearly 1.5 million people tuned in to watch, Peregrine ended up the runner up in the final episode of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist -- the reality TV show aired on Bravo.

Beyond the standard and ongoing debate of whether the reality TV show (now entering its second season) is intrinsically good or evil, I am most intrigued by Peregrine's reaction to the experience (overall very positive) and the experience as described by one of the show's judges, art critic Jerry Saltz. Saltz, frequently labeled a LOSER in his own right for participating in this reality pageantry, commented in New York Magazine that "Bravo had me at hello. The show appealed to my belief that art only got better once the boundaries between high and low culture were relaxed, most famously by Andy Warhol, then by countless others. It also satisfied my hunger to try new things; my demons that demand I dance naked in public; and my desire to see if art criticism is supple and porous enough to be practiced on a wider stage-even if this stage distorted that practice."

Saltz found that people wanted to talk to him about the show - by the thousands - following its airing. Blogs were created, as were fan and hate clubs. It got people talking about what makes "real" art, how art functions as a commodity, and how art can and should be approached, marketed, sold, and promoted. "Work of Art reminded me that there are many ways to become an artist and many communities to be an artist in. The show also changed the way I think about my job. Over the ten weeks it aired, hundreds of strangers stopped me on the street to talk about it. In the middle of nowhere, I’d be having passionate discussions about art with laypeople. It happened in the hundreds, then thousands of comments that appeared below the recaps I wrote for nymag.com. Many of these came from people who said they’d never written about art before. Most were as articulate as any critic. I responded frequently, admitted when I was wrong, and asked others to expand on ideas. By the show’s end, over a quarter-million words had been generated. In my last recap I wrote, “An accidental art criticism sprang up … Together we were crumbs and butter of a mysterious madeleine. The delivery mechanism had turned itself inside out.” Instead of one voice speaking to the many, there were many voices speaking to me—and one another. Coherently. I now understand that, like us, criticism contains multitudes."

Maybe it is through pushing beyond the bounds of our complex and highly ritualized current art structure that we can find a new function for art in every day life. Or maybe Work of Art really is a bastardization of the art world and its meaning for art lovers and artists. Either way, it became an interesting social experiment. And it clearly got us all talking.

Pictured above: Honig and Saltz, Me & Ben at the opening, detail of our latest art acquisition - Peregrine Honig's Birdsmilk.

4 Oct - Exit through the Gift Shop

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I saw Exit Through the Gift Shop at the Center for Contemporary Arts - the Banksy film we believed to be about street art and the arguably most famous street artist of all time, Banksy. Banksy, whose identity is a mystery, rose to international celebrity and acclaim with major exhibitions, movie star collectors (Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Christina Aguilera to name a few) and works being auctioned at Sotheby's in the mid six-figures. In classic "Banksy" irony, during the second day of the first Sotheby's sale that included his work (which was selling far beyond its six-figure estimates), Banksy updated his website to show an image of people bidding on his work the first day of the auctions with a caption stating "I Can't Believe You Morons Actually Buy this Shit" (pictured above).

Perhaps a continuum of a commentary to expose the commodification of street art in the extreme, the film Exit through the Gift Shop is startlingly not really about Banksy at all. It features the amateur film maker Thierry Guetta, who innocently and passionately takes to the streets to create THE seminal street art film from the "inside." He gets so "inside," however, that he becomes enchanted with the street art life and decides, with Banksy's encouragement, to abandon filmmaking to become a street artist in his own rite. The resulting project is a monumental-scale solo exhibition. Entitled “Life Is Beautiful," the production - it can hardly be called an exhibition - is a grotesque demonstration of what a man with a team of talented artists (for Guetta made none of the work himself) can accomplish. As aptly described by Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times "garnering a cover story in LA Weekly, (the show) appears to be a display of blatant knockoffs and cut-and-paste pop trash that’s nevertheless fawned over by gullible collectors."

Easily comparable to the film Untitled, Exit through the Gift Shop is a testament to the lemming-like behavior of many art collectors and critics. If the show is big enough, if it garners enough attention in the press, if it is perceived to be the next big thing, people will come and pay ridiculous prices simply to be considered in the loop. In one scene, before the show opens, the hype has drawn such attention that collectors are calling Guetta to pre-order works to the tune of $35,000 and beyond. Madonna commissioned Guetta to design the cover of her album of greatest hits. Again quoting The New York Times, "Banksy, who seems both gratified and embarrassed by his Frankensteinian role...mischievously exfoliates the next-big-thing hunger and the posers who pursue it".

Catsoulis, Jeanette. "On the Street, at the Corner of Art and Trash." New York Times. April 16, 2010.

28 September - Untitled the Movie

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I just watched Untitled (the movie) again. The film is a brutal satire of the contemporary art world and the first time I watched it, as the former curator of the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and as a current curator of LAUNCHPROJECTS, it hit me to the core of my contemporary art conundrums. It was almost too painful to watch, and I seriously contemplated hating this film. To add to my pain, previous to watching it I had accepted the dubious honor of introducing it for audiences at the CCA. I nearly called CCA's Film Director to back out of the deal. But then I thought about it. And this is the introduction that I gave (omitting the welcoming preamble).

This movie is too true, to painful to ignore. The protagonist of this film creates brooding new music that brings to mind “art bands” such as internationally celebrated artist Mike Kelley’s band “Destroy All Monsters,” and John Cage’s 1952 composition 4 minutes 33 seconds of which three minutes are performed without a single note being played. Installations in Untitled’s fictitious gallery include Maurizio Cattelan style taxidermy sculptures (pictured above, right) and contemporary ready-mades a la Marcel Duchamp such as post-it notes, blank walls, and push pins. A light bulb installation immediately calls to mind Martin Creed, the artist who won London’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2001 for an installation of an empty gallery with a pair of flashing lights.

These are all real art objects, real art starts. The pressing question became HOW do these artist become famous, important, and valued? Matthew Barney covers the walls of the Guggenheim in vasoline and scales the museum, Tracey Emin presents her slept-in (and horrifically dirty) bed, Felix Gonzalez Torres places a pile of candy and a string of lightbulbs in an exhibition space, Marcel Duchamp obtains a urinal, signs and titles it Fountain. All of the above are celebrated as paradigm-shifting moments in art. How did this happen?

It is admittedly hard to accept challenging art. I remember a few years back, standing in front of a Richard Tuttle installation at the Museum of Modern Art asking myself, HONESTLY, as a curator, if Tuttle had submitted a proposal to me as an unknown artist, would I have given him a show?

The contemporary art curator often translates into exhibitions objects that have yet to be defined, much less understood. As Betty Parsons, the first dealer to promote abstract expressionism, described “You can’t put something that’s just been done into history; you’ve got to talk about its creative impact for the moment. A new work by a new artist is not history. It is the present”.

In this movie we see Madeline, the sexy adventuresome art dealer, convincing collectors to purchase seemingly farcical and ridiculous objects of art. While laughing at the absurdity, however, my mind strayed to Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings—drawings he never himself executed. The collector buys instructions, sometimes detailed, sometimes not, and the drawings are carried out by other artists or art students. Talk about a tough sale, but LeWitt is one of the most prestigious and sought-after artists in the world.

The fact is, as an art collector, museum curator, or dealer, it is tough to distinguish innovators from charlatans. Innovators challenge what we believe art to be in such a way they can easily look like pretenders. Charlatans with the right backing and publicity can make it to fast notoriety—smashing and popular success.

Marcia Tucker (pictured above) was the first female curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art and was fired for her innovative approach to the arts and for her solo exhibition of Richard Tuttle. Audiences complained bitterly that it was not art. Tucker went on to found the New Museum, one of the most important contemporary art museums in the world. She forged a career of challenging audiences, and receiving excruciatingly bad press all the while.

Tucker once made an observation that I will leave with you as we turn to the film. “If cutting edge works of art were truly devoid of significance, why should the world of artists, critics, writers, argue, swear, and fight over them? The question answers itself; the trouble is the works do possess significance. They are significant of the spirit of change that within and about us, the spirit of unrest, the spirit of striving". This film, I would argue, is a silly yet shrewd continuum of that debate.