18 Feb - Orgy of the Rich

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Tuesday's evening auctions at Sotheby's London experienced an unprecedented moment - five protesters snuck into the room and disrupted the auction process. The protestors threw fake £50 notes in the air and then unfurled a large banner stating "orgy of the rich". The demonstrators belonged to Arts Against Cuts, a group of artists and students protesting a recent plan by the U.K. government to explore budget cuts for arts programs in the wake of the recession.

Their protest began with moaning as Andy Warhol's Nine Multicolored Marilyns (Reversal Series) was presented by Sotheby's star auctioneer Tobias Meyer. The moaning escalated to screaming, shouting, sirens, and alarms while dozens of protesters rallied outside the auction house, shouting and waving banners. One particularly poignant sign read 1 Warhol = 1,222 tuitions.

In the words of New York Times contributor Soren Melikian, "If this was a happening, as I overheard another dealer saying in jest, it was too close to the bone to feel like a joke. It chimed well with the Whatever the reality, this may have long-term repercussions in the market. People deeply involved in art, rich and not so rich, tend to live in their own cocoon. They are not used to having the worries of the rest of the world thrown in their faces."

Rob Parsons and Godfrey Baker of the London Evening Standard quoted a protester explain that "it is obscene that the amount of money being spent at this auction could be the difference between having some form of local services which exists in the community and not." Belgian collector Mark Vanmoerkerke said the auction house took the interruption in its stride. He said: "It's fun to see people stand up for what they believe in. An orgy of the rich? They're not exactly wrong."

My guess is that Vanmoerkerke's flash of insight did not influence his enthusiasm or spending, nor did the protest have any effect on the rest of the evenings sales. The notably small sale raised £44m. When combined with the results of the single-owner sale Looking Closely held the previous week, Sotheby’s total for its post-war art auctions fetched £88m - the second highest February in the auction's history.

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16 Feb - Contemporary Gaga

LAUNCHPROJECTS - In Monday's LA Times, art critic Christopher Knight discussed the "space Age plastic egg" in which pop-music sensation Lady Gaga arrived and later used in her performance on Sunday's Grammy Awards. Knight addressed the similarities between Gaga's egg and and Japanese artist Mariko Mori's Wave UFO sculpture, featured in the 2008 Venice Biennale. Knight further paralleled the meat dress worn by Gaga at this year's Video Music Awards and Canadian artist Jana Sterbak's 1987 sculpture Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorexic, made from 50 pounds of raw flank steak, now in the permanent collection of Paris' Centre Pompidou.

The article jogged my memory to my first experience with Lady Gaga's music. I had heard a few of her songs on the radio, knew she was Julliard trained, and wanted to know more about her. In a quick Google search, the video for the song Bad Romance popped up. I was stunned to watch this contemporary pop icon clearly riffing on Matthew Barney's epic video project, The Cremaster Cycle. I was electrified by the connection. Gaga had successfully transformed an utterly esoteric work of art (even among the erudite and experienced of contemporary art aficionados) into a sexy and accessible 4-minute visual sensation targeting mass audiences and teenage fans across the globe.

Gaga's "sampling" of contemporary art could perceived as the debasement the original artists' intention and process for media attention and pop sensationalism. I have yet to find any artistic credits to Mori, Barney, or Sterbak on Gaga's website and if that does not yet exist it needs to happen. I also feel, however, that it is exciting that contemporary art is influencing videos, album covers, and pop fashion. It provides the possibility of a more mainstream access to the type of art that can otherwise be considered too rarefied for mass consumption. Access creates understanding and appreciation. It ideally also fosters future champions of the arts.

When pop stars incorporate contemporary art into their practice it becomes less intimidating and mysterious to those who do consider themselves "art people." Lady Gaga must give credit to the artists that inspire her ideas. Credit, a brief description, and links to more information about the artists that influence her work on her website could whet the appetite of her enormous fan-base. Gaga could also add a curator to her entourage. Imagine the cultural street cred that would create - a much stronger statement of cultural achievement and sophistication than "poppin' bottles of Crystal." This confluence of culture is a potentially phenomenal vehicle to acquaint a substantial and diverse group of pop music fans to the wonder of contemporary art. Keep it up, Gaga - just give credit where credit is due.

11 Feb - Steve Martin + Dave Hickey

LAUNCHPROJECTS - To follow-up my past blogs discussing Steve Martin, his latest novel Object of Beauty (November 17), a recent implosion at New York's 92nd Street Y (December 2), and Dave Hickey (July 11) - the two men came together Thursday night at LACMA to chat. The topic of the discussion was Martin's book, his collection, and the art world in general. I think they also wanted to make New Yorkers look bad for not wanting to sit through Martin's talk at the Y. LACMA's Andrea Grossman opened the night by stating, "We in Los Angeles want to hear Steve Martin talk about art!"

The evening's moderator Doug Harvey relays the opening sequence of events in his transcription of the conversation:

Me: Dave, can I get a quote on how this is going to prove that Los Angeles audiences are more sophisticated than New York audiences? In your own words of course.

Dave Hickey: I am going to wear my opera glasses to look at the audience.

Me: By wearing opera glasses, are you implying that L.A. audiences are more sophisticated than New York audiences?

Hickey: More buxom.

As Harvey notes "This exchange, had with post-Vegas MacArthur genius Dave Hickey before he squared off with funnyman/collector/novelist Steve Martin onstage at LACMA Thursday night, was a pretty good indication of what was to follow...The audience was fairly star-studded for this kind of affair, with a cluster of comic genius at the back of the reserved section that included Carl Reiner, Eric Idle, Martin Mull, and Ricky Jay. I'm pretty sure I saw Beck kicking around beforehand, and I definitely spotted Martin's "Colbert Report" co-conspirator Shepard Fairey. Not so buxom a crew, but there was plenty of that to go around in the rest of the 600-capacity Bing Theater."

Hickey delivered his typical Hickey-isms including:

"That's the way I do art criticism – I try to raise the price of things that I think are underpriced, and lower the price of things that are overpriced."

"Buying paintings with the prospect of financial gain is like shopping for your wife. It's never going to work."

When he stated that "If I were trying to write a book about the art world... I really couldn't quite tell the truth, because as awful and grotesque as the party is, I want to keep coming to the party" he certainly described one of the challenges Martin faced when writing Object of Beauty. Largely taken as a satire, the book was meant to be true to the art world as Martin experiences it. He tried to write the book without naming actual names, which proved to create a distracted guessing game to those who read it (I can attest to that). When he used real names, however, he was criticized for portraying the characters too harshly, "I have Peter Schjeldahl [the art critic] sitting at a dinner and he delivers a bon mot," Martin told the crowd. "And Peter Plagens [another art critic] reviewed the book saying it wasn't worthy of Schjeldahl -- although it is actually something he said."

One of the things I take away from Martin, Hickey, Object of Beauty, and the LACMA "scene" is that the art world is its own caricature so any storytelling - real or fictional - reads as satire. The reality of our world is that comedians become important collector/novelists, actors become artists who act like artists on TV, and collectors dress as custodians to get to pay millions of dollars for objects of art before anyone else. And that is just scratching the surface. Our fancy and lovely world of art is so outrageous that it is hard not to take as parody, which is why movies such as Untitled (September 28) feel so harsh yet ring so true. Ridiculous. Sublime. Contemporary. And buxom to boot in LA - just ask Dave.

Photo of the event by Doug Harvey

7 Feb - The Google Art Project

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Roberta Smith wrote a piece in today's New York Times about Google's Art Project. I had peripherally heard of this undertaking but had not yet explored the site. Intrigued by Smith's rave review - "from where I sit Google's Art Project looks like a bandwagon everyone should jump on. It makes visual knowledge more accessible, which benefits us all" - I logged on.

Within a few minutes I visited the Tate Britian, the National Gallery, The Frick Collection, the Museo Reina Sofia, MoMA, the Uffizi Gallery - to name a but a few. I experienced the rooms, the walls, the frames, and the paintings to such minutia that William Hogarth's Satan, Sin, and Death (pictured above, right) became almost unbearably tangible - Milton's Paradise Lost in real time in my living room.

This level of access fosters an incredibly intimate art experience. Anyone can enter any of the participating museums at any time, for any length of time. There is no jet lag, fatigue, crush of crowds, plane ticket to buy, or lunch appointment to keep. It is an opportunity to practice seeing, in Smith's words "you can look from a seated position in the comfort of your own home or office cubicle, for as long as you want, without being jostled or blocked by other art lovers. At the same time the chance to look closely at paintings, especially as made things, really to study the way artists construct an image on a flat surface, is amazing, and great practice for looking at actual works."

Google's Art Project is a unique opportunity to explore major works of art throughout the world in an instant. This virtual experience is a part of a continuum of image reproduction that reaches larger audiences. Traditionally in the form of "art books, as postcards, posters, and art-history-lecture-slides," Google's Art Project is the next step in this access to information. Seen exactly for what it is, Art Project is an exciting innovation and incredibly powerful tool accessible to anyone free of charge. Maybe modern technology won't be the death of painting after all.

3 Feb - Noah Fisher: Tentacle Erotica

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Our opening tonight will feature an exquisite watercolor on paper by Noah Fisher (image right) based on an 1814 Japanese woodcut The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife by Japanese artist Hokusai (pictured left). It is the most famous woodcut Hokusai ever produced and is in the style of "shunga," a form of erotic art.

Japanese scholar Danielle Talerico describes that The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife illustrates the legend of Princess Tamatori, a shell diver who marries a man searching for a pearl stolen from his family by Ryūjin, the dragon god of the sea. Tamatori vows to help her husband and dives down to Ryūjin's undersea palace. There she is pursued by the god and his army of sea creatures, including octopi. She cuts open her own breast and places the jewel inside; this allows her to swim faster and escape, but she dies from her wound soon after reaching the surface.

Popular throughout Japan, the story and its imagery are the subject of works by artists including Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Yanagawa Shigenobu (above left), Japanese-American artist Masami Teraoka (above right) - even Picasso did a version in 1903. This tale is also considered the precursor to "tentacle erotica," a common thread in late 20th century and contemporary Japanese animation and manga. Fisher is in a long and fascinating tradition of re-imaging this potent and darkly beguiling legend.

2 February - Art and Dopamine

LAUNCHPROJECTS - In Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer argues that art is a critical path to knowledge. Through the lives and discoveries of Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stavinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Wolf, Lehrer highlights that "it is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will even know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness."

The Modern era was one of artistic struggle and hard-won innovation. It was a time when "the public wasn't used to free-verse poems or abstract paintings or plotless novels. Art was supposed to be pretty or entertaining, preferably both.... but the Modernists refused to give us what we wanted. In a move of stunning arrogance and ambition, they tried to invent fictions that told the truth." Throughout this fascinating book Lehrer cites examples of avant-garde artists forging the way to "truth" far before science and research caught up to their groundbreaking discoveries.

Lehrer describes in his chapter on Igor Stravinsky the initial public reaction to The Rite of Spring. Its "remorseless originality" incited a full-blown audience riot. Throughout the chapter Lehrer examines the neuroscience of this anger and hostility towards new sound, yet how ultimately it came to be manifestly adored (in 1940 it was included in Walt Disney's Fantastia). After a long discussion of dopamine, neurons, nerves, and our coticofugal system, we learn that that dopamine (the chemical source of our most intense emotions) is released only when our brainstem finds something amiss - a pattern broken, an unexpected sound. Although our survival instincts tell us to stick only to what we know, without dopamine we would feel no intense emotions, have no powerful reactions. Our lives would be lackluster, "all we would be left with would be a shell of easy consonance, the polite drivel of perfectly predictable music."

Dopamine's demand for experiential upheaval sheds new light on the critical importance of innovation in the arts. New art creates fury and hostility in audiences. Artistic breakthroughs can threaten belief systems people hold dear to their understanding of the art world and how it functions. I now understand, however, both the physiological desire for the status quo and our atavistic need for variation. "Works like The Rite jolt us out of this complacency. They literally keep us open-minded. If not for the difficult avant-garde, we would worship nothing but we already know...What separated Stravinsky from his rioting audience that night was his belief in the limitless possibilities of the mind. (The Right) is the sound of art changing the brain." Or as New York Times art critic Holland Carter wrote “confusion is demanding, but it’s a form of freedom, and it can be habit forming.”

The next time someone angrily tells me what "isn't art" I now have the mind-stretching drug dopamine on my side. I love neuroscience.

30 Jan - In Memory of Dennis Oppenheim

LAUNCHPROJECTS- Dennis Oppenheim, Conceptual artists, pioneer of earthworks and body art who made "made emphatically tangible installations and public sculptures that veered between the demonically chaotic and the cheerfully Pop," died on Friday in Manhattan of liver cancer. He was 72.*

We met him just once at Alanna Heiss' home at a dinner for James Franco after an opening at Heiss' latest venture since P.S.1, Art on Air. Oppenheim was clowning around in Heiss' bedroom in front of one of his works of art. He was charming and silly - almost giddy - and befriended us immediately upon learning of our mutual friend in Santa Fe, Thomas Ashcraft. Sitting in the room with such an iconic and fascinating artist who challenged so many notions and definitions of art throughout the decades I had to keep reminding myself that this accessible prankster was THE Dennis Oppenheim. His work can be tough to pin down and describe, so I will use the words of Roberta Smith for the New York Times:

"Many works involved moving parts, casts of animals (whole or partial), upturned or tilted building silhouettes and sound, water and fireworks, which on occasion prompted unscheduled visits by the fire department....He first became known for works in which, like an environmentally inclined Marcel Duchamp, using engineers' stakes and photographs, he simply designated parts of the urban landscape as artworks. Then, in step with artists like Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria and Lawrence Weiner, he began making temporary outdoor sculptures, soon to be known as land art or earthworks.

...Mr. Oppenheim's art-making could seem simultaneously driven and lackadaisical, fearless and opportunistic. Few of his contemporaries worked in a broader range of mediums or methods, or seemed to borrow so much from so many other artists. His career might almost be defined as a series of sidelong glances at the doings of artists like Vito Acconci, Mr. Smithson, Bruce Nauman, Alice Aycock (to whom he was married in the early 1980s) and Claes Oldenburg."

Oppenheim stands out for his impact and wholly original - often inconceivably rigorous - works of art in an era of artists who continually challenged the definitions and status quo of the traditional art world. He was one of the greats.

IMAGES: Oppenheim, "Device to Root Out Evil in Canada" 1991, Oppenheim at Heiss house (in front of his piece), 2010.

*Quote also from Roberta Smith, New York Times

27 Jan - William Burroughs: A Man Within

LAUNCHPROJECTS - I just returned from the documentary William Burroughs: A Man Within at the Center for Contemporary Arts. Having read and appreciated Burrough's writing, I knew just enough about his life to admire him as both literary and cultural icon. I had no idea that among other things he was the gun-obsessed grandfather of the punk rock movement.

The film includes interviews such notable rebels as John Waters, Laurie Anderson, Peter Weller, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Gus Van Sant, and Sonic Youth (just to name a few) and explores how the Harvard educated heir to the Burroughs’ adding machine estate struggled throughout his life with addiction, companionship, and tragedy. One of the stunning revelations in the film is that in an altered state and quite young Burroughs accidentally shot his wife in the head in Mexico City while demonstrating his "William Tell Act". To add to his wife's death, his son Billy died of acute alcoholism at the age of 33 in an effort to gain the approval and attention of his otherwise occupied father.

Larger than life, Burroughs took every drug available and was addicted to "junk" most of his life. He was also a pioneer of the queer and drug culture in the 1950s and was unquestionably a literary genius. In an article for Drone Magazine, an unattributed writer states that "Burroughs was a man who still continues to defy categorisation, in his work, personal traits, lifestyle and aesthetic. It’s this point that makes him -- to this day -- the most dangerous cultural figure of the last hundred years (if not longer)".

Burroughs once stated “what can seem negative can become valuable for a writer." He found inspiration in that dark side - addiction, death, guns, anarchy. He was the poster boy for the tortured genius and it is no wonder the likes of Kurt Cobian, Frances Bacon, Andy Warhol, and Patty Smith held him so dear. Burroughs also opened the door for experimental writing, homosexuality, and the awareness of drug addiction in the United States. Burroughs changed US laws on censorship with the publication of Naked Lunch and inspired an entirely new genre of musical expression - punk. In all of his danger, edge, and iconoclasm, Burroughs effectively paved the way to a more open cultural space in the politically conservative climate of 1950's America.

"You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live." - William Burroughs

Images: William Burroughs with Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol, on the shooting range.

24 January - Ruscha and Truitt on art

LAUNCHPROJECTS - In her journal Turn, Anne Truitt travels to Europe to experience first-hand the masterpieces that she had for 62 years seen only in reproduction. Her descriptions reveal a perception that extends far beyond what most people experience when looking at art of any type, let alone masterpieces that have been reproduced to the point of cliched posters used to decorate college dorm rooms. Truitt experiences a profound synesthesia of sorts, and through her descriptions I felt as though I was experiencing each picture anew through her acuity and perception. Truitt's description of simply entering the Louvre for the first time is astounding, "screams of terror overlaid by screams for blood echoed through corridors dimensionless as those in nightmares, ironically lined with art of such authority that I stood as much aghast as dazzled."

Truitt goes on to describe Van Gogh, Monet, and Manet: "Van Gogh's insight is relentless. No matter what the literal subject matter of his paintings, their content, implicit in brushstroke and color, is the interpretation of good and evil rendered transcendent by way of his art... Monet's utter mastery of atmosphere is akin to my own preoccupation with color as a form of an imminent truth otherwise inaccessible. He achieves it stroke by stroke; I attempt to catch it by way of superimposed films of inflected color. Manet's Le Dejuner sur l'Herbe and Olympia are shocking paintings. I felt my bones shake."

I could transcribe half her book to include her descriptions of Delacroix, Cezanne, Gericault, Gauguin, Giotto, Piero, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Rubins, and more. My mind was engrossed in her descriptions, wondering if she were unique in her ability to see and perceive artwork in a wholly original and heart-wrenching way when I came across Ed Ruscha's recent description of his ongoing experience with John Everett Millais' Ophelia:

"I first saw Millais' Ophelia (1851-1852) when I came to the UK in 1961, and was struck by its originality. It's hard to explain what I first saw in it, but it was a moving picture to me and so realistically painted. I guess I had a fondness for all sorts of Pre-Raphaelite images back then, a feeling which subsequently passed, but the nature of this painting stayed with me. It holds true today as one of the most profound paintings of that period.

At first I didn't delve too much into the story and the symbolism behind it. I viewed it strictly as a picture - how it was composed and so on - but later I learned that it had been studied and analysed by so many people, which made it even more interesting. Every little blade of grass and plant has been botanically identified. Someone has discovered almost exactly where Millais set up his easel by the river. Some believe there is a skull hidden in the painting (just to the left of the forget-me-nots on the righthand side). The painting itself is like an embellishment of the Ophelia story in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The fact that she was portrayed as a mad woman during Millais' time was, I guess, considered unsuitable subject matter. You did not paint mad people. However, when I look at the woman in the water there, I don't see a mad woman. I see a tragic woman.

I would never realise that this painting would affect me the way it did. Ophelia became a trigger in my art; an inspiration for what I'm doing. You notice here you are looking at the woman from an oblique angle - in a sense, it's an aerial view. The diagonal of Ophelia in the water is an aspect that was made for my work. My study of art and much that came out of it is ordered on that thinking that you look at something almost as if it were a table-top arrangement, as you can find in Ophelia. I regard a lot of my paintings and even photographs (such as Thirtyfour Parking Lots, 1967) as off-springs of this painting. For example, Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire, painted from 1965 to 1968, has a similar angle to that of Ophelia - looking down on it from above. Also, the tragic circumstances of a situation in my painting are told, I think, in a very bucolic and pastoral way, just as they are in Millais' picture.

The composition of Ophelia is very simple, and yet so complex for what it is saying. And it evolves right into my thinking. When I make a picture that might resemble it, I'm not doing it on purpose. It's just happened from years ago seeing Millais' image. I don't get this response from any other of his paintings that I've seen, but with this one he hit the nail on the head.

Of course, my pictures and Ophelia are very different in intent and content. They are worlds apart in so many ways: Ophelia is in the grand tradition of English painting, and the story goes back to Shakespeare, whereas Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire goes back to 1968 and, you could say, is the culmination of commercial America. But pictorially they are connected. They are like brother and sister. I feel as if there is a little silver thread between that painting and mine. So maybe the years between the works are not that distant.

In some ways I think that I am looking at myself when I am looking at Ophelia. So each time I come to London I feel an obligation to see it, but it is an obligation I feel good about."

I am inspired by the way Ruscha and Truitt look at and describe art, by the way pictures affect them profoundly - to the core of their art making practices. This perception is extraordinary and changes the way art history functions within the contemporary dialog. Masterpieces come back to life through their contemporary progeny, contemporary works disclose predecessors that no curator or art historian might detect. What a different course students of art history might take if it were taught through the lens of those who incorporate the lessons and works of the past into their innovations of the future.

Pictured: John Everett Millais Ophelia, 1851-1852; Ed Ruscha Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire, 1968

21 January - Anne Truitt, TURN

LAUNCHPROJECTS - I am in the process of reading Anne Truitt's book Turn. Captivated with her work since I encountered First years ago (pictured above, left), I have since wanted to know more about the woman who made these pared down, elegant, powerful sculptures. Turn is a graceful journal of her thoughts and views on life, art, family, aging, and humility. I will blog more about specific sections of her writing - as with Weschler's stunning biography of Robert Irwin this is a book that I am reading slowly to take each word and insight as deliberately as it is written.

Her 5th of January, 1984 entry discusses meeting two curators from the National Gallery to discuss the cleaning of her sculpture Spume which had become dirty since it was acquired in 1972. She describes revisiting Spume after so many years, "one hundred twenty inches tall by 25 1/2 inches wide by 13 1/2 inches deep, luminescent blues and violets, it loomed over me. I straightened up to face it. In the first second of looking, I did not recognize it as my own work and only felt its presence, with an involuntary shudder. I was so taken aback that I rocked on the feet. 'What on earth - ?' were the first words that came into my mind, along with the very particular sharp tension I sometimes feel when I am making my work: as if I were being forced face to face with a mystery equally threatening and alluring."

She describes telling these "practical men with an object to deal with" that the best way to clean her sculpture is with soap and water, which took both curators aback - they were accustomed to complex problems with elaborate and expensive solutions. These important and otherwise occupied men stirred in Truitt a keen awareness that "once again my sculpture is a bother because it is large and has a delicate surface. Despite years of self-discipline, I can never entirely avoid identification with my work and when it is thought bothersome I feel as if I were myself criticized. I have thought a lot about this aspect of my work and wonder sometimes if the vulnerability of my sculptures does not combine with their size to awaken the subtle hostilities evoked when women retain innate delicacy even while asserting their existence."

So utterly in touch with her work and its deep resonance, Truitt throughout her journal epitomizes the force that exists at the intersection of confidence and vulnerability. Searingly truthful about both her wisdom and her limitations, Truitt once stated that life experiences are "the ground out of which art grows." Truitt lived a simple yet fertile and joyful existence. Her life and sculpture bring to mind a quote that Truitt's peer Louise Nevelson stated in a lecture in 1980. "True strength is delicate."