23 March - Richard Prince + Appropriation

LAUNCHPROJECTS - On Friday, March 18 2011, U.S. District Court judge Deborah A. Batts ruled that Richard Prince infringed upon the copyright of photographer Patrick Cariou when he appropriated 41 photographs from Cariou's book of photographs of Rastafarians in Jamaica titled Yes Rasta (PowerHouse Books, 2000). Prince altered these images for the exhibition Canal Zone at Gagosian Gallery in New York City.

Judge Batts rejected Prince’s argument that the images were appropriated for “higher artistic use,” noted that allowing copyright to be infringed solely on this claim would in practical terms eliminate copyright protection altogether. The court further found that Prince's motive in copying Cariou's photographs was primarily commercial, citing the fulsome proceeds from the exhibition, described in court documents: Prince made 29 "Canal Zone" artworks, with all but one including imagery from Yes Rasta. Gagosian sold eight of the works for a total of $10,480,000, with the gallery taking 40 percent of the proceeds. Seven more "Canal Zone" paintings were exchanged for unspecified artworks, valued between $6,000,000 and $8,000,000. Almost $7,000 worth of catalogues were sold.

Batts further ruled that Prince showed "bad faith" when he appropriated the images without attempting to license them properly and also found Gagosian Gallery liable for Prince's infringements, on the grounds that the gallery should have ensured that Prince had the rights to the material he used before the gallery offered the items for sale. Prince and Gagosian were ordered to cease exhibiting and promoting the series, and in an intriguing addition ordered that collectors of any "Canal Zone" paintings are not lawfully allowed to display the pieces they purchased. What a bizarre position for a collector to be in – surely there will be backlash for that judgment.

Charlie Finch of Artnet wrote a fantastic and ironic piece addressing Cariou's search for justice, Prince's effortless (lazy?) successes, and how Finch imagines this ruling to play out (in Prince's favor, of course):

“Having a judge as an interpreter of the meaning of art remains Kafkaesque: we can trot out the entire oeuvre of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and a thousand other artists as violators of Judge Batts' standard. But what of photographer Cariou? Is he not an artist, as well? There is undeniable schadenfreude in seeing Prince suffer, notably when his "Canal Zone" show was one of his laziest (but wasn't that the point?) and a best seller at high retail price points. Indeed, Judge Batts decreed that, absent a stay for an appeal from the defendants, Prince's work from the series and the tools used to make it should be obliterated in some way in the next 10 days, with those paintings already sold forbidden from being (literally) hung on the walls. Presumably, Cariou will have to go after their owners specifically.

Rough justice might demand that Cariou himself do the destruction and that Prince photograph the process and produce a new, very ironic series that would sell for tens of millions apiece. But this proposal enters a metaphysical plain of justice and recompense apparently beyond the scope of the law.”

15 March - How We Can Help

LAUNCHPROJECTS - I find myself at a loss for words as I watch in horror the unfolding catastrophe in Japan. The following is a list compiled by backpacker.com of known legitimate organizations helping the countries hurt by the earthquake and tsunami that occurred on March 11, 2011. CNN has also published an article on how you can help. To all of those who have been affected, you are in our thoughts and hearts.

“In charity there is no excess.” – Sir Francis Bacon

Red Cross: United States Residents – Calling +1-800-RED-CROSS for donation options. Text “Red Cross” to 90999. A $10 donation will be added to your cell phone bill. American Red Cross Online Donations.

Salvation Army: United States Residents - You can call +1-800-SAL-ARMY for donation options. Text “Japan” or “Quake” to 80888 to make a $10 donation. A one-time donation will appear on your cell phone bill. Respond “YES” to the thank you message you receive. Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Services

Save The Children: Online Donation

GlobalGiving.org: This project will disburse funds to organizations providing relief and emergency services to victims of the earthquake and tsunami. GlobalGiving is working with International Medical Corps, Save the Children, and other organizations on the ground. United States Residents – Text JAPAN to 5055. A $10 donation will be added to your cell phone bill. Online Donation

Convoy Of Hope: United States Residents – Text TSUNAMI to 50555. A $10 donation will be added to your cell phone bill. Online Donation

World Relief Corp: World Relief has been in communication with our partners in these countries including our alliance partner in Japan, the Japanese Evangelical Association, who is monitoring the damage there. United States Residents – Text WAVE to 50555. Online Donation

World Vision: Providing support to children and their families. Online Donation

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF): Has two three-person teams attempting to get to the worst-hit areas in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. Online Donation

ShelterBox: Humanitarian response to the disaster began immediately and a three-person ShelterBox Response Team is already en route to Japan. Online Donation

7 March - B-Girl Bouillabaisse

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Art in its most authentic form can manifest spontaneously. Seemingly out of nowhere and with a galvanizing effect on contemporary culture, the case at hand occurred on a Staten Island Ferry with a formally ballet-dancer-gone-rogue. This story is the perfect kick-off to Thursday's opening at LAUNCHPROJECTS with artist / fashion collaborative Tete de Veau. The night will include performance art, post-war reel-to-reel audio, haute couture, and live models in gowns of reclaimed camping materials and fur...

The New York Times Magazine featured an article yesterday on Anne Marsen, an early 20-something dancer who grew up in a competitive ballet school in New Jersey. As described by Paul Tough of the New York Times, Anne was still recovering from a high-anxiety childhood and "the ever-accelerating pressure to be the best and skinniest and en pointe-iest girl in class. Since dropping out of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia a year earlier, she had gone rogue, dance-wise, taking three or four classes a day from studios all over New York City — jazz, modern, tap, salsa, flamenco, belly-dancing, break- dancing, West African, pole dancing, capoeira — borrowing gestures and movements and boiling them all down into her own unique B-girl bouillabaisse."

Her world collided with that of Jason Krupnick, who was hired to create a promotional video with dancers for footware. He posted an ad for dancers on Craigslist in exchange for slices of pizza. He was enthralled with her unique moves, used her in that video, and and six months later called her to collaborate again for a video for D.J. Girl Talk's latest album All Day, "a stew of samples lifted from 373 songs and recombined into a chaotic, propulsive mix. As Krupnick listened to the album, it struck him that Girl Talk makes music the way Anne Marsen makes dance."

Marsen danced for 71 minutes, completely improvised. She is brilliant and hysterical and "weird and joyous, popping with youth and energy. At first, Marsen looks more like an enthusiastic and slightly dorky amateur than a trained dance pro. She wears regular tennis shoes and worn gray cords and an oversize, multicolored jacket, and at one point she falls off the railing of an escalator. It’s not until a minute or so in, as she twirls and gyrates through the ferry’s upper level, staring down the camera with a sly smile on her face as sleepy commuters pretend not to notice, that you start to suspect that you’re watching something more than a little magical."

Anne and Jason are enjoying mini-celebrity status with their shared talents and their pure joy for what they do. An undeniable work of performance art, Anne is raw and talented and a thrill to watch. Even when she falls off the escalator. I will leave the words to the New York Times and the moves to Anne. Check out the Marsen Magic below - enjoy!

GIRL WALK // ALL DAY

HUMAN AFTER ALL

images: video stills by Jason Krupnick

23 Feb - The Ferus Gallery

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Last week I had the remarkable opportunity to meet Irving Blum. Internationally renown art dealer and the force behind Los Angeles' legendary Ferus Gallery, Blum was a pioneer in the promotion of the post-war artists of the 1960's on both coasts - discovering and championing artists such as Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Bell, Ken Price, Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns.

Last night I decided to watch the documentary The Cool School to learn more about the Ferus Gallery and Blum's tremendous impact both in Los Angeles and New York at that time. The Cool School uncovers and interviews virtually all of the artists, friends, collectors, and minds behind Ferus to explore how this short-lived gallery forever transformed the Los Angeles art scene. As the documentary describes, "the gallery managed to do for art in Los Angeles what the museums previously could not. Even though their modalities were as disparate as assemblage art, abstract expressionism and Pop, Ferus artists shared ideas, goals, workspaces and a lasting vision."

The concepts and motivation behind both the success and closure of Ferus is further described by Blum in a 1977 interview with Paul Cummings. Blum describes that even with the excitement and rush of Ferus' exhibitions and openings, "there just wasn’t a heck of a lot of activity. There wasn’t a lot of movement, there really wasn’t. And the awful thing about selling out there, especially at the beginning, was that there was simply no pressure. So if somebody said, well, if you told somebody the price of a painting, they would say to you, “Fine, all right, let me think about it.” You’d say, “All right.” And they would think about it for a month, or two, or three and be relatively sure that when they came back into the gallery, that thing would still be there... And virtually every time out, it was still there. So they could take as much time as they liked to consider buying whatever it was they had in their head to do. Whereas in New York, if you see something and it’s really terrific, and if you say to the dealer, “Well, let me think about it,” the dealer will generally say, “Well, certainly, take 48 hours. I have other interests, I have other people coming in to look.” And you know that that’s true. In California, it simply wasn’t true. I couldn’t say, “Look, I can only give you 24 hours.” They would laugh! They would say, “Who else would buy that, for God’s sake?” And you couldn’t answer. And they’d be right, you know".

When Cummings questioned Blum what he had learned over decades of dealing emerging and established art on both coasts, Blum responded that "if I knew then what I know now, I probably would have had other thoughts about doing the gallery business. I probably would have gone ahead and done it in any case, but at least I would have had a sounder base from which to operate. I would have known that it would have taken me six or seven years just to get even for example. That was something I had no idea of at the very beginning. And I would have understood that showing younger people or unknown people takes forever and is largely a thankless, difficult, expensive matter."

Our conversation followed the thread of both the documentary and the interview. He was extraordinarily generous and forthcoming about his experiences and his insights resonate deeply as we consider LAUNCHPROJECTS' current endeavors and what we ultimately aspire to accomplish. Blum's energy and enthusiasm for the art world continues to be contagious, his charm exhilarating. Transformation, passion, and honest examination of time and place is clearly a foundation to sustained growth and continued relevance in this capricious and mercurial world of art.

Images: Irving Blum, The Ferus Gallery Storefront, The Ferus gang, 1962. L-R, Ed Kienholz, Allen Lynch, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John Altoon

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.

WATCH IT LIVE

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