visual art

Hey!

The (Seattle) Stranger's Jen Graves, a viz arts journalist I admire a lot (she does visual arts podcasts!), has been posting an "Impressionist Fact of the Day" in honor of the Seattle Art Museum's pretty, pretty Impressionist show.

Interjection: The Impressionist paintings have so much lustre now that people forget, or rather never are taught unless they major in art history or something, how radical and hostile to the establishment were the Impressionists. Yeah, they're pretty paintings. They're also about a dramatically shifting time, prostitution, the horrors of a newly razed and re-boulevarded Paris, the Industrial Revolution and so much more. But more on that some other time.

Point is, I commented on her post yesterday. And she kindly reposted my comment along with a call for help. My comment was a bit ... um ... sarcastic. Though not entirely. (I like in the post how Jen calls me "an arts journalist in Oregon" — I'm thinking Eugene is off the radar for the Slog readers?) Anyway, here's me:

The UO’s museum (Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art) is opening a show called “Faster, High, Farther: The Spirit of Track-and-Field Sports,” and I don’t think there’s a single book or piece of information about running or javelin-ing that I want to convey to the overwhelmed-with-Olympic-Trials-trivia Eugene public. But if you know of any good sporty art history books, I guess I could give it a try.

Nobody has suggested anything yet. Ya got anything, viz arts readers? Frankly, I think of Leni Riefenstahl. Which, to quote my new BFF Buffy, gives me the wiggins.

(Speaking of the J-Schnitz, I interviewed the new director for this week's paper. Also, Chuck reviewed "Faster, Higher, Farther" and other Trials-related art last week. Go, read, enjoy.)

Meanwhile: Sports in art history? Anyone got books for me?

Just clicked on the NYT website to see the headline, "Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82."

Here is the full article (4 pages online!) from the NYT. I don't know enough about RR to say a whole lot other than Black Mountain, Jasper Johns, combines, creative, smart, inspirational, genius, etc. But there are so many people who have said it so much better than I. At Bloomberg, an appreciation.

One of my faves of his is Bed, to the left. I love that since he was too poor to buy canvas, he used his quilt. I heard from art history profs, but again it wasn't my research area, that the quilt was furthermore from the bed where he slept with Johns, and so that was just as shocking or titillating to many in the art world. (Teh gay!)

And here's a nice blog post arguing against the dismissal of a wide swath of the country (Rauschenberg came from a small town in Texas) by coastal folks. Well, NY and LA folks. Oregon's just as much flyover country to them as Texas, Iowa, or Utah.

Here's a YouTube video in which the man himself discusses the famous Erased de Kooning:

R.I.P., Robert Rauschenberg.

Hey y'all!

To the great chagrin of everyone else running around finishing up the largest paper in the EW history (sorry, guys! I'll bring Portland treats ... ), I'm up in Portland at the Oregon Arts Commission conference — excuse me, Arts Summit.

In the breakout session I'm in right now, talking about facilities and capital campaigns and all of that, there are about 21 people, including lots of arts org folks in Portland but also Craig Willis from the Leebrick, Karen Marie Pavelec from Maude Kerns and Riley Grannan from the Eugene Ballet Company.

Also, I'm hearing stories of people from Roseburg, Klamath Falls, Gresham, Hillsboro and Vail. Vail! Where the heck is that? Wait ... it's Vale!

View Vale Map Grannan knows where it is because the Ballet used to be a Boise/Eugene collaboration, and Vale's kind of on its way (check out the map).

I love the Internet. Now there's discussion of how to "brand" arts organizations. This normally makes me insane (witness my reaction to the Oregon Bach Festival's new branding thingie that involves a certain EEEEVIL corporation), but these folks are helping me understand how it gets money out of donors. Hey, even the donors in the room are talking about it.

More on this later. I know Mary Unruh of DIVA is in another room, and this morning, Frances Bronet, dean of the UO School of Architecture and the Allied Arts, was the keynote speaker (much more on her in a few weeks in the paper and online).

This is so cool.

At the end of last month, Chuck and I went to the the Portland Art Museum for the media opening of the new show, "The Dancer" (I'd link to a page about it, but like many things about PAM, the website is rather ... er ... well, it says it's getting a revamping; I'd be real happy to check back soon and see it easier to use [not that we should talk, I know].)

So point is, "The Dancer" has the aura of a blockbuster, or at least a show that the museum director might hope would be one. What's a blockbuster? This blog entry from The Guardian explains:

The word blockbuster comes from the second world war: a massive bomb designed to destroy entire swaths of city at a time. In the 50s it started to be used about plays; in the 70s, the era of Star Wars, people began to talk about blockbuster movies. The blockbuster also hit art.

Hunh. I've been to many a blockbuster in this and other countries. Now apparently the concept of shoving as many people as possible through an exhibit, especially an exhibit that has little scholarly backing but a lot of popular appeal (i.e. anything, anything at all, related to the Impressionists, Picasso, Matisse, etc, mostly the French painters), is fading.

So complex. Museums can't live on grants alone, nor on the shaky generosity of a donor list. So they need to bring people in; also, it's nice and democratic, in some ways, to have huge, exciting shows that show people familiar painters or other artists in new ways (or even if not in new ways, show them at all in a new location where people haven't had a chance to see the actual paintings before). But lord, i hate being crushed through the galleries. When I was an art history grad student, I heard tales of my mentors getting to see and sometimes touch the work (usually sculptures and paintings) on which they wrote and worked. I longed for that. But I didn't want to get a Ph.D. in art history from the (particularly annoying) program I was in, so I gave it up. Being a journalist means I get to see (and sometimes touch) artworks at times away from the madding crowd. Nice, but undemocratic of me. So if the blockbuster really is retreating in favor of "more unexpected, perhaps more scholarly shows," I'm kind of happy and kind of worried. I don't want museums to be inaccessible.

BTW, that at the top there is, you know, a Claude Monet (Twilight, Venice from 1870). And he's really a freakin' genius even if a bit, oh, just a tad bit, overexposed. For a while I thought he was the biggest blockbuster draw of all time, but as time marches on, I think Picasso and Matisse are passing him. More on that when I'm not quite as sleepy as I am right now.

So, there's lots of art in Los Angeles, or so I hear. Would like to go there, myself, if they had better public transportation.

And catching up on art podcasts last night while trying to polish, post-Oscars, a freelance story, I heard the Art-a-Go-Go peeps discussing the new Brode Contemporary Art Museum of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

They hated Chris Burden's new work outside the museum, Urban Light (some nice pics here).

I believe the Art-a-Go-Go people (who, well, I don't know who they are; Kathleen and Doug, who are you?) have a good background in art and art history (Kathleen mentions her art history classes and teaching). A couple of the things they said about the Burden piece:

Maybe you have to be there, but it was hideous.

It's crap. I know all art is art, but ... I don't know, I haven't seen it.

Um, I haven't seen it either. Still, I kinda like the restored lamppost idea. And I think it's hilarious to say how "crap" it is without having been there.

Here's a Seattle Times article on the new building, and here is the NY Times' review of it, along with some discussion of the controversy surrounding the building (and here is the Times' article on that).

In any case, if you want to see the artwork, this is a super Flickr set.

What do you think of this sculpture? Is it crap?

BTW, "Broad" is Elil Broad ("brode"), and the freaking awesome Guerrilla Girls took on Broad and his collecting policies in their inimitable fashion. (I wish they'd take on The New Yorker for its worship of John Currin, Jeff Koons, etc. Heck, they probably have, and I just don't know it, being on the left coast and all.)