The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

George Lindemann Journal - "A Sculpture King Meets the Sun King" @wsj by Mara Hoberman

'The Entry of Apollo,' a Jean-Michel Othoniel fountain-sculpture, awaits transport to its outdoor Versailles location. Philippe Chancel

A building that once housed the pharmacy of French King Louis XIV has recently brimmed with activity again—this time, involving blown-glass orbs, steel pipes and curious nozzles. Since January, the Paris-based sculptor Jean-Michel Othoniel has turned this vaulted chamber on the periphery of Versailles' grounds into his makeshift studio.

When the artist finishes installing the three resulting fountain-sculptures later this summer, they will become the first new permanent artworks in the palace's gardens in more than 300 years.

Since 2008 Versailles, the lavish regal complex about 18 miles west of central Paris, has held temporary art exhibitions inside its 17th-century gilded ballrooms and manicured gardens. These shows have featured contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami. Mr. Othoniel's commission—part of the total renovation of a garden originally designed by the famed royal landscaper André Le Nôtre —is meant to stand the test of time.

"As an artist, and a French artist in particular, there is something very special about making a mark on the land that Le Nôtre and Louis XIV designed," Mr. Othoniel said of his fountain-sculptures, made of about 2,000 bowling ball-sized gilded glass spheres.

Photos: The Making of the New Fountains at Versailles

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Paris-based sculptor Jean-Michel Othoniel's three fountain sculptures will become the first new permanent artworks in the palace's gardens in more than 300 years. Philippe Chancel

The genesis of the work, titled "Beautiful Dances," dates to 2011, when the artist was invited by landscape architect Louis Benech to collaborate on a proposal for a Versailles-sponsored competition to reimagine the Water Theater Grove. It has been closed to the public since suffering severe storm damage in 1990.

The entry from Messrs. Benech and Othoniel—the only one to include contemporary artwork—won in 2012 over 21 other international submissions.

Some preservationists flinch at the idea of contemporary art becoming a permanent feature of a historic landmark. But Versailles President Catherine Pégard says that "Versailles was always a place for creativity and creation." Louis XIV, she added, "surrounded himself with the greatest artists of his time, and we are continuing that tradition today."

No stranger to monumental art projects, Mr. Othoniel is best known for his bauble-decorated entrance to a Paris subway station near the Louvre Museum. In 2000 he gave a garland of glass ornaments to the fountains of the Alhambra complex in Granada, Spain. Since 2003 six of his giant glass necklaces, like permanent strings of Mardi Gras beads, have adorned an oak tree at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

What the final artwork will look like. Othoniel Studio

At Versailles, Mr. Othoniel says, he felt a responsibility to "enter into a dialogue with the past." He extensively researched Louis XIV's interest in dance. The Sun King, it turns out, got his nickname from his balletic interpretation, at age 14, of Apollo. Mr. Othoniel's studies led him to discover a rare book of notations devised to help the king study Baroque dance steps. Originally published in 1701, these diagrams are the basis for the fountains' arabesque forms, which are meant to evoke the king and queen dancing on water.

"Beautiful Dances" is also linked to the past through its materials and manufacture. Louis XIV brought Venetian artisans to Versailles to fabricate the famous hall of mirrors. Similarly, Mr. Othoniel joined with a traditional glassblowing workshop in Murano—Venice's island of glass artisans—to create four blue orbs that will mark the locations of fountains in Le Nôtre's original garden design.

To match the particular form and intensity of the water jets in Versailles' existing fountains, Mr. Othoniel joined with hydraulic engineers to custom fabricate 17th-century-style nozzles. "I am dialoguing with history," he said, "but also creating a contemporary discourse that will become the next chapter in the history of a legendary location."

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann "Oliver Payne and Nick Relph: ‘Ash’s Stash’" @nytimes by Karen Rosenburg

An installation view of “Ash’s Stash” at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, with shelves of formerly trendy gadgets and accessories. Credit Courtesy the artists and Thomas Müller/Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York

“Today everything is always ‘on’ at once, simultaneously forever — we’ve simply run out of past,” the British duo of Oliver Payne and Nick Relph write in a statement for their latest show at Gavin Brown. There, boutique-style shelves hold small, colorful assemblages of formerly trendy gadgets and accessories, among them, Reebok pump sneakers, Sony Walkman cassette players and one forlorn-looking Macintosh Classic computer with a protruding floppy disk.

The whole installation is itself a “reissue”; it dates from a booth at the 2007 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. And the artists have restaged it because they found it oddly predictive of the current trend for sharing carefully chosen photographs of our bookshelves and closets on social media. As they cleverly put it, “Cupboards become catwalks, and possessions pose for the camera, waiting to be liked.”

The cheeky little displays here do look as if they had been made for that exchange, with their high-low, tasteful-kitschy juxtapositions; witness the gilded cat that seems to be “driving” a black-and-gold sneaker, with a Confederate flag pin serving as a hood ornament, or the bottle of Chateau Latour that sports a chunky white digital wristwatch. (The many wine bottles tucked into sneakers may balance out all the expired tech and fashion with suggestions of increasing value.) The assemblages also make an interesting complement to Jeff Koons’s boxed Hoovers at the Whitney — which implies that to “run out of past” is not exactly a new phenomenon of the Instagram age. In fact, it sounds a lot like postmodernism. 

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann "‘Displayed’ at the Anton Kern Gallery" @nytimes by Anton Kern   

When you exhibit a work of art, there are two things going on. There’s the object and there’s the presentational apparatus, which might be a frame, a pedestal, a shelf or a vitrine. Also involved are the gallery architecture, the structure of the exhibiting institution and, in the broadest terms, the art world social system. Usually, viewers are supposed to focus on the object and take for granted the apparatus.

In these postmodern times, however, many artists — from Joseph Beuys to Jeff Koons and Carol Bove — have made the displaying part an object in its own right. Organized by the artist and curator Matthew Higgs, this excellent show at Anton Kern Gallery presents works by 18 artists exemplifying a trend he calls “displayism.”

A ramshackle stage set with the artist’s signature — Josh Smith — scrawled in paint on its canvas backdrop implies that the object is the absent artist himself. An installation by Nancy Shaver resembling part of a flea market consists of materials from an antiques store she operates in Hudson, N.Y., called Henry. It includes old things like balustrade knobs and a chain made of bottle caps, with price tags attached, that viewers can purchase mostly for under $20.

Funky sculptural works by B. Wurtz — cobbled from odd pieces of wood, wire and metal cans — display things like white tube socks and plastic bags. A lovely, Walker Evans-like series of photographs of New York sidewalk newsstands from 1994, by Moyra Davey, turns a familiar type of public display into a kind of vernacular art form.

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Striving for Grand-Scale Intimacy" @wsj by Lee Rosenbaum

The Clark Center and reflecting pool. Tucker Bair

Williamstown, Mass.

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, with verdant outdoor vistas complementing the lush Impressionist landscapes in its galleries, has always had nature and culture on its side. Now it's aiming for stature—not just in the rural Northern Berkshires, but internationally, while keeping its special allure as a rustic retreat. In this it has largely succeeded, thanks to a discreet addition and sensitive delicate restorations of its existing buildings and grounds that make them seem familiar yet greatly enhanced.

"We're the Berkshire Bilbao," the Clark's director, Michael Conforti, repeatedly proclaimed during opening events for his museum's thorough renovation and 42,600-square-foot expansion. While the new glass, concrete and stone Clark Center bears no resemblance to Frank Gehry's flashy titanium tourist magnet, the elegant new pavilion designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando does boast an outdoor "wow" feature—a three-tiered, one-acre reflecting pool, jointly designed by Mr. Ando and landscape architect Gary Hilderbrand.

The pool is flanked by an expansive patio where anyone—not just admission-paying art lovers—can picnic at the Clark's tables while contemplating the glistening water flowing over a bed of smooth stones (accompanied, during a recent visit, by the loud mating calls of tree frogs). The outdoor amenities are part of Mr. Conforti's plan "to embrace the specialness of the landscape," enticing out-of-town visitors, not just locals, to use the Clark's 140 acres as a public park for hiking, cross-country skiing and just relaxing peacefully in an idyllic setting.

The most pressing drivers for the 15-year (and still unfinished) capital project were the need to upgrade the museum's antiquated infrastructure and the desire to expand its special exhibition program. Following the collecting interests of founders Sterling and Francine Clark, the temporary shows rarely ventured in scope beyond the U.S. and Europe, or into the modern era. "We needed larger-scale spaces to show 20th-century art," Mr. Conforti said.

The new galleries are suitable for ambitious traveling exhibitions, organized not only by the Clark (as in the past), but also by major U.S. and foreign institutions. First up is a loan by the Shanghai Museum of some 33 masterworks, now on view, from its incomparable collection of ancient Chinese ritual bronzes. They are installed in a 3,000-square-foot, flexibly configured glass-walled space, which in the future will sometimes be used for conferences or events.

But the overriding question raised by the $145-million project is: Why risk compromising the sense of intimacy and historic resonance that give treasure troves like the Clark (and several other recently expanded mansionlike museums) their unique allure? The original Daniel Perry-designed neoclassical evocation of an ancient white-marble Greek temple seemed architecturally fusty when it opened in 1955, yet visitors have always been charmed by its homelike interior.

That sense of intimacy was disrupted in 1973 by the forbidding, Brutalist architecture of Pietro Belluschi's addition—an incompatible bedfellow to the original building's well-mannered domesticity. The visitors' entrance migrated from the Perry to the Belluschi and now to a distant cousin who speaks a completely different architectural language: Japanese minimalism.

Largely sheathed in glass, Mr. Ando's self-effacing, two-story addition (65% of which is hidden underground), not only defers to the stronger personalities of its two neighbors, but also helps unify the campus via the water feature. Uniting the disparate elements more problematically is Mr. Ando's monumental "7 Wall," named for its angled shape. It traverses much of the campus, including the long walkway from the Clark Center to Mr. Ando's 2,000-square-foot glass museum pavilion, opening into the Perry building's new front entrance (which had originally been the rear). This new orientation allows views spanning the entire campus.

But the wall frequently interposes itself between visitors and the expansive landscape, not only from within the new Clark Center, but also from its outdoor patio. Alternately withholding and partially revealing views (a traditional Japanese design strategy), it is intended to heighten visual perception. Here, it feels like oppressive manipulation.

Thanks to Mr. Conforti's strong suggestion that the architect use red granite for the "7 Wall" instead of Mr. Ando's signature material—silky smooth concrete—the barrier helps to visually harmonize the site's architectural cacophony. The rough, deeply hued, richly veined stone came from the same quarry as the exterior of the Belluschi building.

"I was thinking hard about whether to use stone or not for that wall," Mr. Ando said through an interpreter. "I had a blackout: It was a very difficult question. Finally, I felt the past has to be respected. Now I'm very happy that I chose the stone." Mr. Ando's Clark-commissioned 2008 conservation and exhibition outpost, a short hike up nearby Stone Hill, consists of concrete and wood, and also features a "7 Wall."

The new building's three interconnected special-exhibition galleries are generously proportioned (totaling 8,000 square feet, with 14-foot-high ceilings) but underground and oddly shaped—two are tapered at one end. In an attempt to dispel the gloom, Mr. Ando has inserted two windows in the far wall, adjacent to a cavity that admits shafts of sunlight from above. The first test of these galleries will occur on Aug. 2, with the opening of an exhibition of American and European abstract paintings from 1950-1975, loaned by Washington's National Gallery of Art. Its headliner is Jackson Pollock's 1950 "Lavender Mist."

Lavender also figures in the one jarring misstep of New York architect Annabelle Selldorf's otherwise subtle, satisfying renovation and reconfiguration of the Clark's original building: She used that unconventional wall color (described by her as "mauve") for the museum's central, most popular space—the large gallery where its Renoirs and Monets are arrayed. Intended by Ms. Selldorf to complement those paintings' predominant blues and greens, the purple haze irritatingly clashes and upstages.

Also sabotaging the room's appeal was senior curator Richard Rand's decision to banish its familiar centerpiece—Edgar Degas's "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen"—to a much smaller, less prominent gallery. Arguably the Clark's signature object, it has been supplanted by five Rodin sculptures, intended by Mr. Rand to "toughen up" the Impressionist gallery's display. But they also block sightlines to the surrounding paintings, much more than the ballerina. This was one place where dramatic intervention was uncalled for.

Under Ms. Selldorf's auspices, the nearly 60-year-old walls of the original building were stripped to the studs. New lighting and environmental controls were installed; long corridors were subdivided; room sizes were adjusted. A 2,200-square-foot space for American art was created in former back-of-house areas. This is now the first gallery encountered by visitors to the permanent collection and features the Clark's celebrated Winslow Homer seascapes and recently donated George Inness landscapes.

As part of the sweeping makeover, Mr. Hilderbrand substantially redesigned, protected and enhanced the Clark's "natural assets"—plantings, trails, wetlands. Together with Gensler's executive architect Maddy Burke-Vigeland he has emphasized sustainability and green design, aiming for LEED Silver certification.

More changes are yet to come: The Clark's 1973 building (renamed the Manton Research Center, home to the Clark's extensive art-history library) is still undergoing extensive renovation. Originally intended to open with the rest of the project, the Manton's makeover will include a spacious public reading room in its entrance courtyard, a study center for works on paper and galleries for British and American art. The grounds may soon be enlivened by contemporary artists' interventions: Janet Cardiff, Jenny Holzer, Thomas Schütte and James Turrell have been consulted as possible participants.

Still up in the air, though, is the question of ice hockey. Recreational skaters will be encouraged to glide across the reflecting pool this winter. But while Mr. Conforti said his plans do not include sticks and pucks, Mr. Hilderbrand let slip that he had, in fact, designed "batter boards for hockey."

It may be, then, that the Clark will not always live up to its reputation as a quiet retreat.

Ms. Rosenbaum writes on art and museums for the Journal and blogs as CultureGrrl at www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl.

George Lindemann Journal

George Lindemann Journal - "MOCA mum on move rumors" @miamiherald By Hannah Sampson and Jordan Levin

Is the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami preparing to shed the “North Miami” from its name?

The Art Newspaper reported Thursday that the museum might be moving, and cited unnamed sources who said MOCA could potentially merge with the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach.

Thursday afternoon, MOCA interim director Alex Gartenfeld would only say that the board is “thinking very deeply about what the future of MOCA might hold.” But he said such conversations have been going on for years and there was no new urgency to those talks.

“There have been longstanding discussions and rumors about the relationship between our institutional mission and our location,” he said.

Rumors of a potential move, however vague, angered one prominent Miami collector who has donated several works to MOCA.

Rosa de la Cruz said she and husband Carlos were upset because in her mind, moving the museum would be akin to closing it — and merging with another museum would be the same as giving the collection away.

“I gave work to that museum,” de la Cruz said. “I didn’t give works to the Bass Museum.”

Although de la Cruz would not say where she heard the rumor, she said she was disappointed that no one from the board reached out to her directly.

“I think the collectors and the people that gave and the artists that gave work to that museum should have at least been informed and asked for advice,” she said. “It would have been a little more elegant, I think.”

Co-chairs of the museum’s board of trustees, Irma Braman and Ray Ellen Yarkin, declined to comment.

The rumors follow a period of change for the institution, which is partially funded by North Miami. Longtime director and chief curator Bonnie Clearwater announced her departure in July to take the same position at Nova Southeastern University’s Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale.

A year earlier, the museum suffered a blow to its plans for an expansion that would have tripled its space when voters in North Miami rejected a $15 million city bond issue to fund the project.

When Clearwater announced that she was leaving, she said the city and board were looking at all options and “being very creative.”

“The museum’s reputation is really not tied to the building,” she said at the time. “It’s where we built our reputation.”

Gartenfeld pointed to that comment in an interview Thursday. He said a robust exhibition program has already been announced through early 2015, and daily educational activities and regular public programs are continuing.

“The worry that MOCA will go away, that’s not something that’s going to happen,” he said.

The Art Newspaper’s story took city officials in North Miami by surprise.

“I cannot answer to rumors that they are leaving because I have not been formally informed,” Mayor Lucie Tondreau said Thursday.

Although city manager Stephen Johnson was slated to meet Friday with the museum’s board, that meeting was scheduled several weeks ago to discuss the appointment of a permanent executive director, city spokeswoman Pam Solomon said.

Tucked between city hall and the police department, MOCA is the centerpiece of downtown North Miami and the city’s emphasis on arts and culture; it had been allocated $982,000 in the city’s 2014 preliminary budget.

“Absolutely MOCA is an important part of our arts and culture,” said Solomon.

At the Bass Museum of Art, executive director Silvia Karman Cubiñá was not available to comment.

In an emailed statement, the president of the board of directors, George Lindemann, said in part: “The Bass Museum welcomes collaborations with institutions in Miami and from around the world....We are continually evaluating opportunities for these collaborations so as to strengthen our programming and widen our audiences.”

Reached by phone, he declined to talk about any arrangement with MOCA.

Gartenfeld also avoided specifics, saying: “I can’t comment on probabilities and things like that. It’s too much speculation.”

He said the museum already collaborates with other institutions in South Florida, highlighting the recently formed Miami Art Museums Alliance.

George Lindemann Journal

The Liam Gillick and Louise Lawler show at Casey Kaplan.

By KAREN ROSENBERG

Published: November 21, 2013

525 West 21st Street, Chelsea

Through Dec. 21

In their first collaboration, Liam Gillick and Louise Lawler stay within their comfort zones but manage to nudge us out of ours. Their familiar methods of institutional critique (photographic in Ms. Lawler’s case, sculptural for Mr. Gillick) combine to form a dynamic, disorienting installation.

Mr. Gillick’s contribution is a text piece composed of cutout aluminum sentences, which hang from the ceiling in neat rows and lure readers deeper and deeper into the gallery. Gradually, it reveals a vague and halting narrative about workers at a defunct factory (the Volvo plant in Kalmar, Sweden, as the news release tells us).

Ms. Lawler contributes a striking background, a long vinyl wall sticker that links the three rooms of the gallery. The image printed on it is a stretched-out version of some of her earlier photographs of artworks in bland white-box settings; here, pieces by Degas, Richard Serra and Gerhard Richter, among others, are distorted beyond recognition.

The collaborative ethos of the show, the references to the socialist history of Volvo production, the relentless conveyor belt of the installation and the content of Ms. Lawler’s photographs (individual artworks by top-selling male artists, blended into a single seamless strip) all signal discomfort with the rah-rah capitalism of the current art market. But no alternatives are proposed, and the installation leaves us with a haunting vision of a factory in limbo. As Mr. Gillick’s text puts it, “No one has secured the building, and no one has wrecked it either.”

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George Lindemann Journal

BERLIN—Police near Stuttgart took possession of artwork in a local residence on Saturday connected to Cornelius Gurlitt, the man at the center of an investigation into a cache of lost, Nazi-confiscated art, a police spokesman said.

According to photos and a report first published in the Sunday edition of German newspaper Bild, authorities collected 22 artworks wrapped in old newspapers, Bubble Wrap and duct tape and placed them into the back of a police car.

A huge cache of modern art found in the apartment of an elderly Munich man is in the hands of German officials - but what they are going to do with it is up in the air. Via WSJ's global news update The Foreign Bureau.

Nikolaus Fräßle, Mr. Gurlitt's brother-in-law, lives in the house, according to the paper. Mr. Fräßle, the widower of Mr. Gurilitt's deceased sister, didn't return calls to his house in the southern German town of Kornwestheim.

Police near Stuttgart took possession of artwork in a local residence connected to Cornelius Gurlitt, the man at the center of an investigation into a cache of lost, Nazi-confiscated art. Mary Lane reports. Photo: AP.

A police spokesman in Kornwestheim confirmed on Sunday that pictures in connection with the Gurlitt case were taken from a residence in the town but wouldn't say how many or from whom.

Mr. Fräßle contacted the police himself to ask them to come pick up the art because he was concerned about security, Bild reported.

The 1,400 works of art seized by German prosecutors from Mr. Gurlitt's Munich apartment in early 2012, a discovery made public last week, are believed to have been collected by his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt.

Augsburg prosecutors have declined to release a full list of the works in the trove, but among them are works on paper by Pablo Picasso, and works of unidentified material by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Auguste Rodin. Also found in the younger Mr. Gurlitt's apartment was an oil painting of a girl by Henri Matisse that was known to have been taken by the Nazis from prominent Paris art dealer Paul Rosenberg.

The senior Mr. Gurlitt, now deceased, was a leading art dealer for the Nazis and was known to have sold Nazi-confiscated works labeled as "degenerate" by Adolf Hitler. Many so-called degenerate works are known to have been taken from Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis.

Write to Mary M. Lane at mary.lane@wsj.com