"Concrete Ideas" in @wsj

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Archipicture At Das Parkhotel in Ottensheim, Austria, guests sleep on beds inside industrial-size pipes. Concrete or its byproducts make up almost a fifth of the waste in the world's landfills.

Concrete often gets a bum rap as the material of choice for drab factories and brutal, anonymous housing complexes. But it's actually quite versatile, used in everything from the monumental Pantheon of ancient Rome to Frank Lloyd Wright's elegant Fallingwater house. In any event, there is no escaping it. About 265 billion cubic feet of concrete are produced annually—that comes out to about 35 cubic feet for every person on the planet.

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Ichiro Sugioka

"Concrete," edited by William Hall ($49.95, Phaidon Press), explores the many forms that this mixture of crushed rock, cement, sand and water can take. Yes, concrete can be cold and imposing—but as the 175 structures in the book attest, it can also be colorful, playful and delicate.

A version of this article appeared September 1, 2012, on page C12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: ConcreteIdeas.

"Artist Focus: Barry McGee: Street Art Steals A Berkeley Show" in @wsj

By RACHEL WOLFF

In the vein of pioneering New York street artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barry McGee got his start spray-painting San Francisco walls in the 1980s with "Wild Style" graffiti and cartoony faces. His work quickly grew to include sculptures, immersive installations and elaborate murals, painted both in and out of doors.

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Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive - Barry McGee's 'Untitled,' acrylic on glass bottles from 2005.

Like many of today's street artists and unlike Basquiat, whose work set an auction record in June with a $20 million sale at Christie's, Mr. McGee, 46, is formally trained. He earned his BFA in 1991 at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he specialized in painting and printmaking but found himself drawn to the street rather than to more traditional galleries. Mr. McGee—who is represented by Cheim & Read in New York—and his ilk have made street art more complex while finding homes for it with private collectors willing to pay from $25,000 to $500,000 for a new installation.

In the past decade, mainstream museums have embraced this generation of artists too. Tate Modern commissioned a handful of street artists (including the Brazilian duo Os Gêmeos) to make massive murals on its exterior walls in 2008; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles hosted a major survey dedicated to the movement in 2011, in which Mr. McGee's work was featured prominently.

"Barry McGee," the first comprehensive look at his career, opened Friday at the University of California's Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) and remains on view through Dec. 9. In April, the show travels to the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

Street-Art Standouts

[image]Christies Images Ltd. 2012

A Keith Haring ink on vinyl tarpaulin piece executed in 1982 that sold for $2,840,000, more than double the estimate.

[image]Christies Images Ltd 2012

An acrylic by street artist Kaws, the alias of artist Brian Donnelly.

Mr. McGee is widely admired for his ability to create in-gallery environments that evoke the street, and insisting that museum exhibitions include an outdoor display. "There is a tension in artists between wanting to exhibit our work in galleries and wanting to make work that defies that same system and maintains our sense of being individuals," says John O'Connor, an artist and visiting assistant professor in the fine arts department of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Mr. McGee's approach has inspired unknown graffiti writers, MFA hopefuls, and younger New York street artists like Swoon. The wider art world embraced his aesthetic, and he was exhibiting his work regularly by the mid-1990s, often enlisting friends and collaborators (including his late wife and fellow street artist Margaret Kilgallen) to aid in his large-scale installations and make contributions of their own. He has shown everywhere from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco to the Prada Foundation in Milan.

The Berkeley show features dozens of framed drawings, prints and bright Op-art-like abstractions clustered tightly on gallery walls; little-seen early etchings; and murals bearing his signature "'toons"—expressive, often droopy faces with deep-set eyes and heavy lids inspired, in part, by the homeless population in San Francisco's Mission District. There's also a sculpture of five hoodie-clad animatronic kids stacked on each other's shoulders as the top one tags a gallery wall with the word "Amaze."

As part of his usual effort to bring his art outside, Mr. McGee has also spray-painted "Amaze" in a graffiti-like scrawl on panel that sheaths the museum's exterior facade. "The parts of graffiti I like are really antagonizing still—it's not something that a museum would really embrace," he says. "And even if they let me do it, I like to make it look like it's done illegally to some degree."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577605410129516228.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

"Eye Candy or Eyesore?: Work by Niki de Saint Phalle and Bruce High Quality Foundation" in @nytimes

Julia Gillard for The New York Times
An installation by Charles Long at Madison Square Park. More Photos »

By KEN JOHNSON
Published: August 23, 2012

Public art makes me think of what the Conceptualist Douglas Huebler once said: “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” That may be a funny thing for an artist to say, but if you live in a place as densely packed with objects of all kinds as New York City, you may appreciate its wisdom. Nevertheless, for better or worse, temporary public art displays pop up all over the city during the warm seasons in hopes of adding beauty and zest to the urban fabric.


Julia Gillard for The New York Times

Outdoor Sculpture One of nine installations by Niki de Saint Phalle on traffic islands from 52nd to 60th Streets on Park Avenue features a stout tree whose branches have morphed into gold heads of lively snakes.


Julia Gillard for The New York Times
John Chamberlain’s sculpture on the plaza of the Seagram Building on Park Avenue.

A stretch of Park Avenue is one place where the necessity of public art comes into question right now. There a series of monumental, bulbous figures clad in colorful mosaic tiles by Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) punctuates the traffic islands from 52nd to 60th Streets. Dating from 1983 to 2001, they include simplified but recognizable portraits of Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, as well as a number of renditions of curvy, knob-headed female beauties and a stout tree whose branches have morphed into gold heads of lively snakes.

Back in the ’60s, when Ms. de Saint Phalle was developing her aesthetic, figures like these had a goofy, liberationist vibe. But the works here seem woefully outdated, more tacky than visionary.

As a counterpoint to Ms. de Saint Phalle’s strenuously playful works, a quartet of abstract metal sculptures by John Chamberlain occupies the plaza of the Seagram Building, on Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Made from 2008 to 2010, they are unlike the Abstract Expressionist conglomerations of automobile body parts he was known for.

Mainly they consist of tubular elements, made of crushed sheet metal, that resemble elongated elephant legs bound together into knotlike configurations. They were copied from small maquettes that Mr. Chamberlain created by molding aluminum foil with his hands. Colored metallic green, copper and silver, they are weird hybrids of beauty and ugliness. Here on the Seagram Building’s porch, they call to mind the old dismissive label for abstract sculpture on corporate plazas: “plop art.”

As chance would have it, there is a piece of outdoor sculpture in the same neighborhood representing the opposite of the beautifying imperative. Installed on the plaza of Lever House, it is a giant rat, one of those balloons that labor union strikers often bring with them to represent masters of the capitalist universe, but here cast in bronze by the team of young artist-provocateurs known as the Bruce High Quality Foundation. In a poetically just world, it would be permanently installed on Wall Street within waving distance of the raging bull.

The rat, titled “The New Colossus,” accompanies an exhibition of the group’s works in the glassed-in lobby of Lever House. It consists of real objects, like mops in buckets, vacuum cleaners, a step ladder and office furniture, scattered about the space. Each has an audio speaker built into it that is connected by radio to a video montage on a flat screen called “Art History With Labor: 95 Theses.” Different professional actors’ voices enunciating texts about art and labor emanate from the speakers, as if these objects associated with daily work had themselves become animated, like ventriloquists’ dummies, by unionizing passions.

I wonder what the denizens of this zone of corporate business and super-expensive domiciles think about the Bruces’ agitprop? It is hard to imagine many of them being aroused to revolutionary fervor. Still, the incongruity itself is refreshing. In this respect it is worth noting that the Lever House art program is privately sponsored, with the former Whitney Museum of American Art curator Richard Marshall organizing its exhibitions. It is rare to find such baldly partisan expression as the Bruces’ in outdoor art sponsored by public institutions. Offense is so easily taken, especially if taxpayer money is involved.

A more circumspect approach to political art can be found in two pieces included in “Common Ground,” a 10-artist exhibition in City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, organized by the Public Art Fund. “It’s Never Too Late to Say Sorry,” by the team Elmgreen & Dragset, consists of a glass case displaying a gleaming aluminum megaphone. The case is locked, but a descriptive label explains that once a day a performer will open it and “activate” the piece. No actor showed up while I was there, but in an online video of the sculpture’s debut in Rotterdam you get to see a man unlock the case, take out the megaphone, hold it to his mouth and cry out, “It is never too late to say, ‘Sorry!’,” whereupon he returns the bullhorn to its case and walks away.

Placed across the park’s circular central plaza is Amalia Pica’s “Now, Speak!,” a podium cast in concrete that seems to invite people to step up and say whatever is on their minds. Otherwise implacably silent, it shares with Elmgreen & Dragset’s piece a funereal feeling. Both could be memorials to the loss of a widely shared and well-developed public discourse.

As Martha Schwendener observed in her review in The New York Times, other works in “Common Ground” exemplify the distinctive language of high-end contemporary art. Paul McCarthy’s colossal inflated ketchup bottle; Christian Jankowski’s plaque announcing the burial of his remains somewhere in the park; Justin Matherly’s rough re-creation of a part of the Ancient Roman sculpture “Laocoön and His Sons,” elevated on a platoon of aluminum walkers: these as well as works by Matthew Day Jackson, Thomas Schütte and Jenny Holzer speak in tongues likely to be as mystifying to the public as they are familiar to people conversant in the polyglot lingo of today’s art world.

There is another, more democratic — utopian, even — rationale for presenting this sort of art to the public. It might interrupt the usual flow of collective consciousness, diverting minds from routine compliance with the banal order of things and opening up ordinarily hidden vistas of imaginative vision.

A more viewer-friendly example of that approach is an installation called “Pet Sounds” by the sculptor Charles Long at Madison Square Park in Manhattan. The main elements are large, cheerfully colored fiberglass blobs resembling extraterrestrial or subaquatic life forms as imagined by the makers of “Ghostbusters.”

Some stand on their own; one sits on a park bench; another sprawls on a picnic table. All are connected to swerving hand railings that create winding pathways for visitors. A close encounter with any of the blobs reveals that each is equipped with a small speaker that emits futuristic electronic noises. A kind of surrealistic petting zoo with a nod to the Beach Boys, Mr. Long’s creation requires little esoteric knowledge to enjoy. Its generosity of spirit is infectious.

Although very different in style from Mr. Long’s sculpture, works by Oscar Tuazon in Brooklyn Bridge Park also aim to tweak everyday consciousness. “People,” the most complex of three pieces there, consists of a poured concrete handball wall with a tall dead tree attached to one vertical edge and an old basketball hoop and backboard attached to a truncated branch. Placed near a chain-link fence setting parkland off from an adjacent construction site, it looks less like art than like an ad hoc construction waiting to be broken down and carted away by a demolition crew. Another production of the Public Art Fund, it reflects a considerable uncertainty about who it wants its public to be.

You might suppose that the High Line would be a good site for outdoor art. Thus far, however, the park’s public art program has done little to distinguish itself. This summer’s effort, called “Lilliput,” sounds like a good idea. Organized by Cecilia Alemani, the High Line’s art curator, it presents small-scale sculptures by six artists distributed in inconspicuous places to either side of the main walkway.

Only one piece creates the sort of surprise you would hope for: Tomoaki Suzuki’s “Carson,” a startlingly realistic, two-foot-tall portrait of a young man with bleached hair wearing tight black jeans and a black motorcycle jacket. Made of carved and painted wood, this miniature hipster stands nonchalantly on gravel between old steel train rails, oblivious to the giant tourists who gawk at him or stop to pose next to him for snapshots.

Nothing else in “Lilliput” has such a galvanizing relationship to its environment. Though mildly appealing, Francis Upritchard’s Rodinesque pair of bronze simian creatures and Oliver Laric’s colorfully striped cast resin portrait of Sun Tzu with two faces like the Roman god Janus, would be seen to better advantage in an indoor gallery.

The High Line public art program faces an unusual challenge. The site is almost a mile and a half long but mostly no wider than a one-way street, and grass and other plantings take up a lot of that space. Because of its popularity, it is pretty congested in nice weather. With vendors selling drinks and snacks, as well, and so much nonart to see in different directions near and far and up and down, there is almost too much going on. Does the High Line need art on top of all that? I’m not convinced that it does.

Site Specific

 

BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION: ‘ART HISTORY WITH LABOR’ Through Sept. 28. Lever House, 390 Park Avenue, at 53rd Street; leverhouseartcollection.com.

‘COMMON GROUND’ Through Nov. 30. City Hall Park, between Broadway and Park Row, Lower Manhattan; publicartfund.org/commonground.

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Through Nov. 16. Seagram Building, 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets; gagosian.com.

‘LILLIPUT’ Through April 14. The High Line, six sculptures between 30th and Gansevoort Streets and 10th and 11th Avenues, Manhattan; thehighline.org.

CHARLES LONG: ‘PET SOUNDS’ Through Sept. 9. Madison Square Park, 23rd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues; madisonsquarepark.org/art.

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE ON PARK AVENUE Through Nov. 15. Park Avenue between 52nd and 60th Streets; nikidesaintphalle.org.

OSCAR TUAZON: ‘PEOPLE’ Through April 26. Brooklyn Bridge Park; entrance at Old Fulton and Furman Streets, Dumbo. publicartfund.org/oscartuazon.

 

A version of this review appeared in print on August 24, 2012, on page C21 of the New York edition with the headline: Eye Candy or Eyesore?.

"Franz West, Influential Sculptor, Dies at 65" in @nytimes


Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
“The Ego and the Id,” installed at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park in 2004.

By
Published: July 26, 2012

Franz West, an influential Austrian sculptor with a penchant for art objects that were willfully unserious, nonideological and accessible and were displayed in Central Park and on the plaza at Lincoln Center, as well as in international exhibitions and blue-chip galleries around the world, died on Wednesday in Vienna. He was 65.His death was announced by the Franz West Foundation. He had been ill for some time.

Mr. West’s work ranged from collages to furniture to large, colorful public sculptures. It consistently embodied a kind of friendly iconoclasm in which form and function were pitted against each other, and the notion of artwork as an autonomous object was frequently undermined. His homely, rough-surfaced materials, like plaster or papier-mâché, sometimes doused with color, challenged accepted taste.

His efforts contributed equally to two of contemporary art’s most persistent trends: the interactive, collaboration-prone art of relational aesthetics and the cobbled-together assemblage-like objects called bricolage. He was also known for large, irreverent sculptures, like those shown in Manhattan in 2004 whose cartoonish, sausagelike shapes and patchwork surfaces, made of lacquered aluminum, parodied the usual decorum of abstract public art.

Mr. West, who represented Austria at the 1990 Venice Biennale, was less a strikingly original artist who changed the course of art than an astute synthesizer and incisive adjuster. He operated on a parallel course to contemporary art, commenting and satirizing, creating a vast multimedia universe that fomented an active mingling of painting, sculpture, collage, furniture and even works (most of which he owned) by the artists he admired.

But his work was also steeped in various figurative and avant-garde traditions of postwar European art. Its DNA included the elongated, encrusted figures of Giacometti, the plaster-coated paintings of Jean Fautrier, the reliclike sculptures of Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth’s objects made of chocolate and other decaying foodstuffs, and the polymorphous formal wit of the painter Sigmar Polke.

Mr. West was born on Feb. 16, 1947, in Vienna. His father was a coal dealer, his mother a dentist who took her son with her on art-viewing trips to Italy. Mr. West was unclear about his aims in life and sometimes said he started making art “mostly to calm my mother, who was fed up that I did nothing.”

He started making crude drawings around 1970 before moving on to painted collages incorporating magazine images that showed the influence of Pop Art. He was also attracted to newsprint as a material both to paint on and to moisten and form into tentative objects.

By then he was familiar with the work of the Vienna Actionists, whose provocative performances involving masturbation, self-mutilation and dead animals dominated the Viennese art scene of the 1960s. He once said that he had his first taste of the movement when he heard the screams of his mother’s dental patients from her office next door to the family’s apartment.

He deliberately sidestepped Actionism’s physical ordeals and existential intensity. Instead he emphasized a benign, relaxed lightness.

Among his first known efforts were pieces that he called Passtücke, or Adaptives: eccentric white objects formed of plaster or papier-mâché and sometimes rebar that he began making in 1974, three years before he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he studied until 1982. There he executed the first of his “wall arrangements,” installations in which he combined his work with that of his fellow students.

The Adaptives, Mr. West’s primary work into the early 1980s, executed a neat, low-key truce between performance and art object. Sometimes incorporating parts of chairs and other found objects, they reflected his early admiration for the all-white paintings and reliefs of Robert Ryman and Piero Manzoni. The difference was that Mr. West’s works were intended to be held, carried or worn by the viewer, and they were often part of larger events.  

Writing about the Adaptives in 1989 in The New York Times on the occasion of Mr. West’s first exhibition in the United States, at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Michael Brenson noted that they were “meant to be placed over the face, worn around the waist or held in the crook of the neck,” adding that “they leave the wearer looking both protected and trapped.”

Much of Mr. West’s later work developed from ideas implicit in the Adaptives. He sometimes invited other artists to apply paint or collage to their white surfaces. Soon he was adding color himself to pieces that were too large to handle, and which he therefore called “legitimate sculptures.”

These evolved into considerably larger painted papier-mâché and cardboard works whose fragmentary shapes and distressed surfaces had an ancient mien, as if they had survived the vicissitudes of time. They were succeeded by larger, hilariously bulbous, vibrantly colored papier-mâché pieces.

In the early 1980s he started expanding on the possibilities of the found furniture incorporated into some of the Adaptives, making spindly chairs and divans out of rebar that parodied elegant furniture while being quite elegant and surprisingly comfortable themselves. This development led in turn to increasingly ambitious installations that combined furniture, sculpture, paintings and, frequently, works by other artists.

A large presentation consisting of row upon row of divans, covered with Oriental rugs, suggestive of a theater without a stage and titled “Auditorium,” was one of the biggest hits of the 1992 Documenta in Kassel, Germany. A variation called “Test and Rest” was later installed on the roof of the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea.

In the late 1990s, Mr. West turned to the immense lacquered aluminum pieces, the first (and several after) inspired by the forms of Viennese sausages, as well as the shapes of the Adaptives. With their hot monochrome colors and irregular patchwork surfaces, these works were immensely appealing and also meant for sitting and lying. They both confirmed and belied Mr. West’s contention that “it doesn’t matter what the art looks like but how it’s used.”

Mr. West’s first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Tamuna Sirbiladze, a painter; their children, Emily Anouk West and Lazaré Otto West; and his sister, Anne Gutjahr.  

via nytimes.com