Snaps of the Fall: The Train and Lake Massawippa

A Talk in Brooklyn - Tall Tales of the Totem Pole: The Intercultural Biography of an Icon

This is a 400$ dress made by NYC based designer Lindsey Thornburg.

More importantly Aaron Glass will be giving a talk on the history of the Totem Pole as an iconic object next Sunday. Since the first European contact the totem has progressively come to symbolize Native American culture as a whole - as if it had preserved all the qualities of a culture and tradition lost. Problematizing the issue Glass will touch upon the changes the totem underwent since early colonialism and the reasons for its now cult status (in theme parks, in fashion - see image - or within more serious repatriation and heritage issues).

Glass is an anthropologist teaching material culture at the Bard Graduate Center in NYC, where he is also a museum fellow.

The talk will be given October 24th at the Observatory Room at 543 Union Street (near Nevins) in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

It's 5$ (800 times less than the dress) and will convince you how stupid the dress is too.


... Afterthoughts: Totem and Taboo

Among the many things I gathered at last night's talk: 1913 Freud publishes "Totem and Taboo", Totemism in 1960s scholarship, more totem poles went up between 1970 and 2000 than from 1870 and 1900, the white man's fur trade in the late 18th century brought new more efficient tools and glues and better brighter paints, 1937 Disney comes out with Snow White:

CNN Turkey and Jacques Villeglé

CNN, an American info channel, might have been in need of refurbishing it's image in the somewhat Middle Eastern country of Turkey (aka we are American but we don't take sides), and as a result CNN Turkey has come up this advertisement campaign with tagline ''Stories with the full background'' (found at Wooster Collective). 

I don't know if the ads aptly represent the media company's stance in the country, but I find the images to be great.

They remind me of Jacques Villeglé (Rues Desprez et Vercingétorix - “La Femme”, 1966):

Delicate messages with everyday objects: Roman Signer at the Swiss Institute

I went to New York's Swiss Institute last night for a beer tasting. Unlike yesterday's weather, art can be dry, so vernissages are accompanied by alcohol.

The Swiss Institute is showing works by Roman Signer - who's water explosions in boots (Water Boots, 1986) might be familiar - in all four areas of the space till November 13th. 

Exhibiting mainly videos, the central room offers 'art installed' seating - wooden chairs including a mechanically rocking one - to look at an assortment of videos from his past pieces. In the back room three of his films are projected, including wonderful Iceland (2008) - two ducktaped black umbrellas stumbling, pulling, flying, thrusting each other together through the country's windy grey steppe landscapes. The umbrellas' violent yet stunning dance seems to soften Sartre's "l'enfer c'est l'autre" statement, by suggesting the beauty this hell implies.

My favorite piece, however, was in the first large room. Similar to the delicate irony of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's work at the Curve with electric guitars and birds, for Piano (2010) Signer placed ping-pong balls on a grand piano's cords. Framing the instrument with two large fans, their wind-power sway the balls randomly to create subtle and unpredictable sounds. The piece is suggestive, simple and deep, and questions what cultural norms and the labels we attach to them are worth.

This is a short but worthwhile retrospective of one of Switzerland's most well known contemporary artist.

Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson Commercial: Branding the next Pabst Blue Ribbon

What beer comes after Pabst Blue Ribbon's underground cheap appeal withers? After the Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker gets a job, a vespa and a bachelor pad in Paris? Stella Artois seems to think it should: once the hipster blooms into a full grown (childfree) bobo (bohemian bourgeois), he will want Stella (and date French cute women). mon amour: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola for Stella Artois.

OK GO's (music) videos as video performance (art)

Since their treadmill choreographed music video and youtube sensation (53,000,000 views) Here It Goes Again in 2006, OK GO has achieved the tricky operation of staying cool by continuing to impress us - at least me - with their music videos' creativity and wit. So good actually, it's hard to know if the music is catchy because of the band's musical talent or because of the band's visual performances. 

Earlier this year OK GO came out with This Too Shall Pass, a 4 minute music video based on the Rube Goldberg's chain of events machine. Like Here It Goes Again the real-time unedited quality of the short, and the way everyday objects play off each other to obtain unexpected lifelike qualities gives it an undeniable awe factor. And in many ways the same exact awe factor the Swiss artist duo Fischli/Weiss went for when they created their famous The Way Things Go with teacups, tires, explosions and buckets of water in the studio/loft in 1987.

A parallel that yet again brings up the rather banal question of what gives art it's aura (see Gaga vs. Jana).

OK GO's This Too Shall Pass (2010)

The Way Things Go by Fischli/Weiss (1987)

More recently OK GO's latest music video End Love brings up the same question: a mix of time lapse and stop motion, teletubbies, tamed geese and endurance, it's worth some great thought-out video art performances - minus the boredom. In particular:
- Tuner prize recipient Martin Creed's 2008 piece Work 850, a sprint athlete running every 30 seconds between 10am and 6pm the 86-meter dash from one end of the British Tate to the other, for four months; 

- Chu Yun's This is xx (2006) shown at the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus Triennial, of a female participant sleeping in the museum/gallery space after having taken sleeping pills; 

- of course John Baldessari's iconic 1971 I am Making Art; 

- and wonderful Guido van der Werve's The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) a beautiful 9 minute stop motion film of the artist in the North Pole turning in the opposite way of the sun for 24 hours.

OK GO's End Love (2010)

Guido van der Werve The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) (extract)

Curatorial Project: Within Which All Things Exist and Move - Closing Party and Catalogue Launch

The catalogue is printed and Pop Montreal was very generous - we have beer reserves till spring.

Thanks to everyone who came to the show, the closing vernissage and/or helped with putting all the parts of the exhibit together - the art, catalogue, curating, hanging or party.  

It's been a great success and hopefully was material to challenge the spaces within which all things exist and move!

The Colours of Fall are settling in: Zen it

The month of September was very crowded, and went by way too quickly. The summer's gone, your tan never happened, the trees are already wearing their oranges, golds, bordeauxs and reds signaling their slow walk towards the death of winter, and you're thinking about Halloween costumes. Personally I feel like I missed the last rays of summer 2010 fighting with French grammar. Sounds tedious (and it is) but it remains a time warp.

Over at le Greffon they suggest a bit of Zenitude courtesy of Nam June Paik. I agree:

Zen For Film by Nam June Paik (1962-64):

The Pompidou also agrees: Autour de Zen For Film will be shown with a talk on the film tomorrow, 29th of September.

Murakami's Fall of Scandals

Takashi Murakami is an artist/designer/brand owner/billionaire and workholic. His work is based on the concept of the Tate Modern and National Gallery show "Pop Life: Art in a Material World," aka this object is a tacky, easy to make, and/or part of everyday culture, so is it art? (see past blog post). His latest venture is the design of the latest cover of Brit magazine Pop. Obviously the use of Britney Spears is 'edgy,' because, she too, is one of those ambiguous characters who is just as tacky, easily consumable but at the same time slightly auratic and controversial. So their association isn't that surprising - yet you should think it is. If anything is surprising here is the wonders done by good lighting, makeup and photoshop.

In parallel to that 'scandalous' cover, France is debating over the reasons why le Château de Versailles is presenting works by the Japanese artist, aka where is culture going? Where is the respect for the past going? etc... Like the Jeff Koons exhibition two years ago exactly, many are outraged but if things go as planned it will be a blockbuster exhibition. A scandal remains a scandal even if culture is at risk. It opens on September 14th.

NEW AGE FUN with a VINTAGE FEEL!!!

This is to American Apparel's bankruptcy, the New York Times' 20s something article and the death of the hipstamatic application:

One Goal, Two Girls: One Sound, Two Videos

One Goal, Two Girls Born the Same Day:

Aggravated beyond belief with the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics (between the plastic and simplistic versions of culture and history and the hypocritical nationalistic pride mixed in with the utopian beliefs of humanity as one although those Ralph Lauren suits sure made the Americans look a lot better than the rest of them) I promised never to watch any world event ceremony ever again.

But I did. I don't remember much of the Soccer World Cup opening, except for how annoyingly catchy Shakira and the Black Eyed Peas songs were compared to how much more talented and beautiful the South African Guitarist was (that I obviously, as well as symbolically for how the world works, don't remember the name of) but I do remember watching a video on female literacy that made me cry.

Obviously it was one of those change the world type of videos that immediately inflicts a deep feeling of guilt on any sane person by amalgamating 'african' children, poverty, dirt and destiny. But somehow in this video - by organization One Goal - that contrivedness is surpassed. It's a particularly precious, meaningful and poignant little video.  

Finally, I just put Florence and The Machine into the equation.

Florence and The Machine, Dog Days Are Over:

Arcade Fire's Nostalgia: The Past Packaged as New Age Fun with a Vintage Feel

Last month Chris Milk launched an 'interactive' video for the Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait."

While it has all the qualities to be the coolest thing on the planet - an interactive personalized trip into your childhood via multi-popup narratives (cool), google street view (super cool) and 2,335 likes on facebook (super cool and cutting-edge) - it's pretty much the visual version of the clunky nostalgia of the band's lyrics. 

If the polarized versions of the past and easy grabbing feelings of loss in their lyrics ("i don't want to work in a building downtown," "but in your dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard" or "all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall") are tolerable because of the beautiful harmonies, in Milk's video it feels like a packaged rebellion (against what? time? change? suburbia?).

The plot is simple: in the pop ups trees growing through the (bad) cities our parents have built, and a runner (you) desperately tries to find his/her childhood by running away from his/her present (adulthood).

But the generic adolescent fear of change doesn't end there, the observer/main character can even send a digital message (a digital drawing/postcard from which root-like lines grow) to his/her past self (which is actually their tour).

Overall the whole thing is totally tacky. It's suppose to feel amazing;y cool and cutting edge, but it turns out ot be a bland version of what personal memories are suppose to be. Let memories run off on their own. Like Google trying to archive all knowledge, let at least memories alone (especially when google street view never gets an address perfectly enough for the thing to work).

To make your own arcade fire memories: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

Slips instead of Bras, a Frank Capra passage into the 1930s: It Happened One Night

I saw It Happened One Night last night. I saw it on the premise that this was Hitler's favorite movie and that Claudette Colbert was French. 

Both arguments are true but slippery ones, and yet the movie is frankly quite great. It has the populist love affair mixed with the glitz and glamour of the contrived rich girl escaping rich life falls in love with handsome honest poor man, but it works. The scenario is witty, the acting actually believable. But the strongest point is the exterior settings which make the film a great medium to access the everyday (somewhat) of times past - 1930s roads, bus stops, stores, motels, farms - as well as customs - smoking, pressing clothes, hairdos and mustaches, slips instead of bras, manly high-waisted pants, print culture etc... 

Two extra details are the cherries on top: a flying machine worth Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of a half helicopter half plane makes it's entrance for the wedding scene and an actor playing a thief driver is 99% certain Doctor Phil's grandfather.

Here's an extract (with Doctor Phil's grandfather in the last second): 

Curating: Within Which All Things Exist and Move

I curated an exhibit opening at Art45. Although it opens saturday, the closing party is where things will be at: October 3rd with Pop Montreal, the artists and the catalog launch. Here's the press release:

Curated by Chloé Roubert, this exhibition juxtaposes images from Jon Rafman's Google Street View series with photographic urban shots from the 1950s onwards by Gabor Szilasi. By comparing these artistic approaches to past and current public space, the exhibit touches upon ideas of urban visuality, privacy and authorship.

Rafman will be in the forthcoming exhibit Free at the New Museum in NYC, and Szilasi is a recipient of the Governor General award whose retrospective was held at the National Gallery of Canada in 2009.

The Closing Party with catalogue launch and artists present is organized in collaboration with Art Pop of Pop Montreal, on Sunday October 3rd from 3pm to 5pm.

Art45 is open Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 5pm, or on weekdays by appointment.

Art45 - Edifice Belgo Building
372 St Catherine W. #220
Montreal, Québec
art@art45.ca

Lineups, Feeling Different and Dumping the Disc: Apple Marketing 101

Today Apple introduced the world to its redesigned iTunes symbol. Someone in their marketing department decided it was time to get rid of the CD that's hiding behind musical note. Who's uses CDs these days? Jobs doesn't.

Because I'm still not entirely over how the marketing geniuses that managed to create lineups for their new iphone came up with this boring logo, here's the totally iconic 1984 ad by Steve Hayden. 

It came out in 1984 to introduce the first Apple Macintosh personal Computer. A 'different' computer from the PC... Now people are lining up to be different. Which makes 1984 iconic and ironic.

Art + Hip Hop + Video = M.I.A vs Kanye, Who is the Most Ironic of Them All?

M.I.A's xxxo 

For an intricate dialogic discussion about what this is actually about, check the Official Youtube Comments Page

Kanye West's Power

For an intricate press review about what this is actually about, click here.

p.s. could this be intertwined in the equation? Napoleon leading the Army over the Alps (2005) by Kehinde Wiley (a work presently in the Brooklyn Museum).

Jeff Koons' penis vs. John Baldessari's brain: what does it take for the 'what is art' question to be successfully conveyed?

Curious to compare the National Gallery's Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibit to the one presented last October in the Tate Modern, I accidently ended up in Ottawa on Canada Day. Both in the UK and in Canada, Pop Life was, and remains, a blockbuster success.

If there are a few differences - particularly in Canada, the sad spacial absence marking the controversy around Richard Prince's photograph of young Brooke Shields' nude and the unnecessary addition of a room thought-out by so-called genius concept Reena Spaulings but based on a notion articulated better by others fifty years ago (see Nouveau Realist Daniel Spoerri in particular) - both exhibits are a shiny clutter of recognizable works, names, ideas, shows, things, accessories and humor by Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol's disciples (Haring, Basquiat, etc) and Andy Warhol's sons (Hirst, Koons, etc).

This success is obviously tied to the overt and cool 'contentious' issues that are embedded in the show's premise: Brillo Boxes (courtesy Warhol) and a calf in formaldehyde (courtesy Hirst) question art with an 'ironic' regard Mona Lisa incontestably can't. However how does this type of art get to be such a success when similar contentious questions have also been tackled by artists without the clunky use of their penis stuck in La Cicciolina waxed asshole (courtesy Koons)?

When I saw Pop Art at the Tate Modern, the neighboring temporary exhibition was a retrospective, John Baldessari Pure Beauty. After the bustling business and literal heat of the Pop Art rooms, John Baldessari's space was strikingly different - it was empty. Better to contemplate his thoughtful yet biting career of videos, words, canvases, collages and a final installation (see photo above) subtly questioning the nature of our contemporary human condition, the difference of public interest between both shows was a sad nod to what Pierre Bourdieu hoped for: the opening up of museums. Indeed in the 60s this French sociologist observed the exclusion of people lacking a cultural capital, and invited museums to democratize their spaces with better formulated labels, programs, visits, relaxed atmospheres, cheaper entrance fees, etc...

Ideally I'm all about this, I think art can be a powerful force to question our own assumptions on reality. Practically, though, exhibitions that are public successes seem to require the straightforward 'irony' and (at this point) boring 'controverse' of Warhol and this results in people like Jeff Koons and Cosey Fanni Tutti imposing their wet dreams to my face in the name of 'irony', 'mockery' and 'art.'

I believe in Baldessari. (the MET is opening his retrospective next October).

Nike Air Max 90 Ad: An analysis of the Shoe Collector's Core Values

After "Write the Future," Wieden and Kennedy launched a new commercial for the Nike Air Max 90 shoe in the UK. Entitled "I am the Rules" this is a one minute film of clean, concise, energized and assured images. If the symmetrical geometry of each frame and beat-based music are powerful factors to this effect, the colours are just as important: the six colours of the exclusively designed for Footlocker shoe are used throughout the ad, with black, grey and white as base, and colza, red and violet as decorative highlights.

If at first the whole thing feels like a mish-mash of rule-breaking attitude, it's unsurprisingly filled with stereotypical ideas (that sell) about tradition, innovation and respect. How are these materialized?

During the first few seconds of the clip we are introduced to the very majestic notion of time and history - somewhat of sports, but also in general with the a shadow clocking away, the iconography of kingdoms lost and of traditions forgotten (aka the projection of the colosseum). Then, skipping through a few centuries, we are facing present-time sport brands' favorite athletes - the consuming shoe collector - commanding the video with his remote control. From then on things get a little crazy, when intercutting slow motion and rapid shots of various activities paralleled with statements about defying tradition (by dancing hip hop or being a girl boxer), expectations (screaming at microphones/media) and stereotypes (wear Nike instead of suits) are presented. The guys who created hip-hip might be 60 by now and blowing up in front of media not so revolutionary (or appreciated by brands like Nike see Tiger Woods or Les Bleus), but these ideas look great. The weirdest thing is when the ad turns to illustrating how to defy prejudice via Nike shoes. They come up with two Brian Jungenian masks, a DIY time machine from Japan with flags waving and lighting fire crackers over an athlete in front of the projection of the amphitheater. 

Really defying your idea of prejudice, right?

"I AM THE RULES"

Timelessness might have begun in 1961 and take the Form of a Giraffe called Sophie

Timelessness is a reassuring concept overused particularly by fashion people to increase sales and/or indulge their own consumption - depending on the season and the year the necessity to own certain time-adapted timeless objects over other time-adapted timeless objects varies (these days the timeless things are Burberry trenches, Chloé bell bottoms, Hermès Kelly bags and Cacharel re-editions of their liberty print collections - and if they aren't timeless right now wait till next season) - yet recently I came across an object that might just be the closest thing to timelessness: Sophie la Girafe.

Yes, it only appeared in 1961, and yes, it was mostly a success in France - which, relative to the dawn of time is short and to the size of the planet small - but even after the slue of inventions in the past half century by the toy industry - that in the US alone makes 21 billion dollars a year, - Sophie remains as perfectly enjoyed in my mother's baby hands as in three-month old baby Eva Madeleine's.

After a Triennal Downtown and Biennale Midtown, a Dynasty in Paris: are young artist getting better or are institutions changing?

I went to the collaborative curatorial exhibition Dynasty by the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d'art Modern in Paris earlier this month.

I was particularly interested in seeing, what feels like, yet another manifestation of an established art institution's lust for showing work by emerging new talents - some of whom, may or may not, be the next biggest thing and some of whom, may or may not, have anything but youth to convince you their presence in these shows is legit.

With the recent Whitney Biennale and the New Museum Triennal as American examples of this fashionable trend, I was wondering how the French version would compare, and, if, in my short review for Corduroy I clearly found the Parisian version of the concept better concocted, with my visit I also started to wonder how 'new' this thirst for young new art really was?

Obviously throughout art history young age never obstructed recognition or hype, and so clearly that isn't what is new here - there are dozens of examples of artists that were recognized, revered and admired before they hit thirty - by 27 (age of his death) Basquiat had amassed quite some fortune and been honored with numerous gallery retrospectives, by the age of 24 Picasso was selling to Leo and Gertrude Stein and throwing fancy diner parties in Montmartre, and by age 29 Michelangelo had a few exploits under his belt including two chef d'oeuvres La Pietá and David (respectively done at 24 and 29) and 4 years working for the at the Medici family (which he left at age 17).

So artists can be artists before they are older than Jesus for sure, yet has something changed in the way our institutions - these large, highly profiled centers - are portraying them? Portrayed more for their emergence and youth, as much as their art and craft? In 1953, the Guggenheim Museum held an exhibition entitled "Younger European Painters" on the then new and exciting expressionist movement, in which many were over 33 - like Pierre Soulages, 34 or William Scott, 40. Unlike Dynasty, though, it seems youth wasn't what brought these painters together but rather the unity of their aesthetic - and in a way accessorily a particularly young one at the time.

A second difference seems to be the role the institutions are starting to embrace. If Basquiat was world-renowned with gallery representation and enamored collectors by his death in 1988, it was only four years later that the first museum - the Whiteny - curated a solo exhibition of his work. Could it be, then, that today our large are institutions partake in and expose a 'selection process' that once was more hidden - with gallerists, critics, a bit of time and artistic self-doubt that led certain artists to become part of a certain canon and others not as much?

My short review on Dynasty: http://www.corduroymag.com/events/a-dynasty-in-paris/

(images: All taken at Dynasty - Upper: in the Musée d'art Modern de la Ville de Paris Imaginez Maintenant by Robin Meier and Ali Momeni; Lower: in the Palais de Tokyo, a work by Julien Dubuisson entitled Visite Exterieure d'une Grotte)