Look, See

Red Horizon

Red Horizon, 2006, HTML & animated GIFs (24.6 seconds, looped & synched), 500 x 440 pixels

Red Horizon

Red Horizon, 2006, HTML & animated GIF (3.52 seconds, looped), 486 x 525 pixels

Reading

Things to read:

Out Standing in His Field: Gustave Courbet and the landscape of Modernism by Doug Harvey

For starters, landscape became Courbet’s most successful vehicle for flipping off the Man. Many of the artist’s career highlights pertained to this ongoing endeavor: his establishment of a separate, pay-per-view pavilion devoted exclusively to his own work in direct competition with the state-sponsored 1855 Salon; his increasingly explicit erotic content in unexhibited but nevertheless notorious works like The Origin of the World (Google it — you won’t be sorry); his refusal of the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1870; and his subsequent service as head of the Arts Commission for the fleeting proto-anarchist Paris Commune the following year, which ultimately led to his imprisonment and exile.

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Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper Gallery by Joan Waltemath

Is it the pleasure in seeing the experiences Walsh offers that points the way from sensation to sentient? Or is it in rendering the modernist grid as an inhabitable space that Walsh shows the end to materialism in sight?

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Thomas Nozkowski at Max Protech by Ben La Rocco

An artist today must do more than simply make things. It would be nice, of course, to churn out work and exhibit it as a pure, and therefore valid, expression of your most immediate impulses. But it is not enough, though it is important, merely to yell, “Here I am!” An artist must additionally yell, “This is what I mean!” Artists must represent something. They must stand for something beyond a success story or a market value. Tom Nozkowski does this. Through and through, his work bespeaks a faith in unadorned painting to communicate the immanent reality of a richly imagined and complex world.

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Charlene von Heyl at Friedrich Petzel Gallery by Roger White

A set of framed black and white works on paper, featuring Xeroxed images treated with spray paint, washy ink or charcoal, sheds more light on von Heyl’s paintings. If the master metaphor of postmodern abstract painting was the flatbed of the printing press, von Heyl’s work has more to do with the glass sheet of the copy machine: a transparent surface onto which disparate images can be momentarily gathered, and which the viewer necessarily encounters at one remove from their source.

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In Conversation: Karin Davie with Joan Waltemath

Davie: Well, I‘ve always been interested in (Tricia Brown's) work because of the way she dealt with the mechanics of the body, the edges and where they lie, the sense of natural gravity that she uses and defies at the same time, and how she was able to extend all of that beyond the boundary of the stage, out of the concert hall into other alternative spaces like rooftops and walls as well as gallery spaces. I try to think all of that in relation to my painting in some capacities, not just the verticality of the stripes, allowing for the paint to drip but also the physicality and the property of paint, where the form bulges, bends, twists and distorts. In some ways, I intentionally set out to use the stripe as something that everyone already knew. For some reason this was very liberating for me, and it was also a thrill seeking exercise, because I felt the stripe was so overdone and has been absorbed into the language of art. It almost has become a Pop icon in itself. I thought it had been emptied out of meaning, so if I was to take and carry it on, I have to add something else to it with some kind of representational meaning. I wanted to embody a certain image, but it wasn’t like I consciously knew what I was going to do. I felt an affinity to the form on a basic level. What I was interested in was using the body, bringing back gesture into my work, and it seemed appropriate to reduce it down to something like the stripe or the dot.

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Korean immersion in Kensington: Studio visit with John Tallman (via dgls)

"I'm attracted to minimalism -- casual, hand-made minimalism," he said. I don't put all of my thought in one work. I take five percent of it. Each thing I do I'm trying to break it apart. "

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Birnbaum v. Alberto Manguel by Robert Birnbaum (via artblog.net)

Alberto Manguel: One thing I find very worrisome in the theoretical and critical movement in the 21st century in art is that it deliberately does not acknowledge feeling—the emotional response to art.

Robert Birnbaum: Why not?

AM: I have had art critics say to me, “What you are talking about is what we feel when we look at a painting.” I don’t know where the dialogue goes from there. If we leave that aside, for me there is absolutely nothing left. I am not interested in what I can elaborate afterwards, if the first impulse is not one that is emotional. It’s impossible. So, yes, I’m very uninterested in looking at that. As a way, also, of saying this belongs to us all. This is how we used to look at art and this is how we have the right to look at art again—I like it, I don’t like. That’s where we start.

RB: In fiction, many writers will attest to the reader being the one who completes the work.

AM: Oh, yeah.

RB: And there is a way of broadening that to include all works of creation. What is a work of art without the viewer?

AM: It doesn’t exist. If I told you that I have written a novel or painted a picture and destroyed it afterwards or locked it up, I may tell you it’s the greatest thing since the Bible, but it doesn’t exist. It has no value. It has no presence; it simply doesn’t exist.

Red Horizon

Red Horizon, 2006, HTML & animated GIF (3.65 seconds, looped), 290 x 250 pixels

Red Green White

Red Green White, 2006, HTML & animated GIF (6.2 second, looped), 399 x 333 pixels

Red Pyramid

Red Pyramid, 2006, HTML & animated GIF (6 seconds, looped), 575 x 500 pixels

Radio Nova: Blê blê blê

From what I can tell this weblog was mentioned on a program called Blê blê blê on a Portuguese radio station, 98.9 in Porto. A synopsis of the program online includes the following, in Portuguese and roughly translated via Babelfish into English; the greater context is Artnews.info, at which I have a page:

Um sítio muito interessante para procurar informação sobre determinado artista contemporâneo é o Artnews. Tem pequenas biografias, criticas, reproduções e links. Tem ainda por cidade, incluindo Lisboa e Porto, listagens de galerias e museus, excelente para quem quer saber o que visitar no estrangeiro. Ao passear por lá descobri um artista muito interessante, Chris Ashley, uma das críticas começa com, “Chris Ashley é pintor mas não usa tinta”. Sim porque ele faz arte digital, usa html, em vez de óleo, o resultado é muito curioso e podem assim ter no vosso computador uma obra de arte.

A very interesting small farm to look to information on definitive artist contemporary is the Artnews. It has small biographies, it criticizes, reproductions and links. It has for city, still including Lisbon and Porto, listings of galleries and museums, excellent for who it wants to know what to visit in the foreigner. When taking a walk for I discovered an interesting artist very, Chris Ashley, one of the critical ones there starts with, "Chris Ashley is painter but it does not use ink". Yes because it makes digital art, it uses HTML, instead of oil, the result is very curious and can thus have in your computer a work of art.

Which I rewrite as:

Artnew is a very interesting place to look for information about particiular contemporary artist. It has brief biographies, criticism, images and links. It includes information about cities, including Lisbon and Port, and listings for galleries and museums, which is excellent for tourists who want to know what visit. When looking around I discovered a very interesting artist, Chris Ashley, about whom a critical piece begins, "Chris Ashley is a painter, but he doesn't use paint." Because he makes digtial art he uses HTML instead of oil; the result is very curious, and you can have a work of art on your computer.

Red Equinox (For L.- Happy Birthday)

Red Equinox (For L.- Happy Birthday), 2006, HTML & animated GIFs (20.8 seconds, looped), 394 x 394 pixels

Red Corner

Red Corner, 2006, HTML & animated GIF (3 seconds, looped), 250 x 250 pixels