Look, See

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The GIF Show, again

A week ago I wrote about not seeing The GIF Show. In that post I copied and pasted from the gallery's hours from the gallery's web site" "WED - SAT 2:00pm - 6:00pm."

So I was thinking of running over today to see the show, and wanted to call ahead to make sure the gallery would be open, but now the hours have been changed. It now says:
WED - THU 3:00pm - 6:00pm
FRI - SAT from 9:00pm
by appointment by calling (415) 756-8825.

Are they making this up as they go along?

So now I've got a three hour window on two midweek afternoons, and apparently endless time after 9pm on Friday and Saturday, when this gallery adopts its "Wine & Sake Bar/Lounge" persona, which of course is the perfect time to get a clear view of the art.

Aargh, I may have to settle for curator Marisa Olsen's del.ico.us page that links to most of the pieces in the show.

Top right: Guthrie Lonergan, Non-stop Icon Marathon!

Bottom left: Olia Lialina, accordiol.gif

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Painting the Digital River

I am just getting into Painting the Digital River : How an Artist Learned to Love the Computer by James Faure Walker. I'm not at a point where I have a lot to say about the book, but I think it will be of interest to anyone who looks at this weblog; who likes, painting, or used to like painting, or now hates painting because it's old and obsolete; who is interested in the question of the death of painting; who is interested in new media; who is looking for another medium; who wants to understand how painted-like image making can move beyond the easel; who wants to figure out how computers do and don't change approaches to image making; who is wondering if painting has a life; who wonders about the intersection of painting and digital images; who is wondering what the future of image making might be; who... whatever.

From Walker's bio at the Digital Art Museum (I'd never heard of this online museum before):

James Faure Walker (UK) b 1948 was a founder of Artscribe magazine in 1976 and editor for eight years. His writings have also appeared in Wired, Studio International, Modern Painters, Mute, Computer Generated Imaging, Art Review, and in catalogues for the Tate, Barbican, Siggraph, and Computerkunst. He is Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art at Kingston University; in 2002 he won a major AHRB fellowship for research into painting and the digital studio.

From Amazon:

This book is about art, written from an artist's point of view. It also is about computers, written from the perspective of a painter who uses them. Painting the Digital River is James Faure Walker's personal odyssey from the traditional art scene to fresh horizons, from hand to digital painting--and sometimes back again. It is a literate and witty attempt to make sense of the introduction of computer tools into the creation of art, to understand the issues and the fuss, to appreciate the people involved and the work they produce, to know the promise of the new media, as well as the risks. Following his own winding path, Faure Walker tells of learning to paint with the computer, of misunderstandings across the art and science divide, of software limitations, of conversations between the mainstream and digital art worlds, of emerging genres of digital painting, of the medieval digital, of a different role for drawing. As a painter and computer enthusiast, the author recognizes the marvels of digital paint as well as anyone. But he also challenges the assumption that digital somehow means different. The questions he raises matter to artists of every background, style, and disposition, and the answers should reward anyone seeking insight into contemporary art.

Calder at SFMoMA

The Surreal Calder at SFMoMA until May 21, 2006 fills four large galleries, plus another gallery at the entry to the exhibition which sets the context by inlcuding works by Ernst, Miro, Giacometti, Picasso and others. The museum site says:

Living and working in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, Alexander Calder was naturally influenced by the burgeoning surrealist movement, and some of its most prominent voices — including Joan Miró, André Breton, and Jean Arp — became his close friends and associates. In recent decades, however, Calder’s relationship with Surrealism has been all but forgotten. Presenting rarely seen pieces from the Calder Foundation as well as a sampling of works by Calder’s surrealist peers, this exhibition recasts the artist and his work in their original context. The resulting showcase highlights the wit, inventiveness, and improvisation at the heart of Calder’s art and rooted in the legacy of Surrealism.

Before reading the statement above I had three words in mind to describe what I saw, and they're in that paragraph above: wit, inventiveness, and improvisation. It's amazing just how much fun Calder can be, how surprising, and how visually dazzling. His work is really about seeing, physicality, balancing, directness. While the work here certainly comes out of the Surrealist milieu, it really feels that the meaning of this work extends far beyond that time, unlike many of the real Surrealists. As Kenneth Baker wrote in his SF Chronicle review:

Even at his darkest, Calder toys with the sort of nightmare and spookiness that fascinated the Surrealists rather than wringing terrors from them...

"The Surreal Calder" emphasizes the cosmic visionary aspect of Calder's art, one of the most remarkable qualities shared by toylike constructions such as "Constellation" (1943) and darker, more congested pieces such as "Black Frame" (1934). Several works, such as "Croisière" (1931) and "Parasite" (1945), suggest solar system models or star maps. They hint that at an unconscious level, a planetary perspective always threatens to invade, or liberate, our most intimate vantage on things.

Nestled in among all the larger works, and the wire, the primary colors, the hunks of wood, in the smallest of the galleries, is a painting, a vertical rectangle perhaps 30 x 24 inches. It is untitield, oil on canvas, dated 1930. All washy gray, it has nothing more than a line that starts in black at the bottom left heading up diagonally across and makes a big loop while turning to white and then back to black before exiting the near the top right corner. Because platforms for the sculptures abut the wall the viewer can't closer than three or four feet to the painting. But it caught my eye.

The paint is darker at the top and thins out slightly towards the bottom. The line appears to be drawn in charcoal, and the white part of the line might have been made simply by scratching through to the white ground. It's a painting that may have taken no more than ten minutes to make. But it's a beautiful, simple little thing, colorless, open, with a line in space that transitions as the eye follows it. Everything feels about it feels just so, a moment suspended, everything fitted together, no fussing. And it was contained with a hand-made frame made with what looked like 2 x 2 inches stock wood painted white, abutted not mitred.

Of course I can't find a picture of it, so here's a crude approximation of it I made:

After Alexander Calder (Original: Untitled, 1930, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, ca. 30 x 24 inches), 2006, JPEG (made in Photoshop), 460 x 358 pixels