Come one, come all...

Do I Make Bar Art?

What is Bar Art?
If art could talk (and maybe someday it will), Bar Art might say, "You better leave my mother outa this you cocksucker! (beer bottle smashes over bar; best friend runs over and apologizes for Bar Art; Bar Art throws-up and begins to sob; The object of Bar Arts aggression and Bar Art hug each other and continue the conversation with all misunderstandings of the past forgotten; Bar Art and the object of his former aggression appear as brothers in arms as if out of a Vietnam War movie; Other bar patrons who were admiring Bar Arts chiaroscuro effects earlier have now lost all respect for his petty tricks and leave the bar in disgust, denying the bartender of a tip; Bartender senses things have gone awry and attempts to kick out Bar Art and the former object of his aggression; Bar Art and the former object of his aggression impulsively assume the role of soldiers in a strange enemy land hemmed in by enemy forces and begin fighting their way out of the bar; Bar Art is hit in the head by a flying stool while the object of his former aggression is mercilessly beaten near the entrance by a bouncer itching for an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to disable slow, intoxicated people; Bar Art wakes up the next morning vowing to be gallery art for now on; Bar Art changes his tune by about 6p.m. that day and by 9p.m. is smashing a beer bottle over the bar calling the object of his aggression a cocksucker....)"

Sunday Jan. 8, 4-7p.m.
@Dirty Franks, 13th & Pine St.

KATHY BUTTERLY

Kathy Butterly: Slide lecture and Dinner! Friday, February 10, 2006: Beginning at 6:30pm * Sought after ceramic artist and grad of Moore College of Art & Design / UC Davis will speak at The University of Pennsylvania Chemistry Building, 231 S. 34th Street in Philadelphia. The lecture will be followed by dinner in a private home in the area at 8pm. Contact Christina Edleman at The Clay Studio, 215-925-3453 x.13 or www.theclaystudio.org. for more information. Seating for both events is limited. 

I Want to Hear About Your Crits!

Because of the brevity of the winter crit, I didn't get a chance to speak to many of you (they're not even over and I know I'm not going to get the chance, so I'm posting now...), but I really want to know how your crits and thesis reviews went. Please post here!

Arts Journal Changes

It looks like changes are afoot over at ArtsJournal.com, one of my perennial favorite news sources for arts-related gab and info. I encourage everyone to bookmark the site and look at it daily, but I'm especially keen to see that they are going to be doing some topic-driven group blogging in the weeks ahead, in which invited guests will comment on aspects of a specific subject (it begins with dance).

I like this idea and I think it would be great if you adapted for this blog, appointing a certain week to address a certain topic of interest to all MFA students. I'm sure the faculty would be willing to participate if we were invited. Give it some thought.

Should you exhibit while still in school?

This summer, Topics students talked a little about whether or not it was a good idea for artists to begin exhibiting while they are still in grad school. The panel at the beginning of the summer - and the article in the New York Times about "hot" grad programs had no doubt gotten a few people thinking, but when I saw an interview with Chuck Close (whose self-portrait appears at right - see, we're getting all artblog with the images!) in the current CAA News, I thought I should post a little bit for everyone to consider.

What do you think of students exhibiting their work before they graduate?

Part of the problem is that schools require students to make consistent work instead of encouraging them to bash around and try a lot of different ideas and different styles. Young artists should resist zeroing in on their vision so early…
I absolutely believe and always have believed that artists shouldn't go public with work until they are ready to lay their necks on the line - which means that anything an artist did before going public is nobody's business. But the minute you decide to go public, an artist sets a specific trajectory and seems to truncate other options. I think it is really good to bang around for a while and really be sure you can love with the work that you make for a long time before you decide to show it.

Politicality

One of my brighter Art Center students came up to me today and seemed distraught. She told me she'd had a "discussion" with a friend in which they disagreed about the nature of art. Her friend suggested she go out and ask a few more people's opinions. The issue? They were debating whether or not all art is political.

Fortunately, my student was smart enough to know that the answer partly depends on what your definition of political is, but she seemed more than a little disappointed by the rapidity with which I said I thought, sure, art is political. (I guess I know what side of the argument she was making...). We talked about how, in Western art before modernism, all art was political in the sense that it reinforced the power of the church and state. In The Invisible Dragon, Dave Hickey convincingly talks about the art of the Baroque, for example, as a form of religious propaganda.

Things obviously get muddier the closer you come to the present. After all, what is political about a Pollock? Turns out that there may be plenty. Not too long ago, Louis Menand contributed an article to the New Yorker in which he addressed the oft-made claim that Abstract Expressionism was a tool of the CIA. I've been interested in this idea for a while - one of art my heroes, the poet Frank O'Hara, was involved in the development of international touring exhibitions of the art some have called political propaganda for American-style democracy. I'm fairly sure, based on my research, that he was as apolitical as they come (which I consider a fault, but that's another story).

What I realized (too late) that I should have said is that I don't think anything is inherently anything - things become meaningful based on how they are used. Art may not be intended to serve some political agenda, but once it leaves the artist's studio and belongs to the world, it gets put to use in ways the artist never imagined. Many people like to say they hate political art, but I think what is often meant by that statement is that they hate art which is overtly political - art that insists on being used in a certain way, like some craft objects insist on being used in certain ways by their use of certain forms and participation in certain traditions. It makes sense to hate art that is dictatorial as much as it makes sense to hate governments that are dictatorial.

Of course, this raises a whole slew of issues – how do we make sure the objects we make are put to uses we don’t find deplorable? Should we care? If we don’t care, are we immoral? I’d greatly appreciate your comments so I can pass them on to my student…

Alibis?

Hope everyone has an alibi to shield them from investigation of the theft of a Warhol and Pollock from the Everhart Museum in Scranton. According to the Times Leader ("Northeastern Pennsylvania's Homepage"), the pieces were stolen in the middle of the night and police responded to an alarm. The works are valuable - the Warhol is estimated at $15,000 and the Pollock is comparable to one that sold for $11.6 million, according to sources quoted by the paper.
Me? I hope they don't come calling, because if they do...I'm going to say Mike Reenock did it.

Gaetano Pesce at the PMA

Hi All, Gaetano Pesce is lecturing this Friday, November 18th at 6pm. 10$ w/ student ID, 25$ members, 35$ non-members. Check out www.philamuseum.org. for more info about his career and works. Best, Terri

This is for you, Lee...

I thought you'd appreciate this, Lee. The image, under the headline "Touchdown Jesus" ran on the New York Times website this afternoon, accompanying a story about the sculpture's presense on a rural Ohio highway. It made me think of your attempts to bridge the gap between urban and rural art audiences. Hope all are well, gb.

Looking at Drawing

If you're still scratching your head about drawing, you might want to look at this show:

This Friday, November 18th, SPECTOR presents  Drawing For It 2, a diverse collection of pieces by artists who draw as a means to an end along side artists whose medium is drawing. The show is a survey of pencil, pen and ink works within which you can feel each artist's hand.

Artists are Huston Ripley, Matthew Fisher, Caitlin Perkins, Willie Condry, JT Waldman, Hiro Sakaguchi, Randall Sellers, Elizabeth Haidle and Amanda Miller.
The show opens November 18th from 6-9PM and runs through December 9th.

SPECTOR
510 Bainbridge Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
www.spectorspector.com
215-238-0840

Gallery hours
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 2–6 PM
Or by appointment

On appropriation - from Jane

I went to the conference Ursinus College had Tuesday on "Artistic Appropriation in the Age of Litigation"
Before I got there, I had onsidered a few places where I had witnessed appropriation in what I think are good and bad ways. There is always so much debate about how much, and in what use is this acceptable. The conversations there opened my eyes to how much appropriating goes on. Fair use lawyers there demanded that appropraiting is fine if the intent of the artist is to comment directly on the appropriated image, but if it used simply as a device to simplify one's own artistic efforts, it is fraudulent. Any thoughts on this one?

research

I've been asked to teach a class next semester at Art Center and I'm fishing for ideas. The class is called The Art of Research and it is a studio course that aims to close the gap between students' interest making and their familiarity with the context of their practice. It's not a history class, but a class that should give them some research methodologies they might take with them into their practice. Trouble is, how do you teach research without researching something?
I've been polling artists about the way they do research and what place it has in their practice, and I'll eventually share the findings with y'all, but if you've got a moment, could you tell me a little about the roll of research in your studio practice and how you go about it? This is all off the record - I'm not looking to hear so much about Independant Writing class as about if it has been helpful in the studio at all, and if so how, and if not, how might it be more so?
Thanks - gb

Online Virtual Graffiti?!?!?!?!

Promoted and represented by Sprite and MSN is a site where you can do your own "stencil graffiti." It's called Refreshing Wall (I know, how bad is that name). I'm not promoting it, I just want to expose the stupidity and utter ridiculousness of it. How far should corporations go with their advertising campaigns? The answer is a double-edged sword. Then you have to ask yourself: How far should artists go with their art? It's obvious that we are biased to one of those. just thought I'd throw out those thoughts.

215 Festival

Hi Folks, Philadelphia's 215 Festival begins today, Oct. 5 and runs through Oct.10th. Check out the site for event schedules. www.215festival.com. Of particular interest, John Hodgeman presents his important COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE, Friday, Oct. 7th at the PMA, 5-8:15pm. Encouraging all to catch a bit if you can!

Philadelphia Lectures

The next two months hold promising information. 1. Rain Harris : Gallery Talk, Sunday, 9/25 @ 4pm, Nexus Gallery. 2. David Lynch : University of Pennsylvania, Wed. 9/28@ 7pm, Harrison Auditorium. 3.Paula Winokour : The Phila. Art Alliance, Wed. 10/26@ 7pm. 4. Kathy Butterly : University of Pennsylvania, 2/17/06...more info to follow.

Parasite Projector

Hi Y'all! I was checking out Woostercollective.com tonight. If you don't know what it is, it's a site about street art... really cool stuff. Anyways, there's a quictime movie about some Europeans who placed a projector inside a suitcase, attached it to a subway train and projected images in the tunnels. Check it out– it's under "guerilla subway projections" on the main page.

Hope everyone is well.

New lunchboxes and school clothes...

Hope everyone UArts had a pleasant first day of school yeasterday. Art Center doesn't start classes for another two weeks (poor me, I have to prolong my vacation...). I'm sure you all picked out great first day of school outfits and have shiny new notebooks. Have a great semester and see you in December.

Review alert

Friday's New York Times included a review of Nato Thompson's most recent show at MassMOCA. "Becoming Animal" is the title, and I thought it might interest you to know what he's up to. Hope all are well, gb.

Thank heaven - a place to start...

So, wonder if anyone actually wants art in the first place? An encouraging blip appeared in the New York Times the other day. In a Q&A section on interior decorating, Stephen Treffinger offered some (rather weak) suggestions about what to hang on the walls of one's first home. Personally, I lave articles like this. They remind me that we're not making stuff to fill endless rows of shelves like the authors of novels or essays, but things that compete for space and attention in social settings. Perhaps too often, we in academe value art for its commentary or historical value at the expense of its potential place in the fabric of daily life (a funny sidebar on this can be seen in the British press, where a recent list of "greatest paintings" has columnists all a-twitter about how one can "rank" art). Now, more than ever, art has the chance to assume a valuable place getting around mass communication and into our ordinary lives. Perhaps we should think about whether there is "starter art" and where our own products stand in relation to such a thing.