At the New Museum, a time capsule from the garbagey, abstract, political New York art scene of 1993
![Richard Birkett talks to us about curating the White Columns Annual, one of the city’s most important year-in-review art exhibitions.
It sounds like one theme that emerged was about collecting, and it was a little Tumblr-like if you’re talking about gathering specific works from an artist or a theme on a single blog.
A lot of the work seems hard to classify, or experiential, particularly Yuji Agematsu’s arrangements of found scraps (pictured at left) or Zoe Leonard’s work, like when she turned a gallery into a camera obscura.
I think that’s something that’s a thread: collecting, I suppose. Collecting in relationship to found material…. But also, something that’s quite specific is that many people are showing work by other artists. Jason Simon, for instance, is showing his collection of Chris Marker material. And Julie Ault, we’re showing some material related to Theodore Kaczynski [the Unabomber]. There’s a thread going through the show of artists who have responded to something interesting in the world, I suppose, and have translated that into the process of collecting and representing. I guess that goes hand-in-hand with the idea of the White Columns Annual, which is essentially that you’re representing things that you saw elsewhere. It’s almost more a form of collecting than curating.
Read more.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/8b6a67966f0929a3fa5f80cc406ab3d6/tumblr_mgfhrycqhH1qc0o3ko1_400.jpg)
Richard Birkett talks to us about curating the White Columns Annual, one of the city’s most important year-in-review art exhibitions.
It sounds like one theme that emerged was about collecting, and it was a little Tumblr-like if you’re talking about gathering specific works from an artist or a theme on a single blog.
A lot of the work seems hard to classify, or experiential, particularly Yuji Agematsu’s arrangements of found scraps (pictured at left) or Zoe Leonard’s work, like when she turned a gallery into a camera obscura.
I think that’s something that’s a thread: collecting, I suppose. Collecting in relationship to found material…. But also, something that’s quite specific is that many people are showing work by other artists. Jason Simon, for instance, is showing his collection of Chris Marker material. And Julie Ault, we’re showing some material related to Theodore Kaczynski [the Unabomber]. There’s a thread going through the show of artists who have responded to something interesting in the world, I suppose, and have translated that into the process of collecting and representing. I guess that goes hand-in-hand with the idea of the White Columns Annual, which is essentially that you’re representing things that you saw elsewhere. It’s almost more a form of collecting than curating.
“Don’t delude yourselves… You are—with schools, television, the pacifying newspapers—you are the keepers of this horrible order based on the idea of possession and the idea of destruction… Maybe I am wrong, but I will continue to say that we are all in danger.”
Filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini spoke those words in his last interview, hours before he was clubbed to death and run over with his own car on Nov. 2, 1975. Best known as a director of stark, political, often violent and sexually explicit films, Pasolini would have turned 90 last March. The Museum of Modern Art is honoring him with a comprehensive retrospective of his cinema, opening on Dec. 13 and running through Jan. 5, 2013. All of his 22 films will be shown in new 35mm prints, and many in recently restored versions.
A Pasolini series at MoMA provides occasion to revisit the principled, prolific filmmaker
“I started with thinking about various artists I admire who have devised imaginary brands and products and so on as a medium for their ideas, not just about consumer culture but about human nature or other notions…. And then I just started riffing from there about the directions the show could move in, the different ways the concept of a ‘fake product’ or ‘imaginary brand’ can be used: as activism, as parody, as business.”… Walker said he was especially pleased to have Shawn Wolfe’s RemoverInstaller™ in the show, which he called one of his all-time favorite fake brands. Also in the show were what he called “defictionalized” products, which he defined as “brands that at one time existed only in fiction (such as a movie) but that was subsequently brought to the real-world marketplace.” The show thus includes T-shirts for Soylent Green and the Tyrell Corporation (Blade Runner) and cans of Brawndo, the sports-drink from Idiocracy (official tag line: “The Thirst Mutilator”).
Conspicuous consumption: Rob Walker takes his consumer critique into the art gallery
A rare chance to contemplate Renaissance painter Rosso Fiorentino at The Morgan
Kathy Grayson, owner of The Hole, is well aware of her gallery’s appeal.
“Certainly there are some buyers who are attracted to the fact that we’re the most popular young gallery,” she said. “They buy stuff because we have 5,000 people at openings, because some collectors are just like ‘I read about you in Vogue and all these cool kids are into you.’” A faint smell of cigarettes wafted through the gallery on Saturday during Grayson’s latest opening, a group photography show called Attachments. Grayson threaded her way through the crowd, often with an unlit American Spirit hanging from her mouth.
“Like, I was at a party and the D.J. told me ‘You’re the best gallery,’” she continued. “Having tons of 20-somethings love your gallery does, at some point, turn into collectors seeing that’s what all the cool kids think is cool.”
“I recently heard that 30 billion images a year are being created by people with devices, cameras, and phones,” photographer Doug Rickard said. “So every artist, ultimately, whether they are producing images or working with material, has to navigate and make selections that have a profound meaning or narrative.”
How do you make profound photography in a world of Instagram, Facebook galleries, and iPhones?
Times Square billboards answer a high-brow calling: Art
(Photos and report by Dan Rosenblum)
“We’re going to Mars. In fact, we’ll be there on Saturday.”
![Let’s get it out of the way: the body of remarkable photographs currently on display at the Guggenheim Museum’s fourth-floor annex, through June 13, were produced by Francesca Woodman between 1975 and 1981, the year she killed herself at the age of 22 by jumping out of the window of her New York loft …
Compellingly lurid though the subject of Woodman’s suicide may be, to dwell on it is to miss the full splendor of her photographs, their full range of influences (and afterlives), their sly beauty and humor.
[Read more at Capital New York]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1pjnbBQpa1qc0o3ko1_400.jpg)
Let’s get it out of the way: the body of remarkable photographs currently on display at the Guggenheim Museum’s fourth-floor annex, through June 13, were produced by Francesca Woodman between 1975 and 1981, the year she killed herself at the age of 22 by jumping out of the window of her New York loft …
Compellingly lurid though the subject of Woodman’s suicide may be, to dwell on it is to miss the full splendor of her photographs, their full range of influences (and afterlives), their sly beauty and humor.
