hyde or die

The Guggenheim Museum and YouTube have finally announced the jury for YouTube Play.

Do I have thoughts about this Guggenheim/YouTube mashup ploy for attention and desperate attempt by the Gugg to be in with the internet age?  I think I blatantly answered that question by just the wording of my question. Sometimes I am too obvious.  Anywho, that’s not what we are talking about today, today we are talking about the selection of the jury! So who is this group of elite internet multimedia artists and experts to serve on this panel? I’ll tell you who, along with my unfiltered thoughts about their fitness as jurors.

• Laurie Anderson, I am not too familiar with her work, but from what I do know, she goes to the beat of her own drum enough that I think she will make some honest decisions.
• Animal Collective. REALLY!?! I already have mentioned what a ploy I think this is, but Animal Collective? I like there music just as much as the next girl who likes to occasionally listen to music that isn’t hip hop, but I really don’t see what they can bring to the table besides inexperience, naivety and a little “we’re in a popular band so our opinions matter” attitude.*
• Darren Aronofsky is a great director. Period. I love him and enjoy his work. Wait…aren’t you making Black Swan right now, Darren? Oh you are.  Then you shouldn’t have time to be doing this! I am looking forward to that film and if it sucks I am going to blame your being sidetracked by this silly jury and farce of a competition as the reason and never watch The Fountain by myself and cry again.
• Douglas Gordon. Gordon’s video and visual art are quiet and thoughtful enough that I think he is a genuinely good addition to the jury.  Also he’s a little older, 44, and been doing this for a while, so that experience will be useful.
• Ryan McGinley seems to be too nice and too grateful to ever say anything critical about anyone in regards to art. That being said, I don’t know the guy, maybe he’s brutal in his opinions outside of the public persona he has created.  I just really don’t think that’s the case.
• Takashi Murakami. Sure, why not? He hasn’t sold out with a museum show in a while so he has some spare time.  Also, someone has to be there to defend anyone using semen as a lasso in their videos. 
• Marylin Minter, I think that Minter was an early purveyor of video and she still employs it today, so I am ok with this choice.
• Shirin Neshat, Stefan Sagemeister and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, I have never heard of one of these people, although I enjoy the last name of Sagemeister, it makes him sound like some expert of the spices.  He might make me a delicious bolognese sauce.
• Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Guggenheim, is the Jury Chair. Understandable.

Now for more traditional interpretations including monetary advantages for the museum, I would highly suggest reading what Paddy Johnson and Tyler Green have to say about this.

*I’m sure they are very nice and smart people, I just think they aren’t necessarily qualified to be on a jury for something concerning the Guggenheim. 

July 26, 2010, 10:00am  

Artists Nancy Rubins, Barry McGee, Dan Graham and John Baldessari, and Marina Abramovic working with print maker Jacob Samuel in his studio on their respective book etching editions. 

Jacob Samuel’s show Out of the Box at the Hammer right now is a revelation.  If you are in the neighborhood, you have no excuse not to go.  Especially if you are there on a Thursday, because it’s free.

June 29, 2010, 3:00pm  

» One of America's quietest museums quietly expands

Related: North America’s largest art museums ranked by total exhibition space (in square feet):

1. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 736,095
2. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 228,334
3. National Gallery of Art, 224,417
4. Brooklyn Museum of Art, 193,057
5. Art Institute of Chicago, 185,187
6. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 183,404
7. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 165,128
8. Detroit Institute of Arts, 157,314
9. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 144,168
10. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston*, 143,000
11. National Gallery of Canada, 142,979
12. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 142,091
13. Indianapolis Museum of Art, 141,037
14. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 135,000
15. Museum of Modern Art, 130,000

May 24, 2010, 12:22pm  

Museums are so protective…

May 17, 2010, 12:02pm  

(left) Lauren Kalman, Hard Wear (Tongue Gilding), 2006.
(right) Cruz Ortiz, Mamacitas I Miss You Already, 2009

Both of these artists will be showing at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston through the end of July, and if that wasn’t enough, they are also going to have Nick Cave’s* soundsuits…

I GET IT HOUSTON! I NEED TO VISIT MY MOM!!! Stop with the teasing.

*Not that Nick Cave.

April 13, 2010, 1:28pm  

Leaps into the Void: Documents of Nouveau Realist Performance

Pyrotechnics, exploding pigment, blowtorches, lacerated décollage, and found materials, define the radical gestures of the avant-garde movement, Nouveau Réalisme. Translated as “New Realism,” it was founded by art critic Pierre Restany and artist Yves Klein in Paris in 1960. The circle of artists formally and informally associated with the movement included Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Martial Raysse, Christo, Mimmo Rotella and Arman, among others. They believed direct and aggressive physical explorations, characterized by a paradoxical emphasis on notions of deconstruction and accumulation, and the use of discarded materials from everyday life in the tradition of Dada, achieved a more truthful understanding of modern society in a moment of rising consumerism. As proclaimed in the First Manifesto of Nouveau Réalisme, “if one succeeds at reintegrating oneself with the real, one achieves transcendence, which is emotion, sentiment, and finally, poetry.” via…

Well, aren’t you Houstonites lucky? This is up at the Menil through August 9th.

March 08, 2010, 5:53pm  

Manifest Equality

March 03, 2010, 3:31pm  

Laura Owens, Untitled, 2000

I am going to be sad when my weekly emails from MOCA, coinciding with  the Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years, don’t come anymore.

March 02, 2010, 10:06am  

Dennis Darzacq is exhibiting at Laurence Miller Gallery in New York through March 27.

Darzacq brings street dancers, mostly young men and women in their late teens and early twenties into these stores and asks them to perform their leaps, jumps, twirls, and other gravity-defying movements. Darzacq’s working methods are wonderfully captured in a documentary film by Marie-Clotilde Chery. The photographs explore the tension between being and having, between the human body and the built environment. They offer a fresh, witty and intensely colorful commentary on global consumerism and freedom of spirit. via…

March 01, 2010, 12:45pm