marshallastor.com

Every object has its day, but to replace Dustin Shuler’s spindle with a Walgreen’s is an art crime. I just visited Spindle in it’s home at Cermak Plaza in Berwyn, Illinois on July 3rd, and it was one of the highlights of my trip to Chicago, a city that just seems to get public art. I’m not always in favour of preserving art, especially public art, but I love this piece. Beyond my attraction to it as a sculptural object, it’s smart land use, and well placed, too. A mall parking lot is the perfect place for this piece - the perfect environment to not only showcase the aesthetic of the piece (there’s something almost desert-like about the asphalt vastness of Cermak Plaza that really lends to the aesthetic of the piece), but to be face to face with society’s relationship to the automobile. It’s almost like looking at Michaelangelo’s David amidst the quarry that it was hewn from, or like seeing a piece in the studio.

There’s a website set up Save the Spindle, who are working to preserve the sculpture, and all I can really do from far away California is to E-mail local pols and hope the best for them. A second website, Save our Spindle, is also advocating for the preservation of this piece of art.  Of course, Spindle has a myspace page, with an awesome assortment of 500+ friends, including lots of other famous road stuff, like Giant Rubber Band Balls and the Weinermobile.  There’s also a resolution in the Illinois Senate to to save the Spindle, as well. It would be a black eye to everything that’s good and American if Spindle gets torn down.

Here’s a list of people you can possibly encourage or harass about saving the Spindle.

Berwyn Arts Council

Info@BerwynArtsCouncil.org
708-601-ARTS

City of Berwyn

Mayor Michael O’Connor
moconnor@ci.berwyn.il.us

Aldermen

1st Ward
Nona N. Chapman
708-484-6662
aldchapmanward1@aol.com

2nd Ward
Santiago “Jim” Ramos
708-484-4275
2ndward@berwyn-il.gov

3rd Ward
Mark Weiner
708-484-7512
3rdward@berwyn-il.gov

4th Ward
Michele D. Skryd
708-788-6934
4thward@berwyn-il.gov

6th Ward
Michael J. Phelan
708-7749-4342
6thward@berwyn-il.gov

7th Ward
Robert J. Lovero
708-788-1885
7thward@berwyn-il.gov

8th Ward
Joel Erickson
708-484-4999
joel@berwynfirst.com

Technorati Tags: Spindle, Dustin Shuler, Berwyn, Cermak Plaza, public art, sculpture, art, cars

I’m glad that my hometown paper gives me this kind of on the ground international material for my mental gristmill.  An article that focuses on the daily struggle of the artists themselves, even.  It’s sad, but it’s also good to know that there are still artists who are keeping on truckin’ amidst the winds of chaos.

Next time some MFA-to-be bitches about how tough they have it, just take them outside, set them up in front of an easel, start shooting your AK-47 over their head while shouting “Allah Akbar!” at the top of your lungs and see if they’re really, really devoted to their chosen profession.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, art, LA Times

So I couldn’t bear WACK! at MOCA, and given the sheer number of female artists that I work with everyday and have shown over the years, I’m somewhat skeptical of the “giving women their due” attitude that I smelled when the “Year of the Woman” organizational mailers started landing on my desk, but if anything has come out of it (aside from the long-term effects of WACK!’s catalog on the art history majors of ten years from now) that turns my crank it’s the Jori Finkel curated Identity Theft at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. I spent most of yesterday at SMMOA, in my capacity of Discussion Leader for the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Summer Internship Program, and I’m in love. I’ve been aware and a fan of Suzy Lake and Eleanor Antin (She gives off radioactive wisdom, I swear), but Lynn Hershman, who’s transformation into faux-person Roberta Brietman in the 1970’s arouses deep questions about the people of that era, especially the phenomenon of urban disassociation, was totally new to me.

So while WACK! was like some curatorial black hole, unfathomably complex and stretched into directions that seem beyond the understanding of viewers who aren’t experts on the era and theme, Identity Theft is focused and direct, showcasing the brutally accessible works of three of this century’s more curious artists. It came as such a relief to see a show that means something come out of an institution in Los Angeles. Lately, every museum show I’ve looked at in my hometown has seemed distant and inaccessible.

Each artist in Identity Theft seems to approach their work from a disaffected angle, with a mental rawness that could only be addressed by engaging in a radical experiment of self. The show, because of its narrow focus, becomes a deep questioning of our relationship to self, and our desires to escape or grow beyond ourselves. Looking trough the show, I got what I was so angrily missing in WACK! - historical perspective, insight into the art makers themselves and a sufficient volume of work by each artist to have some understanding of their career.

Asides - Icberg: Richard Carter and Margaret Pezalla-Granlund in Project Room I at SMMOA is solid, and not to be missed. There’s a “fine food and wine” pairing in the show that really sucks you in. Also, after we visited SMMOA, we stopped by Patrick Painter to chat about career options with one of his assistants, who standing in the middle of the white box, surrounded by subtle German art gave us a really enlightening talk, while her spaniel dangled at the end of its leash. She was great, but I found the contrast between the non-profit troopers at SMMOA and the “art world” dealer to be so simultaneously jarring, amusing and stereotypical as to be almost completely absurd. At the end of the day I stepped into Mark Moore to see Ultrasonic International II - there’s a great sculture/found object in the form of a wheezing/moaning inflatable Bob’s Big Boy (Ozymandias Weeps, by Chad Person) that is crammed almost floor-to-ceiling in the corner of the room, I could spend all day with that piece.

I woke up this morning, and surfing the artwaves, I noticed that the show that’s on my mind is on the mind of others, as well. Tyler Green at Modern Art notes has some criticism of Emma Gray’s LA Confidential write up of Identity Theft, which I have to agree with - no one is being trumped here. Not that I’m expecting great wit from what is essentially a collection of briefs about LA art, but Emma is right in directing her praise to Identity Theft. Green also draws further attention to the apparent ongoing death of the relevance of the New York art press (Green focuses on the NYT, but I think the same criticism could be directed at most of the NY magazine press, and directly into the curatorial department of MOMA, If you care to know my opinion) - like our president, they’ve chosen to view the world through the rose coloured glasses of their own invented and self-serving interpretation of history.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s collection is full of interesting surprises.  I really wanted to photograph more there, but they have what appears to be a “no photo, except in one or two galleries of European paintings” policy.  As I noted before, though, they have an incredible lack of attentive docents - I was able to photograph pretty freely in a few areas, which worked out okay.  I mean, isn’t copious documentation the purpose of a museum visit, anyways?

The museum has three buildings, all connected underground.  In the third building, the Caroline Weiss Law Building, which was the original museum before the addition of the Audrey Jones Beck Building and the third building, which is basically a parking garage and entrance to the other buildings, I came across the Glassell Collection of African Gold.  One thing I noticed at museums in Dallas and Houston is that their collections seemed “more formed” by gifted collections than the larger museums I’m used to, such as LACMA or the FAMSF museums in San Francisco. 

I’m not sure if this is an issue of presentation or if it demonstrates the collecting limits of some of these less financially powerful institutions.  Regardless, it’s wonderful to come across idiosyncratic collections like the Glassell Collection - after seeing dozens of fine art museums around the country, you are in many cases looking at a set series of objects, deemed interesting and necessary for the legitimate operation of a museum, and I perceive this as a lack of vision.  On one hand there’s a benefit to collecting a highly vetted collection of “acceptably important works and artists”, and making them accessible to people in places like Kansas City or Des Moines, but on the other hand there’s a lack of curatorial vision involved, as well.  I think these museums really owe it to us to highlight not just what’s famous and looks nice on a tote bag, but to present the novel facets of human culture, history and practice, and it’s interesting and unique collections like the Glassell that bring new perspectives to the table.

above - Gunbearer’s Bandoliers - It’s really impossible for me to do these any of these objects descriptive justice.  According to the accompanying label (which has a picture of two Akan men wearing them) these are more than symbolic, the knives were used to “stab the cheeks of criminals so that they could not make oaths against the chief.” 

above - Shotguns and Cartridge Belt - According to their label, these would be carried by the chief’s gunbearer, and that the chief would use them as a “dance implement” while the chief is being carried on a palanquin.

above - No label for these.  I took this picture primarily because of the pith helmet.  I don’t think there’s any more comical, or more lasting symbol of European colonialism in Africa than the pith helmet.  It’s hard to imagine why anyone would make a golden image of one of the symbols of their oppressors, but someone did, and now that gesture is forever and puzzlingly enshrined in a museum in Texas.

above - Swords and Executioner’s Knives - According to the label, these swords form part of a state’s treasury, in addition to being used for ritual purposes.  I was really attracted to the sword on the left, with the big powder keg ornament on it. The executioner’s knives are the same as the ones on the bandolier, they’re just un-bandoliered at the moment.

This is only a really small component of the Glassell collection, and it’s a don’t miss exhibit if one is in Houston.  I would have photographed more, but I was being as discreet as possible.

Technorati Tags: gold, African gold, Akan, guns, bandolier, pith helmet, swords, knives, African art, African, MFAH, Glassell Collection

After my most recent trip, I really feel like I’m getting a decent grip on the history of European painting.  If there’s one thing I’ve discovered, history has yielded a fantastic wealth of paintings that would make great heavy metal album covers.  My interest in art primarily comes from my interest in narrative and storytelling, so a lot of my attention has been on subjects that seem to be common motifs in art.

So the motif here is “Sans Head”, paintings that depict severed heads, or the severing of heads.  All four of these pieces were spotted at the Art Institute of Chicago.

above - panel 5 from Six Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist, Giovanni de Paolo - This six panel narrative tells the story of Saint John the Baptist, who lost his head on the account of Salome.  Saint John’s severed head is a pretty common theme in art, because it offered a chance for painters to depict not only a gory severed head, but the exotically beautiful (and often nude) Salome.

This series of panels is painted in International Gothic style, distinctly fantastic in it’s architecture, geography and figures.  This style of painting always reminds me of the theatre - the figures are portrayed on a stage, composed of symbols to get the key points across to the viewer.  It’s hard for me to see the figures as historical people, I perceive them as characters instead, and perhaps the highly subjective nature of Christian history acts as a reinforcement of this perception. The six panels of this piece were once part of a twelve panel set that’s been split up, but there’s an additional panel among the six on view at the Art Institute depicting John sans head, which depicts Salome with the head on a platter.

View the label here.

above - Judith, Jan Sanders van Hemessen - I’ve become somewhat obsessed with images of Judith lately.  Not too sure why, but it’s a subject that seems to really draw out the context of the painter - you can learn a lot about the painter, the client and the society from them, maybe because they tend to be arrangements of simple symbols - severed head, maidservant, Judith and sword.

What can you tell from this image?  Well, this is one of those paper doll paintings, where the artist sort of combined things as elements.  The body of Judith? That’s a man, baby, with a pre-silicon, bolt-on bosom.  The face is detailed, but looks painted in, like a flat mask.  I’m sure there’s a bunch of super-technical art history reasoning behind this, but I’d be willing to wager that the artist had seriously limited knowledge of the female figure, or, as the label supposes, by giving her a man’s body, he is attempting to draw attention away from the seduction of Holofernes and to her physical prowess.  Noticeably absent from this painting is Judith’s biblical servant, who’s job it is to dispose of the head. 

above - Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Felice Fecerelli - I think that many viewers of renaissance paintings are puzzled by the non-historical garb worn by the subjects.  I used to naively dismiss them as having little knowledge of history, and felt their deviation from supposed historical accuracy was a sign of their primitivism, but now I see them as bold re-interpreters, manipulating their symbologies to fit their aesthetics and ideals.  Human history isn’t really about “objective truth” anyways, it’s all lies, bullshit and anecdote, so why not mash-up biblical narrative with 17th Century fashions.

Here Judith is glamorous, dignified, a bit piecemeal (what’s with painters who can’t convey the proper attachment of the head to the body?), but overall there’s none of the jarring disproportions of the first painting.  Here’s Judith’s blade is down, casually held and bloodless, and the severed head that’s at the center of this narrative is being neatly bagged by her servant.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Judith narrative is Judith’s social status, symbols of which are interestingly not present in the Dutch version above this one.  While she is a rebel, a revolutionary or sorts, she is upper class, and engages in her revolution with the assistance of a servant, making her a rather unconventional revolutionary, which is probably why Judith was such an acceptable subject, and became synonymous with civic duty.  Had Judith been a woman of common, or lower status, I highly doubt that the wealthy art patrons of Florence would have been as eager to commission paintings of her tale.

View the label here.

above - Head of a Guillotined Man, Jean Louise Andre Theodore Gericault - Wow, that’s one hell of a name.  He probably had an extra-long business card to accommodate it.  Gericault is best know as the painter of the ultra-grim, political painting Raft of the Medusa, which depicts the survivors of a shipwreck at their moment of rescue.

Head of a Guillotined Man was painted in 1818/19, while Gericault was also working on the Raft of the Medusa, who’s realism he prepared for by sketching and studying corpses in a Paris morgue - perhaps this head was encountered during those visits.  While this isn’t a super-realistic painting, it depicts a far more realistic subject, an anonymous guillotined head.  In painting Raft of the Medusa, Gericault abandoned allegory in favour of a journalistic realism, which is also present in the above painting.

To me, this painting is emblematic of the age of reason that displaced the church as primary organizer of the universe.  Science, and a aggressive turn to secularism have been at the center of French identity since the revolution, and this painting, almost three decades following, shows the influence of that revolution.

View the label here.

Technorati Tags: painting, Art Institute of Chicago, art, fine art, International Gothic, John the Baptist, severed head, beheading, Judith, Holofernes, biblical, head, sans head

Found at Boing Boing, originally posted at Wooster Collective.

This is a riff on For the Love of God, by an artist identified only as “Laura”. A reproduction of the piece was placed in a vitrine, atop a pile of garbage outside of White Cube, where the skull currently resides. Regardless of it’s Hirst-ness, It’s a great commentary that could be applied to a lot of art.

Technorati Tags: Damien Hirst, Hirst, skull, commentary, riff, garbage, art, White Cube

We’ve not visited Marfa on at least three other road trips. We’re always near it in the middle of the night, at some inconvenient time, or something just seems to keep us away. Having some time to kill on our way home, Michele and I finally decided to drop off the 10 and make a little detour to Marfa, just to check it out. Marfa itself is a whole other post, I guess, this is just about Prada Marfa, which is not really in Marfa, but closer to Valentine, Texas. I guess Prada Valentine wouldn’t have the art world credibility.

This piece is simultaneously a deeply moving, thought provoking site specific installation/sculpture and a softball gently lobbed over the plate of anyone looking to wield the bat of criticism. I see it as saying one of two things.

1) Its incongruity to its environment, its out-of-placeness transforms this urban object into a purely aesthetic object. By removing the goods inside from circulation, it mocks the crass commercialism of fashion and the urban upper class.

2) Prada Marfa is a critisism of Marfa itself - it suggests that it is conceivable that one could build a Prada store here and that the same tiring hipsters from Los Angeles or New York who have built themselves a strange outpost here in the desert would probably charter planes into Marfa’s tiny airport just to spend even more money in order to buy their silly footwear. It’s about bragging rights and opulence, you know?

I’m comfortable with either interpretation. It’s nice to be out there in the wind sounds of the desert, puzzling over this object. It shares the mystery of other side of the road art, like a giant ball of twine, we find meaning in its purposelessness, and like the ruin it eventually will become we feel the onset of the momentary sadness and wonder that future drivers will experience as they pass it at high speed on their way to elsewhere.

above - the very existence of this piece of art inspires an urge to vandalism and violence in many, I bet. The awning is either full of bullet holes or cigarette burns, and the store has been broken into and robbed before. This fist-sized spiderweb of shattered glass is the most obvious artifact of this frustration. The glass appears to be double paned, and exceptionally thick - a deceptively transparent barrier against the realities of desert life. The artists have stated that they intend the building to fall to ruins over time, but it also exists outside of that reality, by being “armoured” against the normal effects of time and of human actions.

above - The most interesting and beautiful part of the piece to me was the mass of insect life living inside and around the structure. Any enclosed structure in the desert will eventually become akin to a terrarium, a closed environment where masses of insects gather and die, going through the generational motions of life - eating, fucking, killing and dying, writing their history on the unwalked carpet of this tiny ersatz store. The exterior of the store was home to a bewildering crowd of insects, a pair of massive female black widows tend their bulging egg sacs inside the far corners of each awning.

I don’t think I need to point out the obvious A Thousand Years reference (What is it Damien Hirst day around here?). Lacking the childhood sadism of the bug zapper, and being an unintentional massing of insects, it is made meditative, despite the struggle within.

above - adjacent to the store, this power pole acts as another reminder that this store is unlike the other structures in the desert, despite the decay envisioned by its creators. While I think the CCTV surveillance of the store is non-existent, I see this sign as being akin to the glass - an inability to let go of the piece and allow it to have its natural life.

above - the store really does arouse something in you. You want to engage with it, but are reduced to either vandalism or passive observation. Being there, I felt I had to take some kind of action, or to perform in some way upon the structure. By urinating on the side of this structure, I conceptually sent the piece back to the piss scented streets of New York that is its natural environment. Sure…

Technorati Tags: Prada, Prada Marfa, Marfa, On The Road, art, site specific, store, fashion, urination

It’s sweet to be home after our whirlwind trip, but weird, especially seeing the dog again - he looked at me like “Where the fuck were you? I was looking for you for two weeks!” when I fed him this morning, but he didn’t destroy all the corn I planted this season, yet…

We saw so much stuff that I barely had time to post about it, especially the art related stuff, as that usually involves a ton of Photoshop processing and/or a ton of writing. So there’s a ton of art coming soon. Hell, there’s a ton more barbecue coming soon. We ate so much barbecue that I’m kind of worried about having a heart attack when I get back to the gym. And are eggs good or bad for you again? Cause I’ve been eating like three dozen a week for the past two weeks. If you could barbecue eggs (I’m sure there’s a way!) I probably would have eaten six dozen.

Even with all the stuff that we’ve seen on multiple road trips, there’s still so many places to go and see. Anyone who wants to pay me to drive around the country, take photos, eat Waffle House and riff on America, let me know.

at top - Damien Hirst’s End Game, as installed at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. This one’s for you, Ally. If you look closely or zoom in you can see Michele and I reflected in the piece. Being Damien Hirst almost seems like a painfully easy thing to be - if you’re so inclined. FYI, The MFAH has a pleasantly draconian photo policy, but they have a fantastically wonderful “barely any docents to see you taking pictures policy” that really compliments it.

Technorati Tags: Damien Hirst, Museum of Fine Arts Houston

According to the gift shop, Big Sam is the world’s third tallest “giant statue of a person.” This weirdly monochrome, ferroconcrete likeness of Sam Houston, titled “A Tribute to Courage”, can be seen as one powers along the 45 Freeway between Dallas and Houston. We came on it from behind, following the signs to the parking lot and gift shop, where you can walk up a forested path to see the statue up close. Walking up the path you’re confronted with this giant spare head sitting in what looks like a small outdoor theater and stage, where you can sit and gaze at it like a Southern Ozymandias.

If I had to judge by the iconography of the plaque, I’d say the statue likely exists because of the generous support of local Freemasons, as their plaque is way bigger and more detailed than the tiny dedication plaque at the rear of the statue. Either that, or they just threw their money into the plaque? I don’t know why people are always on the Masons for being so secretive - from what I’ve seen they’re super into promoting the ultra-detailed history of their more famous members.

The Huntsville area was a little strange - it has two notable characteristics.

1) All the Sam Houston related stuff

2) It’s home to a ton of prisons (eight if I recall). The gift shop at the Houston Statue had a pamphlet for folks looking to go on a driving tour of the prisons.

Technorati Tags: Sam Houston, Texas, On the Road, sculpture, statue, Masonic, Freemason, Texan

Do I not notice these in Los Angeles?  Or are they just way more surreal on the road?  I do not know.

I look to road signs with almost religious intentions.  They’re the symbolism of the dreamtime of the road.  For the past half decade, I’ve seen the above sign, advertising Microsurgical Vasectomy Reversal in half a dozen states.  If road trips are like dreams - this sign is a mysterious constant.

It’s always the same sign, with different phone numbers, depending on the region.  Somewhere there’s a headquarters to this operation, a nexus of vasectomy removal, where a phone sits, awaiting the call of a man, desperate to put his soldiers back into the field.

above - I think I’ve noticed this on previous trips, but there’s a fantastic number of medical billboards in Texas.  If I were to judge Texas by its billboards, I’d think the state is all about horsepower, adult products and elective surgery.  The above billboard, for Robotic Heart Surgery,is probably the strangest of the bunch - it’s a teaser ad for the Trinity Mother Frances Health System.  I’m left wondering if Texans have become so wealthy that they spend their time and dollars planning elaborate health care procedures - or, maybe there’s so little health insurance in Texas that the health care system has become completely Darwinian and market driven.

Technorati Tags: medical, billboard, on the road, vasectomy, robotic, robotic heart surgery