In the past day or so, The Getty has been uploading a host of short, narrated overviews of objects in its collection to its YouTube account. Some of them, like Titian’s Portrait of Alfonso d’ Avalon, Marquis of Vasto, in Armour with a Page, one of my favourite paintings in their collection, is [...]]]>

In the past day or so, The Getty has been uploading a host of short, narrated overviews of objects in its collection to its YouTube account. Some of them, like Titian’s Portrait of Alfonso d’ Avalon, Marquis of Vasto, in Armour with a Page, one of my favourite paintings in their collection, is so freshly uploaded that it isn’t labeled properly yet. Most seem about 1:30 long, and the speakers are clear and have interesting insights into the history of the objects. I’m not sure if it’s the same narration as one would experience on an audio tour, as I’ve never used one of those, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case. Regardless, they will tickle your love for some amazing paintings. Below, more Titian, the Penitent Magdelene.

I used to hate fire extinguisher graffiti but then I realized the purity of it, the ejaculatory, infantile, primeval joy of it, and now I like it even more.  There’s an inevitability in Katsu’s MOCA piece, that his tag is speaking for a lot of other writers and graffiti lovers here.  Someone get [...]]]>

I used to hate fire extinguisher graffiti but then I realized the purity of it, the ejaculatory, infantile, primeval joy of it, and now I like it even more.  There’s an inevitability in Katsu’s MOCA piece, that his tag is speaking for a lot of other writers and graffiti lovers here.  Someone get that man a crown.  Via 12ozProphet, who has more pictures of the piece in progress and completed.  According to 12oz, MOCA wants to buff it and some of the Art in the Street artists are trying to get it to stay.

UPDATE!  Now living on video.

My visit to LACMA during Spring Break! Woo! Woo! 2011! was particularly fruitful.  The stars aligned and I kept hitting high notes over and over again.  Anyways…

The piece above is John Outterbridge’s John Ivery’s Truck: Hauling Away the Traps and Saving the Yams.  If my memory serves, it may be one of [...]]]>

My visit to LACMA during Spring Break! Woo! Woo! 2011! was particularly fruitful.  The stars aligned and I kept hitting high notes over and over again.  Anyways…

The piece above is John Outterbridge’s John Ivery’s Truck: Hauling Away the Traps and Saving the Yams.  If my memory serves, it may be one of the first pieces of art I professionally handled, back at El Camino College Art Gallery, in 1996 or 1997.  I had just started studying Gallery Management with Michael Lewis Miller, right on time to spend three weeks working alongside John during the installation of a solo show of his work.  John and I hit it off pretty well, and I listened in total awe as we moved dirt, wood, yams and lye soap around the gallery, constructing an installation like a metaphorical fire pit, the center of human exchange in the elemental darkness.  There were so many yams and so much dirt and it all needed to be just right and I was ecstatic to labour on John’s vision.  John is a storyteller, and he impressed upon me heavily his distrust for the objective and his love for the reality of a good story, the human truths.  To this day, I routinely think of John’s small wisdoms that he related to me while we worked in the rich smell of his earthy materials.  I remember how his narrative stretched from army life to his distaste for alcohol to UFO’s on country roads, that his mind was free, energetic and always roaming.

What I remember about the piece above (or its near doppleganger) is that there were several like it, one with silver wheels made from the shades of modernist lamps that John had scrounged from someone’s curbside garbage, and that they came out of shiny, custom-made, aluminum travel cases, made to transport John’s work to the 1994 Rio Biennial.  John was particularly proud of the cases, as if they represented another rung in his long climb to artistic prominence and recognition, the trappings of an established artist.  They also represented a savvy and renewable use of the budget for the Rio project, something that also resonates with me to this day.  Inside the cases, custom cut foam allowed the trucks and cars to be slid out with the utmost of care.  My hands in tight cotton gloves, in the trust of a threesome or foursome of preparators, sliding the trucks out of the tightly cut foam remains my ur-memory as an installer and preparator.

Looking back, I can see a lot of my curatorial and artistic practice growing out of my early exhibition experiences working with John and people like him.  My commitment to installation and site-specific projects, a trust that artists can propose unseen and untested works and that they will be successful, the importance of history and narrative, my distaste for academic exercise in artmaking, and much, much more…

Just when I thought I had exhausted the total supply of severed heads in LA museums, LACMA shines through. I was double lucky (or bi-winning, as we say these days) on this find, as I arrived at LACMA just after they rotated the Raymond and Frances Bushell Collection of netsuke in the Japanese [...]]]>

Just when I thought I had exhausted the total supply of severed heads in LA museums, LACMA shines through. I was double lucky (or bi-winning, as we say these days) on this find, as I arrived at LACMA just after they rotated the Raymond and Frances Bushell Collection of netsuke in the Japanese Pavilion, probably my favourite hidden gem in a LA museum, and discovered two 19th century severed heads in the collection, previously unknown to me. It’s been too long since this site had a severed heads post, ne?

At top, that’s the Head of Nitta Yoshisada, a legendary samurai clan leader from the 14th century (wikipedia – it’s gotta be true!), who, faced with certain death after being pinned under his horse, denied his enemies the satisfaction of killing him by severing his own head with his sword. That’s as badass as it gets, hands down.

Below, we’ve got Decapitated Woman’s Head, an anonymous rotting skull.  A criminal, the victim of a crime, in the wrong place at the wrong time?  The world may never know.

If the above has got your jugular throbbing with gory anxiety, feel encouraged to visit my ongoing exploration of the subject of decapitation in art history.  If, on the other hand, you’re just into tiny, Japanese things, all my netsuke photos are always here.

This is interesting, MOCA-latte.org, a website devoted to developing a critical dialogue regarding Art in the Streets, MOCA’s upcoming, “inevitably criticized” exhibition.  They’re sending out stickers allowing you to play the part of Jeffrey Deitch, “approving” or “disapproving” of various pieces of street art out in the wild, they have a forum, a [...]]]>

This is interesting, MOCA-latte.org, a website devoted to developing a critical dialogue regarding Art in the Streets, MOCA’s upcoming, “inevitably criticized” exhibition.  They’re sending out stickers allowing you to play the part of Jeffrey Deitch, “approving” or “disapproving” of various pieces of street art out in the wild, they have a forum, a manifesto, the works.

Tonight Gateway: Japan opens at the Torrance Art Museum, a gathering of Japanese and American artists curated by Yuko Wakaume, Ei Kibukawa and Max Presneill. Among the American artists in the show, three of them, Jocelyn Foye, Macha Suzuki and Devon Tsuno number amongst my favourite people and artists.  I spent yesterday previewing [...]]]>

Tonight Gateway: Japan opens at the Torrance Art Museum, a gathering of Japanese and American artists curated by Yuko Wakaume, Ei Kibukawa and Max Presneill. Among the American artists in the show, three of them, Jocelyn Foye, Macha Suzuki and Devon Tsuno number amongst my favourite people and artists.  I spent yesterday previewing the show and shooting film and photos of the assembly of Jocelyn Foye’s monumental clay sumo ring (seen above, artfully concealed under protective plastic), where at 8pm tonight, wrestlers Daishochi and Wakanoho will engage in their own monumental battle, right in the middle of the gallery.  It’s going to be epic.

Here’s a brief preview via Mike Boehm of the LA Times.

Participating artists include:

Masaru Aikawa, Taku Anekawa, Shusuke Ao, Jocelyn Foye, Shingo Francis, Gajin Fujita, Tomoo Gokita, Yuki Hashimoto, Mitsuko Ikeno, Ichiro Irie, Minako Kumagai, Gil Kuno, Nobuhito Nishigawara, Satoshi Saegusa, Keiko Sakamoto, Akira Shikiya, Macha Suzuki, Devon Tsuno, Kenichi Yokono, Akihiro Yasugi, Yuki Yoshida

Reception is 6-9pm, tonight, March 26.  Sumo performance at 8, it will be tight and crowded, arrive early get a good spot to see the performance.

Currently on view at LACMA.  This thing is hypnotic.

Sure, you could just browse my Flickr set for all the best bits and lie to your friends that you saw the show, but really?  You’ve got the time.  LACMA’s fashion collection is one of LA’s most hidden gems and I’m hoping that the new addition of space at LACMA creates more opportunities [...]]]>

Sure, you could just browse my Flickr set for all the best bits and lie to your friends that you saw the show, but really?  You’ve got the time.  LACMA’s fashion collection is one of LA’s most hidden gems and I’m hoping that the new addition of space at LACMA creates more opportunities for the museum to show off some of its best bits from the permanent collection.  Fashioning Fashion is definitely worthy of the high bar that the museum set with Breaking the Mode in 2007, especially in the “let’s all appreciate the frightening tailoring skills of bygone eras” department.  The exhibition closes on March 27.

I am so gonna steal this “elongated body tiger line drawing” for some future project.  That’s real style, there, just lovely line work.  Hollow Brick with Tigers and Bi Disk, from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-225 CE), from the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  Side view & label.

When [...]]]>

I am so gonna steal this “elongated body tiger line drawing” for some future project.  That’s real style, there, just lovely line work.  Hollow Brick with Tigers and Bi Disk, from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-225 CE), from the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  Side view & label.

When we think about funerary culture, We all are trained like seals to think of mummies and pyramids.  But the Chinese devotion to funerary art can give Egypt a run for its money, any day of the week.  Damn near every pre-Han Chinese object, especially anything made of bronze, including whole sets of bells and gongs were for elaborate tombs or rituals related to burial.  Prior to the Han Dynasty, and the emergence of a merchant class, people were pretty much living for death, with the idea that everything would be better when you’re dead, so you better make all this great stuff, never use it and then be buried alongside it.  Even after the Han Dynasty, the trend never stopped, some people just started being rich enough to afford good stuff in life and in death.

Some more pretty random stuff from SBMA in this tiny Flickr set.

Going through the archives of the unposted, found netsuke I hadn’t posted or written about before…  I’m pretty sure there’s probably 100 more where these came from. LACMA does a great job of rotating the netsuke in the Raymond and Frances Bushell Collection, so I’m not sure if any of the netsuke in [...]]]>

Going through the archives of the unposted, found netsuke I hadn’t posted or written about before…  I’m pretty sure there’s probably 100 more where these came from. LACMA does a great job of rotating the netsuke in the Raymond and Frances Bushell Collection, so I’m not sure if any of the netsuke in this post are currently on view, but all of these were on view in August of 2010.  The teeny, tiny gun at top is by Murusada, of whom I know nothing about.  I don’t know if it works, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it did.  You can see all 18 of the netsuke posted today here on Flickr, all of my netsuke images here, and a little focus on some more great ones below the break.

Above – Raconteur by Ohara Mitsuhiro.  You know you love the expressiveness of this figure.  If only they sold these in toy machines alongside Homies and such.  Ohara was born near Hiroshima and became an adherent of Zen Buddhism at some point.

Above – Seal Carved as a Circus Impresario, artist unknown – There’s a whole school of “wacky foreigners” art that emerges in the 19th century, as Japan re-opens to the world and foreign things become curious and interesting. This is described as a “seal” so it might not be a netsuke at all, but it very well could be a seal and a netsuke.  Anyone who wants to break into LACMA, Mission Impossible style, and extract this guy so that I can have the most awesome Monopoly playing piece ever, I will be forever in debt to.

Above – Substitute Doll, School of Masanao- I don’t know what a “substitute doll” is, although some googling revealed a series of unintelligible Pokemon references and made my lobe melt a little..  This netsuke is strangely beautiful, and kind of creeps me out a little.

Also, a tip for art people, netsuke people, Jewish history people, art history people, etc…  Ceramist Edmund de Waal’s book, The Hare with Amber Eyes, is one of the most stimulating books I read last year.  It’s about way, way more than netsuke, and a great narrative reference for anyone interested in Japonisme and the art world of Europe in the 19th Century, as well as an amazing, multi-generational portrait of the Euphrussi family, a Jewish trading and banking powerhouse.  I saw de Waal speak at the Getty earlier this winter and he passed around one of the netsuke from his family’s collection for the whole audience to hold in their hand, which was an experience I am much richer for.