Summer preview 2005: three times a year Artforum looks ahead to the coming season. The following survey previews fifty shows opening around the world between May and August."The Art of Richard Tuttle" San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a major modern art museum and San Francisco landmark. It opened in 1935 under founding director Dr. Grace Morley (Grace L. July 2-October 16 Curated by Madeleine Grynsztejn [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Born in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1941, Richard Tuttle is among the first generation of artists who took as a given the revolutionary transformations of the art object proposed by Minimalism minimalism, schools of contemporary art and music, with their origins in the 1960s, that have emphasized simplicity and objectivity. Minimalism in the Visual Arts . Extending those earlier concepts in new, unorthodox directions, through improvisational working procedures and nontraditional materials, Tuttle, along with such fellow practitioners as Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, and Bruce Nauman, engendered the loosely defined but enduringly influential "movement" known variously as post-Minimalism (the term coined by Robert Pincus-Witten, writing in these pages in 1973), Eccentric Abstraction (Lucy Lippard's 1966 moniker (1) A name, title or alias. See alias. (2) A COM object that is used to create instances of other objects. Monikers save programmers time when coding various types of COM-based functions such as linking one document to another (OLE). See COM and OLE. ), and process art. It isn't too much of an overstatement to assert that a great deal of the work now being shown in the world's art hot spots is an academic variant on post-Minimalist practice, perhaps with the salt of identity politics or the gloss of Pop thrown into the mix. "Tuttle's brilliance lies in his ambition to create a singular object that is as exuberant, as natural, and as real as a living form," remarks Madeleine Grynsztejn, SF MOMA Moma (mō`mä), town, E central Mozambique. It is important mainly as a harbor for the export of tropical produce. Elisa S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture. Grynsztejn also argues for the centrality of Tuttle's art as a singular inspiration to the more open-ended formal experimentation of later artists. This compendious com·pen·di·ous adj. Containing or stating briefly and concisely all the essentials; succinct. [Middle English, from Late Latin compendi retrospective--comprising some three hundred sculptures, paintings, assemblages, books, and works on paper--traces Tuttle's development in the forty years since his first solo exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in 1965. Of the twenty-four-year-old's premiere, Lippard wrote in Art International that "one of [Tuttle's] most impressive qualities is his avoidance of decorative effects; his art is quiet, modestly scaled and delicately colored.... The visual experience is a strange one because of the extreme thinness and fragile color of these reliefs as seen from an 'aerial' viewpoint; one feels they can't be tripped over but might be stepped on." Modesty of scale and delicacy of color have remained constants in Tuttle's sculptural practice, although he has since experimented with larger objects and a more vibrant palette. The catalogue for this first full-scale retrospective is itself something of an event: It includes an introductory essay by Grynsztejn; Cornelia Butler on Tuttle's notions of drawing as well as improvisation and gesture; Richard Shiff on Tuttle's unique qualities as an abstractionist; Robert Storr on the artist's critical reception in the United States and Europe; and Katy Siegel on his relationship to the written word and bookmaking bookmaking Gambling practice of determining odds and receiving and paying off bets on the outcome of sporting events and other competitions. Horse racing is perhaps most closely associated with bookmaking, but boxing, baseball, football, basketball, and other sports have . In addition, Tara McDowell, Elizabeth A. T. Smith, Adam D. Weinberg, and Charles Wylie focus on specific aspects of Tuttle's career, such as his 1971 exhibition in Dallas and his "controversial" 1975 Whitney show--two venues, not coincidentally, to which this retrospective will travel. --David Rimanelli Travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City, founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. It was an outgrowth of the Whitney Studio (1914–18), the Whitney Studio Club (1918–28), and the Whitney Studio Galleries (1928–30). , New York, Nov. 10, 2005-Feb. 12, 2006; Des Moines Art Center The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. A large exhibition hall rotates through several themes during the year, most of which are featured from one to three months at a time. , Mar. 18-June 11, 2006; Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, USA along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. History , July 15-Oct. 8, 2006; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago This article is about Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. For other Museums named Museum of Contemporary Art, see Museum of Contemporary Art. The Museum of Contemporary Art, often abbreviated to MCA , Nov. 11, 2006-Feb. 4, 2007; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles This article is about Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. For other Museums named Museum of Contemporary Art, see Museum of Contemporary Art. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum in and near Los Angeles, California. , Mar. 18-June 25, 2007. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NEW YORK Lee Friedlander Museum of Modern Art June 5-August 29 Curated by Peter Galassi It's fitting, if inevitable, that a Lee Friedlander retrospective should originate at the Museum of Modern Art, an institution that championed his work early on (John Szarkowski put him in the historic 1967 "New Documents" show with Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand) and has collected it in depth ever since. With some five hundred prints drawn from throughout Friedlander's insanely prolific fifty-year career, the show is likely to be as unruly and unconventional as the work, which includes genre-busting portraiture, self-portraiture, landscapes, still lifes, and architectural studies, virtually all in black-and-white. This maverick traditionalist has quietly and relentlessly redefined the medium. At MOMA, he's bound to make some noise. Travels to the Haus der Kunst The Haus der Kunst (literally House of Art) is an art museum in Munich, Germany. It is located at Prinzregentenstrasse 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park. , Munich, Nov. 12, 2005-Feb. 12, 2006.--Vince Aletti Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Drawing Whitney Museum of American Art June 2-October 9 Curated by Elisabeth Sussman To look closely at the world is to understand that the line between familiar surface appearances and the complex, hidden structures that constitute them--between the "real" and the abstract--has never been as definitive as conventional wisdom would have it. Exploring this zone of indeterminacy in·de·ter·mi·na·cy n. The state or quality of being indeterminate. Noun 1. indeterminacy - the quality of being vague and poorly defined indefiniteness, indefinity, indeterminateness, indetermination via science, psychology, and hallucinatory hal·lu·ci·na·to·ry adj. 1. Of or characterized by hallucination. 2. Inducing or causing hallucination. symbolism, the eight artists in this show--including Franz Ackermann, Julie Mehretu, Matthew Ritchie, and Terry Winters--are all supremely skilled mark makers who synthesize information in dazzlingly idiosyncratic id·i·o·syn·cra·sy n. pl. id·i·o·syn·cra·sies 1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group. 2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity. 3. ways. The ninety-odd works on view are accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Sussman, Caroline A. Jones, and Katy Siegel and a story by novelist Ben Marcus.--Jeffrey Kastner [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim Solomon Robert Guggenheim (February 2, 1861 – November 3, 1949) was an American art collector and philanthropist. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Meyer Guggenheim and brother to Simon, Benjamin, Daniel and four others. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: see Guggenheim Museum. May 20-August 10 Curated by Jo-Anne Birnie-Danzker, Brigitte Murnau, and Karole Vail The Museum of Non-Objective Painting was eventually renamed for its benefactor, Solomon R. Guggenheim, but its first curator and founding director (1939-52), visionary and champion, was the German artist Hilla Rebay. It was Rebay who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build "a temple to non-objectivity" and who supervised the museum's inaugural show, "Art of Tomorrow." This double retrospective recreates part of that exhibition and presents Rebay's own collages, drawings, and paintings. Travels in two parts to co-organizing institutions Schloss-museum Murnau and Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Sept. 8, 2005-Jan. 8, 2006; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, May 4-July 30, 2006.--Frances Richard Pioneering Modern Painting: Cezanne and Pissarro, 1865-1885 Museum of Modern Art June 26-September 12 Curated by Joachim Pissarro Displacing the monographic privileging of the solitary genius in favor of fraternal pairings, MOMA is following the success of "Matisse Picasso" with a show devoted to the twenty-year artistic relationship between Cezanne and Pissarro. The exhibition (organized by the latter's great-grandson, now a MOMA curator) offers as evidence of dialogic contact and mutual response some eighty-five paintings and eight drawings--portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, some of which were made when the artists worked side by side in the regions of Pontoise and Auvers. Get ready for more long lines! Travels to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also known as LACMA, is the official and world-renowned art museum of the County of Los Angeles, California, located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. , Oct. 20, 2005-Jan. 16, 2006; Musee d'Orsay, Paris, Feb. 27-May 28, 2006.--Suzanne Hudson Joan Snyder Jewish Museum August 12-October 23 Curated by Katherine French For the last three and a half decades, Joan Snyder has fused process (whether desultory des·ul·to·ry adj. 1. Moving or jumping from one thing to another; disconnected: a desultory speech. 2. Occurring haphazardly; random. See Synonyms at chance. or earnest) with politics, and the resulting works, nearly thirty of which are on view for this survey at the Jewish Museum, have made Snyder a doyenne doy·enne n. A woman who is the eldest or senior member of a group. [French, feminine of doyen, senior member; see doyen.] Noun 1. of feminist painting and an increasingly likely subject for art-historical canonization canonization (kăn'ənĭzā`shən), in the Roman Catholic Church, process by which a person is classified as a saint. It is now performed at Rome alone, although in the Middle Ages and earlier bishops elsewhere used to canonize. . Betraying the marks of their making, Snyder's best works play the materiality of language against its signifying possibilities in gestures that are by turns surprisingly intimate and barbarously bar·ba·rous adj. 1. Primitive in culture and customs; uncivilized. 2. Lacking refinement or culture; coarse. 3. Characterized by savagery; very cruel. See Synonyms at cruel. 4. significant. Her graphic utterances--most recently against the war in Iraq--are often performative per·for·ma·tive adj. Relating to or being an utterance that peforms an act or creates a state of affairs by the fact of its being uttered under appropriate or conventional circumstances, as a justice of the peace uttering accusations, scrawled salvos that refuse to be just writing on the wall. Travels to the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA, Nov. 10, 2005-Feb. 5, 2006.--SH Chanel Metropolitan Museum of Art May 5-August 7 Curated by Andrew Bolton and Harold Kota Perhaps nothing in culture more effectively validates the Platonic distrust in physical forms than fashion. By its very definition, fashion hinges on a temporality tem·po·ral·i·ty n. pl. tem·po·ral·i·ties 1. The condition of being temporal or bounded in time. 2. temporalities Temporal possessions, especially of the Church or clergy. Noun 1. that condemns its participants to imminent outdatedness. One name in couture has, however, managed to achieve household status while always remaining a la mode, and that is Chanel. Deemed a reassessment of aesthetic values rather than a retrospective, this show spins through eighty years of Chanel history (1920-2000) and more than fifty dresses from the label's Parisian archive--naturally, with matching shoes and accessories. The sleek modernism of Coco Chanel's wool suits and quilted-leather bags is contrasted with current house-heir Karl Lagerfeld's audacious postmodernist rhyming on his predecessor's fabrics and cuts.--Christopher Bollen [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Make It Now: New Sculpture in New York SculptureCenter May 15-July 31 Curated by Mary Ceruti, Anthony Huberman, and Franklin Sirmans Overlapping with the UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX Hammer's show on new sculpture in LA, "Make It Now" offers the bicoastal bi·coas·tal adj. 1. Relating to both the east and west coasts of the United States, as: a. Traveling frequently between coasts as part of a business or living arrangement: a chance to compare and contrast the state of sculpture, East and West. Those grounded in New York will have plenty to absorb in Queens, where Ceruti, Huberman, and independent curator Sirmans present some fifty works--most made within the last year, almost all specifically for the show--by about thirty up-and-coming object makers, including Ester Partegas, Gedi Sibony, and Nicole Cherubini. Despite the eclectic roster, this is not merely a here's-what's-new survey: The curators argue for the relevance of specific strategies, such as the unironic revival of conventions like the monument and the pedestal.--Elizabeth Schambelan BOSTON Getting Emotional Institute of Contemporary Art May 18-September 5 Curated by Nicholas Baume "Getting emotional? Oh, please don't tell me about it. See a shrink." But in this expansive show, ICA Ica (ē`kä), city (1993 pop. 108,724), capital of Ica dept., SW Peru, on the Pan-American Highway. It is a commercial center for the cotton, wool, and wine produced in the region. There are several summer resorts nearby. chief curator Nicholas Baume insists on talking about it, presenting over fifty works by a diverse group of thirty-two artists who similarly shirk shirk In Islam, idolatry and polytheism, both of which are regarded as heretical. The Qu'ran stresses that God does not share his powers with any partner (sharik) and warns that those who believe in idols will be harshly dealt with on the Day of Judgment. tight-lipped tight·lipped also tight-lipped adj. 1. Having the lips pressed together. 2. Loath to speak; close-mouthed. See Synonyms at silent. politesse, favoring unmitigated gut spillage. But the roster seems, hmm, schizophrenic? Sure, Elizabeth Peyton, Jack Pierson, and Nan Goldin are all famed for their expression of "feeling"--either tender or histrionic--but what about more conceptual practices, like those of Ed Ruscha, Christian Jankowski, and Darren Almond? And what about Andreas Gursky? Clearly, Baume's notion of getting emotional involves far more than pulling out your handkerchief. The catalogue features essays by Baume, Jennifer Doyle, and Wayne Koestenbaum.--DR PHILADELPHIA Richard Pettibone Institute of Contemporary Art April 30-July 31 Curated by Ian Berry and Michael Duncan Even if you've had your fill of the '80s Levine/Bidlo art-quoting-art buffet, you may want to loosen your belt for this retrospective of over two hundred paintings and sculptures by Richard Pettibone. Along with Elaine Sturtevant, Pettibone expanded on Duchamp's precedent before appropriation and quotation became buzzwords Below is a list of common buzzwords which form part of the business jargon of Corporate work environments. General Conversation
Laguna Art Museum represents the core California art scene. It places the aesthetics of the west coast within a national and international context and develops scholarship on the art history of California. (Duncan), spans six decades and includes early miniaturized copies of Warhol, Stella, and others--which, perhaps more than any appropriation-ist gesture, needled at the souvenir/collectible aspect of art. Travels to the Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, Nov. 19, 2005-Feb. 12, 2006; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA, Mar. 12-May 28, 2006.--Christopher Miles COLUMBUS, OH Vanishing Point Wexner Center Galleries at the Belmont Building May 21-August 14 Curated by Claudine Ise In his influential volume Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), Marc Auge writes of those uncanny sites--super-markets, airports, and freeways--that seem at once everywhere and nowhere. This peculiar vision of architecture is the focus of "Vanishing Point." Comprising sixty-six works from the past decade, the show reveals that the "non-place" is familiar stomping ground for art-world stalwarts and relative new-comers alike--among them Ed Ruscha, Dike Blair, Luisa Lambri, and e-Xplo, an artist collective that has created an installation based on the nocturnal landscape of the Wexner's hometown. A catalogue with essays by Ise and Hal Foster should provide conceptual ballast to the ambient phenomena the show addresses.--Pamela M. Lee [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MINNEAPOLIS Chuck Close Walker Art Center July 24-October 16 Curated by Siri Engberg and Madeleine Grynsztejn Since the late '60s Chuck Close has trained his monumentalizing eye on family, friends, fellow artists--and himself. Indeed, self-portraiture from the past four decades is the focus of this exhibition, at the institution that acquired (in 1969) Close's first foray into the genre. Organized in conjunction with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and featuring eighty-five of Close's tesseraic works in painting, drawing, photography, collage, and printmaking printmaking Art form consisting of the production of images, usually on paper but occasionally on fabric, parchment, plastic, or other support, by various techniques of multiplication, under the direct supervision of or by the hand of the artist. , the show promises to be a highlight of the museum's inaugural year in its new Herzog & de Meuron-designed expansion. Travels to SF MOMA, Nov. 19, 2005-Feb. 28, 2006; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Mar. 25-June 18, 2006; Albright-Knox Art Gallery The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art located in Buffalo, New York. It is located at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, which is directly across the street from Buffalo State College. , Buffalo, NY, July 22-Oct. 22, 2006.--Lisa Pasquariello DES MOINES, IA Christian Jankowski Des Moines Art Center June 22-August 28 Curated by Jeff Fleming Can dialectics break bricks? Christian Jankowski often romantically reframes this Situationist koan koan (kō`än) [Jap.,=public question; Chin. kung-an], a subject for meditation in Ch'an or Zen Buddhism, usually one of the sayings of a great Zen master of the past. in three dimensions, not by dubbing sound tracks over preexisting pre·ex·ist or pre-ex·ist v. pre·ex·ist·ed, pre·ex·ist·ing, pre·ex·ists v.tr. To exist before (something); precede: Dinosaurs preexisted humans. v.intr. film (as per Rene Vienet's kung-fu technique) but rather by capturing on camera a minister thanking God for the properties of the video medium or aspiring actors discussing their love of cinema, shot in the style of classic Cinecitta productions (whose studios serve as the setting). The artist's first US survey features fourteen such video and film works and lesser-known photographs and silk screens. The catalogue includes essays by Fleming, Norman M. Klein, Jordan Kantor, and Bruce Wagner. Travels to the MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, Oct. 14-Dec. 30; Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool, Jan. 19-Mar. 19, 2006.--Tim Griffin HOUSTON Gego Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
June 26-September 25 Curated by Mari Carmen Carmen throws over lover for another. [Fr. Lit.: Carmen; Fr. Opera: Bizet, Carmen, Westerman, 189–190] See : Faithlessness Carmen the cards repeatedly spell her death. [Fr. Ramirez Complementing the MFAH's 2003 retrospective of Gego's work, this new, more focused show gathers roughly ninety drawings and prints. Included are the Venezuelan artist's idiosyncratic "drawings without paper," in which she dismisses medium specificity by exploring line in space, and her tejeduras, woven-paper works that render the planarity of the support a fallacy. Viewers may not get the full gist of Gego's critique of pictorial structure in a show that emphasizes the effects of light and space on paper, but if they look beyond the formal aspects of these works, they should be able to identify a solid distrust of perceptual certainties in her quest for the immaterial. Travels to the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Feb.-May 2006; the Drawing Center, New York, Oct.-Dec. 2006.--Monica Amor LOS ANGELES Stephen Shore UCLA Hammer Museum June 26-October 16 Curated by Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen Besides almost single-handedly dismantling the distinction between high and low forms of photography, introducing the use of color film for high-brow ambitions, and reviving large-format photography, Stephen Shore forged, in the '70s, two distinct ways of observing the colloquial American landscape. "Uncommon Places," 1973-86, posed a silent, dense description of the present, while "American Surfaces," 1972-73, was restless, ephemeral, and glib. This show of 120 prints from 1968 to 1993 (as well as Shore's daily logs from 1973 and early conceptual projects) should illustrate both sensibilities while forecasting the photographic realism of the present. Travels to the Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver, Nov. 12, 2005-Jan. 15, 2006; Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum, located at 55 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, is one of the largest art museums in Central Massachusetts. History and Collection Overview , MA, Mar. 24-June 23, 2006.--Stephen Frailey [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] VANCOUVER Franz West Vancouver Art Gallery The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is the fifth-largest art gallery in Canada and the largest in Western Canada. It is located at 750 Hornby Street in Vancouver, British Columbia. May 28-September 5 Curated by Bruce Grenville Depending on which aspect of his art you emphasize, Franz West is either a contemporary Giacometti or the godfather of relational aesthetics. This show of thirty works consists of three categories: sculpture, furniture, and the artist's so-called "adaptives," or Passstucke, which are the main focus of the exhibition. These variously shaped objects are meant to be handled and worn by gallery visitors, thus turning the viewer into an active performer. In explaining these odd-looking items made of papiermache, plaster, or polyester, West claims that they give form to neurotic symptoms: When sporting an "adaptive," the body is forced into all kinds of strange positions, making tensions and obsessions visible. --Daniel Birnbaum TORONTO The Shape of Colour: Excursions in Colour Field Art, 1950-2005 Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is an art museum on the eastern edge of Toronto's downtown Chinatown district, on Dundas Street West between McCaul Street and Beverley Street. June 1-August 7 Curated by David Moos Amid the dust kicked up by a Frank Gehry-designed expansion (including board resignations and staff layoffs) the Art Gallery of Ontario's new contemporary curator, Toronto native David Moos, is launching an "excursion in colour field art." Canadians have always crowded both the telling and the making of the Color Field saga, from elder painters like Jack Bush to recent scholars like Shep Steiner and Robert Linsley (who does not, unfortunately, contribute to the catalogue). If Moos's checklist of thirty-six artists (from Helen Frankenthaler to a Charles Long--Stereolab collaboration) seems thinly stretched over vast ground, it at least bides time for the more definitive survey William Agee and David Anfam are preparing for 2007.--Lane Relyea Glenn Ligon Power Plant June 25-September 5 Curated by Wayne Baerwaldt and Thelma Golden Glenn Ligon has long demonstrated an omnivorous omnivorous eating both plant and animal foods. taste for words and images by the likes of Richard Pryor and Adrian Piper. However, this midcareer survey of more than fifty works spanning two decades traces Ligon's penchant for gobbling up and reevaluating his own earlier output. Condition Report, 2000, for example, is based on a conservator's assessment of a painting from twelve years before, while other works find Ligon meditating more generally on the theme of revision. A catalogue with contributions by Wayne Koestenbaum and Mark Nash, among others, promises to shed light on Ligon's conspicuous self-consumption. Travels to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston The Contemporary Arts Museum - Houston is a not-for-profit institution in Houston, Texas, dedicated to presenting the contemporary art of our time to the public. As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visual arts of the present and recent past and , Jan. 14-Apr. 2, 2006; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Sept. 30-Dec. 31, 2006; and other venues.--Scott Rothkopf LONDON Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970 Tate Modern June 1-September 18 Curated by Donna de Salvo For some, the "System" of the 1960s evoked images of a nameless and monolithic authority. For artists, however, the notion of "systems aesthetics" referred broadly to works of art conceived as open and expanding networks, a concept in dialogue with popular discourses around cybernetics cybernetics [Gr.,=steersman], term coined by American mathematician Norbert Wiener to refer to the general analysis of control systems and communication systems in living organisms and machines. . Former Tate curator Donna de Salvo takes up the importance of structures and systems in movements from Fluxus to Neo-concretism, Minimalism to Conceptualism conceptualism, in philosophy, position taken on the problem of universals, initially by Peter Abelard in the 12th cent. Like nominalism it denied that universals exist independently of the mind, but it held that universals have an existence in the mind as concept. . Spanning the mid-'60s through the '70s, "Open Systems" features art in a range of media by over thirty artists--Bas Jan Ader, Marcel Broodthaers, Valie Export, and Ilya Kabakov, among others. The accompanying catalogue includes essays by de Salvo, Boris Groys, Mark Godfrey, and Johanna Burton.--PML [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Back to Black--Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary Whitechapel Art Gallery June 7-September 4 Curated by Patrine Archer-Straw, David A. Bailey, and Richard J. Powell Though historical categories have formed the basis for many recent exhibitions on black art, "Back to Black" is unique in its transnational and interdisciplinary approach to the heyday of black political consciousness, namely the '60s and '70s. Selecting forty-five artists from the US, Britain, and the Caribbean, the curators have used their academic acumen to present a vast swath of diasporic works and concepts, from the originative (Romare Bearden) to the brilliantly blaxploitational (Melvin Van Peebles Melvin Van Peebles (born August 21, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright and composer, and the father of actor and director Mario Van Peebles. ) to the perennially cool (David Hammons). Travels to the New Art Gallery Walsall, England, Sept. 30-Nov. 20. --Malik Gaines Frida Kahlo Tate Modern June 9-October 9 Curated by Tanya Barson and Emma Dexter Some twenty years after Frida fever swept American museums and arthistory departments, the British public gets its first major Kahlo retrospective. This survey comprises over seventy paintings, drawings, and photographs, drawn mainly from Mexican institutions--though rumor has it that Madonna is also lending from her collection. Portraits, still lifes, and idiosyncratic takes on retablo A retablo (or lamina) is a small oil painting on any variety of surface, typically a wood carving. This is a different meaning to the original one in Spanish, which still applies in Spain, which is equivalent to retable in English. , or devotional painting, are augmented by watercolors and oil sketches from the mid-'20s and by syncretistic syn·cre·tism n. 1. Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous. 2. spiritual iconographies made later in the artist's life. Standouts will, of course, be the iconic self-portraits, including Freida and Diego Rivera, 1931, and The Two Fridas, 1939. The catalogue features essays by a host of contributors, including art historians Gannit Ankori and Christina Burrus.--FR Colour After Klein Barbican BARBICAN. An ancient word to signify a watch-tower. Barbicanage was money given for the support of a barbican. Art Gallery May 26-September 11 Curated by Jane Alison Often thought of in terms of chromophobia, contemporary art turns out to have a severe case of latent chromomania. The Barbican's Jane Alison makes the diagnosis in an exhibition of about sixty paintings, videos, photographs, and sculptures from the past half century by noted chromomaniacs like William Eggleston and Sophie Calle, as well as a few surprises, such as Bas Jan Ader. The topic has long been a red herring in the antiaesthetic-versus-beauty grudge match, so it will be interesting to see if this rainbow coalition tells us anything about color's social meaning or whether color is content simply to dazzle visually. The catalogue includes an essay by Nuit Banai and reprints texts by Spencer Finch, Helio Oiticica, and Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Yves Klein. --Katy Siegel Cedric Price Design Museum June 25-October 5 Curated by Sophie McKinlay and Howard Schubert Cedric Price (1934-2003) is one of those architects whose paucity of built works belies their profound influence. His long affiliation with the Architectural Association in London ensured that his ideas worked their way deep into the DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. of contemporary architectural design. And when (or if) the modifiable structure of Zaha Hadid's Guggenheim Taichung is built, it will be haunted by the ghost of Price's 1976 Generator, a sort of full-size, modular dollhouse designed to be continuously reconfigured using an attached boom crane. In what promises to be a comprehensive retrospective of a most unusual architect, over 130 sketches, plans, models, and more will highlight some of Price's landmark projects as well as later, influential studies of London's South Bank district.--Kevin Pratt [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Andreas Slominski Serpentine Gallery April 26-June 12 Curated by Rochelle Steiner Why make things in a straightforward, easy manner when the job can be complex, difficult, and labor-intensive? Andreas Slominski is using his solo debut in a public British gallery as a platform to answer this question. The gallery's interior features numerous "finished" objects (including a full arsenal of Slominski's signature contraptions and animal snares), as well as a series of new, ephemeral actions. He has even arranged an outdoor intervention to take place before the opening involving a ski ramp, a professional skier, and an abundance of real snow provided by a snow machine. The show underscores the fact that Slominski's practice is more than just a laborious means to generate art objects; his elaborate performative acts also add a layer of mystery and myth to the more static works.--Alison M. Gingeras OXFORD Cecily Brown Modern Art Oxford June 28-August 28 Curated by Suzanne Cotter cot·ter n. 1. A bolt, wedge, key, or pin inserted through a slot in order to hold parts together. 2. A cotter pin. [Origin unknown. London-born, New York-based Cecily Brown has gone far--indeed too far, her detractors often complain. The artist's popularity in the glamour press may blind certain viewers to her work's virtues: To paint in a brash, gestural, figurative style may look retrograde, but this is among the qualities that makes Brown's work ... radical? That she does so without the bang-bang-you're-dead "ironies" of so many European painters of the Kippenbergian claque claque Group of people hired to clap (French, claquer) and show approval in order to influence a theatre audience. The claque dates from ancient times. Comedy competitions in Athens were often won by contestants who infiltrated audiences with paid supporters. is refreshing, too. With some fifteen large-scale paintings made in the past five years and a selection of works on paper, as well as her 1995 animated film Four Letter Heaven, Modern Art Oxford's deep focus on Brown's recent work should give doubters a chance to reconsider. Don't hate her because she's beautiful.--DR LIVERPOOL Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era Tate Liverpool May 27-September 25 Curated by Christoph Grunenberg They called themselves freaks and found their love style in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Herman Hesse novels, Beat poetry, and progressive rock, not to mention the hallucinatory drugs that made forms melt and time compress. Taking its title from the fabled California summer of 1967, this show of over one hundred artists of every stripe--Cecil Beaton, Jimi Hendrix, Milton Glaser, Yayoi Kusama, Lord Snowdon, and so on--revisits the heady, often tasteless, hippie era, circa 1965-72. In addition, documentary films, posters, magazines, multimedia installations, and more help revive the acid trips, conspiracy theories, be-ins, sit-ins, and peace marches that generated the New Age movement. Travels to the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt The Schirn Kunsthalle is Frankfurt's foremost exhibition space located in the heart of the old city next to the Dom (Frankfurt Cathedral). Exhibitions in recent years included retrospectives of Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Frida Kahlo Alberto Giacometti, Bill Viola, and Yves , Nov. 2, 2005-Feb. 12, 2006.--Jeff Rian GATESHEAD, ENGLAND Kienholz BALTIC May 14-August 29 Curated by Judith Blackall, Pippa Coles, and Alessandro Vincentelli Behold the corny soothsayers: Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, who traced the darker fringes of American life with results prophetic and cliched, have garnered a substantial show at BALTIC. The curatorial team has selected more than eighty works stretching over five decades, including celebrated tableaux like The Non-War Memorial, 1970. The Kienholzes gave us orchestra seats to death, loneliness, furtive sex, and war, but their lesser works have little more impact than a picked-over flea market: curious for sure, but nothing to take home. Nevertheless, given what's going on What's Going On is a record by American soul singer Marvin Gaye. Released on May 21, 1971 (see 1971 in music), What's Going On reflected the beginning of a new trend in soul music. in the world, perhaps revisiting the best of the Kienholzes will be the hair of the dog. Travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney This article is about Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. For other Museums named Museum of Contemporary Art, see Museum of Contemporary Art. The Museum of Contemporary Art (abbreviated MCA , Dec. 16, 2005-Mar. 5, 2006.--Ronald Jones [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DUBLIN Franz Ackermann Irish Museum of Modern Art The Irish Museum of Modern Art (Irish: Músaem Nua-Ealaíne na hÉireann), also known as IMMA, opened in May 1991 and is Ireland's leading national institution exhibiting and collecting modern and contemporary art. July 20-October 23 Curated by Rachael Thomas Despite fifteen straight years of globetrotting, it seems there are still a few locales that the peripatetic psychocartographer Franz Ackermann has yet to survey. The Berlin-based artist's first solo show in Ireland--accompanied by a catalogue with essays by IMMA IMMA Insured Money Market Account IMMA International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association IMMA International Maritime Meteorological Archive IMMA Installation Materiel Maintenance Activity senior curator Rachael Thomas, director Enrique Juncosa, and Daniel Birnbaum--features about thirty recent works, including his trademark "mental maps," and five newly commissioned wall paintings and installations. The contradictions of contemporary Ireland--where the "Celtic Tiger" economy continues to grow, even as poverty levels remain among the highest in the industrialized in·dus·tri·al·ize v. in·dus·tri·al·ized, in·dus·tri·al·iz·ing, in·dus·tri·al·iz·es v.tr. 1. To develop industry in (a country or society, for example). 2. world--should provide especially fertile territory for Ackermann's artistic peregrinations. --ES PARIS Chaplin in Pictures Jeu de Paume Jeu de paume was originally a French precursor of lawn tennis played without racquets. The players hit the ball with their hands, as in palla, volleyball, or certain varieties of pelota. Jeu de paume literally means: game of palm (of the hand). June 14-Sept 18 Curated by Christian Delage and Sam Stourdze Charlie Chaplin was once the most popular man on earth, the personification of modern times, icon of the twentieth century, and Christ's rival as the best-known person who ever lived. Taking its cue from "Charlot," the French appellation for Chaplin's Little Tramp, this show proposes to analyze two myths--Chaplin the man and Charlot the image. Spanning over seventy years, some three hundred photographs, press clippings, production notes, posters, and artifacts artifacts see specimen artifacts. from the Chaplin archives are complemented by screenings of home movies, newsreels, and Chaplin's films themselves--allowing one to look at the comedian looking at the world. Travels to the Kunsthal Rotterdam, Oct. 1, 2005-Jan. 15, 2006; Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Feb.-May 2006.--J. Hoberman STRASBOURG The Kinetic Eye: Optical and Kinetic Art, 1950-1975 Musee d'Art Moderne mo·derne adj. Striving to be modern in appearance or style but lacking taste or refinement; pretentious. [French, modern, from Old French; see modern.] Adj. 1. et Contemporain May 13-September 25 Curated by Emmanuel Guigon and Arnauld Pierre The great public success of MOMA's 1965 exhibition "The Responsive Eye" turned out to be a first-class burial for kinetic art, which did not survive the populist celebration of its optical tricks. Five years ago Guy Brett reopened the dossier (in "Force Fields," for London's Hayward Gallery and the Museu d'Arte Contemporani de Barcelona), reminding us that there is far more to kineticism ki·net·i·cism n. The theory or practice of kinetic art. ki·net  i·cist n. than mere gadgetry gadg·et·ry n. 1. Gadgets considered as a group. 2. The design or construction of gadgets. Noun 1. gadgetry - appliances collectively; "laborsaving gadgetry" . "The Kinetic Eye" intends to reexamine re·ex·am·ine also re-ex·am·ine tr.v. re·ex·am·ined, re·ex·am·in·ing, re·ex·am·ines 1. To examine again or anew; review. 2. Law To question (a witness) again after cross-examination. Op's illusionist trend, while also paying tribute to kineticism's physical and acoustic stimuli. Some sixty artists active in the '50s and '60s are represented, and two rooms are dedicated to contemporary works and even to nineteenth-century pioneers.--Yve-Alain Bois AVIGNON Anselm Kiefer Collection Lambert June 26-October 23 Curated by Eric Mezil Although he settled firmly (and one hears grandly) in the south of France South of France south n the South of France → le Sud de la France, le Midi thirteen years ago, Anselm Kiefer is still underknown, as they used to say, in his adopted country. Now, the Collection Lambert, situated in Avignon's Hotel de Caumont not far from Kiefer's own primary nest, is mounting his first major French exhibition in over twenty years, a retrospective of the artist's work from the 1970s to the present. The show includes one hundred huge paintings, gouaches, lead books, and monumental sculptures, as well as "specially created" new works. Will France fall for him? The timing might be right: If you start thinking about their work in a certain light, both Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager start seeming somehow Kieferesque. --Lisa Liebmann [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NIMES New German Painting Carre d'Art--Musee d'Art Contemporain May 11-September 18 Curated by Francoise Cohen cohen or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. Until recently, the French art establishment was generally known for its antipathy toward la peinture contemporaine, as well for its institutional sneering at trends generated abroad. Yet with Saatchi's blockbuster show "The Triumph of Painting" generating critical buzz across the Channel, Nimes's Carre d'Art has decided to break with past precedents and embrace the vitality of the "new" German painting scene. Leaving Franco-Germanic rivalries aside, this tightly focused survey features nearly one hundred works by eighteen artists--from '80s father figures Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen to market darlings Franz Ackermann, Eberhard Havekost, and Daniel Richter to an array of recent talents like Anselm Reyle and Tim Eitel. --AMG MADRID Shoji shoji In Japanese architecture, sliding partition doors and windows made of a latticework wooden frame and covered with a tough, translucent white paper. When closed, they softly diffuse light throughout the house. Ueda Fundacion "la Caixa" June 2-July 24 Curated by Gabriel Bauret and William Ewing This retrospective of Shoji Ueda's work, the first outside Japan, gathers 151 black-and-white photographs made in the course of a seven-decade career that began in 1932, when Ueda opened a studio on a remote coast of the Sea of Japan whose sand dunes would provide a favorite setting. The artful images he staged there--including a series of witty tableaux featuring his family in the early '50s--ran counter to the dark mood and aggressive experimentation that characterized photography in postwar Japan. But Ueda's stylized styl·ize tr.v. styl·ized, styl·iz·ing, styl·iz·es 1. To restrict or make conform to a particular style. 2. To represent conventionally; conventionalize. modernism was never reactionary, only charmingly idiosyncratic, and it looks even more winning in retrospect. Travels to Fundacion "la Caixa," Palma Palma or Palma de Mallorca (päl`mä thā mälyôr`kä), city (1990 pop. 325,120), capital of Majorca island and of Baleares prov., Spain, on the Bay of Palma. , Spain, Aug. 9-Oct. 9; Casa de la Provincia de Sevilla, Oct.-Dec.; Sala de Exposiciones de la Alameda, Malaga, Dec. 2005-Feb. 2006.--VA ROME Tom Wesselmann Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma June 8-September 18 Curated by Danilo Eccher Tom Wesselmann began his career with a joke too good to go unpunished unpunished Adjective without suffering or resulting in a penalty: the guilty must not go unpunished, such crimes should not remain unpunished Adj. 1. . When he began painting his stylized odalisques in the early '60s, he called them Great American Nudes--of which, at that time, if one excepts Eakins's nubile nu·bile adj. 1. Ready for marriage; of a marriageable age or condition. Used of young women. 2. Sexually mature and attractive. Used of young women. boys, there were exactly none. Unfortunately, Wesselmann's insistence that our experience of modern art is grounded in eros and intimacy would be sneered away by the "isms" of the '70s, along with his American vogue. It is altogether appropriate, then, that this thematic survey of some thirty canvases and free-standing works (most made since 1987) is being mounted in Rome, where, at least, his gorgeous odalisques, smokers, and ravishing rav·ish·ing adj. Extremely attractive; entrancing. rav ish·ing·ly adv. oranges will participate in a cosmopolitan discourse that accommodates itself to vanitas
In the arts, vanitas and desire.--Dave Hickey MUNCHENSTEIN/BASEL Jeff Wall Schaulager April 30-September 25 Curated by Theodora Vischer and Jeff Wall Continuing interest in Jeff Wall's art-historically savvy fusion of classical painterly paint·er·ly adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a painter; artistic. 2. a. Having qualities unique to the art of painting. b. ambition with Baudelairian social critique and digitally orchestrated cinematic style is well-nigh assured. But this exhibition of the celebrated Canadian photographer's work--the most comprehensive to date--should definitively illuminate the extent of his influence. Focusing on Wall's signature large-format photographic light boxes, as well as on more recent black-and-white prints, it includes some seventy works made since 1978. The simultaneous publication of a catalogue raisonne, edited by Vischer, the Schaulager's director, with texts by her and art historian Jean-Francois Chevrier, completes this panoramic view of the artist. Travels to Tate Modern, London, Oct. 21, 2005-Jan. 8, 2006.--Michael Wilson |
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