Art Fag City at The L Magazine: Inside The New Museum

by Paddy Johnson on December 19, 2007 · 20 comments

Unmonumental at The New Museum, Installation view via the NYtimes

My review of the New Museum show appears in the L magazine today. A preview of those thoughts below:

It’s not a particularly good moment for contemporary art at New York institutions, what with the stale series of exhibitions currently at PS1 and MoMA’s growing interest in hosting block buster shows like Georges Seurat, The Drawings. Other museums have performed better than this mind you, but as far as contemporary art in the city goes, many of us were looking to the New Museum’s inaugural opening this month to breathe some life into an otherwise lack luster scene.
Needless to say, their first installment of a show in four parts, misses that mark. Don’t get me wrong, Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, investigates a worthy if familiar topic — the renewed interest in sculptural assemblage — but I can’t help feeling uneasy about the museum’s choice to explore a genre known for calculated grittiness and use of recycled materials, when it seems to so neatly match the ideology behind the new building itself. “The museum serves as a hinge” says the New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff speaking to the function of the mesh that covers the façade of building, evoking the glitze of soho from afar, and toughness of a now softening Bowery up close. Maybe the sculptures aren’t meant to speak to this same set of ideas, but after seeing three floors of seemingly endless pretty/ugly collage, and spending days reading about the bridginess of a museum on the edge of two similarly contrasting neighborhoods, I couldn’t shake the connection. By the end of it, I felt like the virtues of working humbly had been beaten over my head by Richard Flood, and his curatorial team.
Monolithic curatorial vision may contribute to such a feeling, though I suspect the problem lies more in an unwillingness to take certain kinds of risks. For example, in the three floors of sculptural work presented, not one oversized piece was exhibited. With only 10,000 feet to play with, a curator might not want to chance a sculpture dominating the entire show, but the result is an exhibition that feels more like a marathon viewing experience, as opposed to one full of variation and life. It’s a real shame because the content within great pairings like Carol Bove’s, Experiment in Total Freedom, a stacked table night stand featuring a wire sculpture on one table, and a book with its page open to a reclining nude on another, and Nate Lowman’s aggressively bullet ridden teller window simply get lost within the mish mash of sculptures. While both Bove’s exploration of domesticated political movements and Lowman’s deadpan reconstitution of violent acts on some level explore the idea of neutered social movements, I don’t think it was their intention to also have the work function that way.

To continue reading click here.


What’s Special About V.I.P. 2.0	Gerald Ferguson’s Blue Collar Conceptualism: An Interview with Luke Murphy and Phil Grauer	Sanja Iveković at MoMA: That Backward Feminist From Croatia

http://jafabrit.blogspot.com/ jafabrit
I am now isolated in the middle of ohio, so I enjoy coming here and reading your reviews and seeing what is going on in the art world.
http://jafabrit.blogspot.com/ jafabrit
I am now isolated in the middle of ohio, so I enjoy coming here and reading your reviews and seeing what is going on in the art world.
Thomas
The fact that the New Museum spent tens of millions of dollars on a new building yet have no film projection in their theater is also really disappointing. There was a time, albeit a few decades back, when museums were active exhibitors of emerging cinema, and I was hoping that the New Museum would step up to the plate and fill a kind of institutional void, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to the case. What’s more, there’s such a rich and longstanding practice of collage within avant-garde film, one that has continued to evolve substantially in the 21st century, and though the curators have clearly made a point to consider a wide variety of assemblage (from sculpture to sound to new media), there’s no place for artists like, say, Martha Colburn or Lewis Klahr. Or maybe I’m just misinformed about the lack of film projection. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Thomas
The fact that the New Museum spent tens of millions of dollars on a new building yet have no film projection in their theater is also really disappointing. There was a time, albeit a few decades back, when museums were active exhibitors of emerging cinema, and I was hoping that the New Museum would step up to the plate and fill a kind of institutional void, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to the case. What’s more, there’s such a rich and longstanding practice of collage within avant-garde film, one that has continued to evolve substantially in the 21st century, and though the curators have clearly made a point to consider a wide variety of assemblage (from sculpture to sound to new media), there’s no place for artists like, say, Martha Colburn or Lewis Klahr. Or maybe I’m just misinformed about the lack of film projection. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Art Fag City
Well, I know they have a theatre and therefore assumed they would have a film projector, but I can’t say for sure. I’ll ask the press people at the New Museum and post their response.
Art Fag City
Well, I know they have a theatre and therefore assumed they would have a film projector, but I can’t say for sure. I’ll ask the press people at the New Museum and post their response.
Art Fag City
I had heard this as well though.
Art Fag City
I had heard this as well though.
Art Fag City
I had heard this as well though.
Denny Greenway
You have to look at the overall trajectory of the director and curators. The covering concept here is ‘Unmonumental’ which according to the museum equals ‘fragmented forms’ and includes our present age of “crumbling symbols and broken icons”. The weapon of choice is collage. Here’s what’s wrong. There is nothing unmonumental w/ ‘objects’ (their word) placed in a antiseptically ritualized space, especially when the placers are all college trained and the artists r working out of a flaneur model of production, Schwitters, the sequel. I might as well have been in a car dealership. Sapping their strategy of fragmentation is the curator’s naive lapse back into the old, hierarchy of art historical categories: sculpture, painting (‘the picture’) film, etc., meaning these are the same old art objects. Moreover, what crumbling symbols? Lexus? Google? Exxon? NBC maybe? Lastly, “Historically collage tends to appear in times of trauma and social change.” Okay, this is suspect as Picasso was not; Schwitters was isolated in Hanover in what Huelsenbeck called the ‘petis-bourgeosie’; and the Americans in the 50′s were as much about consumerism and language as anything else. Given that definition we should have seen a ton of collage out of Cambodia or Iraq, right?
Anyway, the upcoming show looks like something out of the Smithsonian. I hope not.
Denny Greenway
You have to look at the overall trajectory of the director and curators. The covering concept here is ‘Unmonumental’ which according to the museum equals ‘fragmented forms’ and includes our present age of “crumbling symbols and broken icons”. The weapon of choice is collage. Here’s what’s wrong. There is nothing unmonumental w/ ‘objects’ (their word) placed in a antiseptically ritualized space, especially when the placers are all college trained and the artists r working out of a flaneur model of production, Schwitters, the sequel. I might as well have been in a car dealership. Sapping their strategy of fragmentation is the curator’s naive lapse back into the old, hierarchy of art historical categories: sculpture, painting (‘the picture’) film, etc., meaning these are the same old art objects. Moreover, what crumbling symbols? Lexus? Google? Exxon? NBC maybe? Lastly, “Historically collage tends to appear in times of trauma and social change.” Okay, this is suspect as Picasso was not; Schwitters was isolated in Hanover in what Huelsenbeck called the ‘petis-bourgeosie’; and the Americans in the 50′s were as much about consumerism and language as anything else. Given that definition we should have seen a ton of collage out of Cambodia or Iraq, right?
Anyway, the upcoming show looks like something out of the Smithsonian. I hope not.
http://erniesandidge.com Ernie Sandidge
Paddy,
Hell Yes! Nice article on the New Museum. Somebody had to say that the emperor had no clothes. The whole thing is so ill conceived from the packaging (architecture) to product (artwork). The gatekeepers of the artworld seem to have completely surrendered to the interests of real estate developers. The NY Time’s architecture critic, Ouroussoff, is lost in some kind of reverie about pure building without considering the history of the neighborhood or the context that the building exists in (dominates). It makes me long for the resurrection of Herbert Mushamp. I mean, is this about contemporary art in New York or about redeveloping the Bowery? If it is about the former we as New York artists are in trouble. If it is about the latter, pity the homeless because the Bowery ain’t the place to flop anymore. Am I crazy or did William Burroughs live across the street once upon a time? Joe Strummer said that “the truth was only known by guttersnipes”. If that is true then we’re in for a lot of lies because the guttersnipes have been evicted. Why polish up the gutter in order to present work that attempts to pass itself off as “unmonumental” when in fact the “work” is nothing but finger pointing at “art”. It’s like a bunch of designers who point out “cool” but have no idea how to create it. Cool!! A fancy building!! Cool!! A rainbow colored sign!!! Cool!! Mel Gibson’s bike!!! Time to renew our collective memberships to the Frick, let Miami take the lead in presenting contemporary art in America and hope the winos will favor us by puking in the lobby of the New Museum. Now that would be unmonumental.
http://erniesandidge.com Ernie Sandidge
Paddy,
Hell Yes! Nice article on the New Museum. Somebody had to say that the emperor had no clothes. The whole thing is so ill conceived from the packaging (architecture) to product (artwork). The gatekeepers of the artworld seem to have completely surrendered to the interests of real estate developers. The NY Time’s architecture critic, Ouroussoff, is lost in some kind of reverie about pure building without considering the history of the neighborhood or the context that the building exists in (dominates). It makes me long for the resurrection of Herbert Mushamp. I mean, is this about contemporary art in New York or about redeveloping the Bowery? If it is about the former we as New York artists are in trouble. If it is about the latter, pity the homeless because the Bowery ain’t the place to flop anymore. Am I crazy or did William Burroughs live across the street once upon a time? Joe Strummer said that “the truth was only known by guttersnipes”. If that is true then we’re in for a lot of lies because the guttersnipes have been evicted. Why polish up the gutter in order to present work that attempts to pass itself off as “unmonumental” when in fact the “work” is nothing but finger pointing at “art”. It’s like a bunch of designers who point out “cool” but have no idea how to create it. Cool!! A fancy building!! Cool!! A rainbow colored sign!!! Cool!! Mel Gibson’s bike!!! Time to renew our collective memberships to the Frick, let Miami take the lead in presenting contemporary art in America and hope the winos will favor us by puking in the lobby of the New Museum. Now that would be unmonumental.
http://erniesandidge.com Ernie Sandidge
Paddy,
Hell Yes! Nice article on the New Museum. Somebody had to say that the emperor had no clothes. The whole thing is so ill conceived from the packaging (architecture) to product (artwork). The gatekeepers of the artworld seem to have completely surrendered to the interests of real estate developers. The NY Time’s architecture critic, Ouroussoff, is lost in some kind of reverie about pure building without considering the history of the neighborhood or the context that the building exists in (dominates). It makes me long for the resurrection of Herbert Mushamp. I mean, is this about contemporary art in New York or about redeveloping the Bowery? If it is about the former we as New York artists are in trouble. If it is about the latter, pity the homeless because the Bowery ain’t the place to flop anymore. Am I crazy or did William Burroughs live across the street once upon a time? Joe Strummer said that “the truth was only known by guttersnipes”. If that is true then we’re in for a lot of lies because the guttersnipes have been evicted. Why polish up the gutter in order to present work that attempts to pass itself off as “unmonumental” when in fact the “work” is nothing but finger pointing at “art”. It’s like a bunch of designers who point out “cool” but have no idea how to create it. Cool!! A fancy building!! Cool!! A rainbow colored sign!!! Cool!! Mel Gibson’s bike!!! Time to renew our collective memberships to the Frick, let Miami take the lead in presenting contemporary art in America and hope the winos will favor us by puking in the lobby of the New Museum. Now that would be unmonumental.
Art Fag City
Thomas: The New Museum confirmed today that they only have digital capabilities.
Art Fag City
Thomas: The New Museum confirmed today that they only have digital capabilities.
Art Fag City
Thomas: The New Museum confirmed today that they only have digital capabilities.
Denny Greenway
Aye, maties, I remember well the days when herds of giant black trannies in Miami Dolphin iridescence clomped down the Bow in psychedelic platforms as high as the Twin Towers. Well muscled hookers. I was the only white on the street except for all the bums shut up inside their Whirlpool boxes, who all had that wino brown color or the Bellvue babble. I got chased home often enuf. Then came all those coked up kids from Bwookwyn in nice leather and all the windshield washers went away, the Haitians and Cubans moved out, and there went the neighborhood. As has been often been pointed out, artists are the alchemical developers par excellence. The museum, a ruin in reverse, symptomizes Bloomberg, no?
Denny Greenway
Aye, maties, I remember well the days when herds of giant black trannies in Miami Dolphin iridescence clomped down the Bow in psychedelic platforms as high as the Twin Towers. Well muscled hookers. I was the only white on the street except for all the bums shut up inside their Whirlpool boxes, who all had that wino brown color or the Bellvue babble. I got chased home often enuf. Then came all those coked up kids from Bwookwyn in nice leather and all the windshield washers went away, the Haitians and Cubans moved out, and there went the neighborhood. As has been often been pointed out, artists are the alchemical developers par excellence. The museum, a ruin in reverse, symptomizes Bloomberg, no?
Denny Greenway
Aye, maties, I remember well the days when herds of giant black trannies in Miami Dolphin iridescence clomped down the Bow in psychedelic platforms as high as the Twin Towers. Well muscled hookers. I was the only white on the street except for all the bums shut up inside their Whirlpool boxes, who all had that wino brown color or the Bellvue babble. I got chased home often enuf. Then came all those coked up kids from Bwookwyn in nice leather and all the windshield washers went away, the Haitians and Cubans moved out, and there went the neighborhood. As has been often been pointed out, artists are the alchemical developers par excellence. The museum, a ruin in reverse, symptomizes Bloomberg, no?