If you’re following art blogs I’m sure you have heard about commercial gallerist Jeffrey Deitch getting hired as director by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art - Tyler collects up some responses and reacts to them here. When I heard about LA MoCA’s decision my first reaction was a bit of surprise, and then I was reminded of what we often get to see in the world of Washington politics.
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Chris Hedges wrote an article about two photography books (Peter van Agtmael’s “2nd Tour Hope I don’t Die” and Lori Grinker’s “Afterwar: Veterans From a World in Conflict”) entitled The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See. In response, Jim Johnson wrote a very smart post (where I found Chris’ original article), noting that “Hedges neglects at least two crucial matters. The first is whether war photographs might have the effect he supposes. […] the second […] is whether even if photographs had the requisite effects it would or could matter to the underlying reality of war and collective violence.” Two important posts, which touch upon many aspects of what war photography might be able to do, what its limitations might be, and what those limitations might arise from.
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“At first glance the new issue of Germany’s Brigitte looks just like a normal fashion magazine. Attractive, perfectly made-up young women show off stylish clothes from labels like French Connection, Escada and H&M, glancing flirtatiously over their shoulders, pouting their lips or staring pensively into the distance. But something about the photos looks different. A prominent tummy here and noticeable wrinkles there reveal that these are not size-zero Amazons straight from the catwalk, but real women. As of the January issue, which hit the newsstands Saturday, Brigitte will use only amateur models in its fashion shoots.” - story
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The first (and only) time I went to the New Museum, and of course I was snapping some photos with my little digital camera (mind you, not of the utterly forgettable art on display, but of the building). A “security” guard approached me and told me “You can’t take pictures here,” and I almost responded “Oh yeah? I just did.” But I ended up being a good boy and put my camera away. This experience will be familiar to many people taking photos, and a new post over at the Smithsonian talks in length about the various cases (the UK seems to have become a particularly bad place for photographers; see Michael’s new post).
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“The best criticism is written for only one person. It is up to the writer to decide who this person should be. Of the thousands of art reviews I have written over the last 40 years, the most effective, in my view, have been the great many silently addressed to my sister, Erin. […] Erin is a traveller; she is socially active, interested in art and writing and architecture, and open to new experiences, but not easily impressed. I have always believed that, if I could convince Erin that such-and-such an artwork or work of architecture was worth her attention - if I could argue my way past her flourishing scepticism - then I could convince anyone. I would urge every new writer to adopt this approach—to find one questioning person to write for, framing every review as a fervent message to him or her.” - John Bentley Mays (via)
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“The art world is already divided into unknowns, emerging, established, mid-career, international artists, and according to what graduate program you went to, who you’re friends with and your social pedigree. It’s more like a high-school cafeteria.” - William Powhida
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“I’ve noticed an interesting pattern. Visual artists are conflicted as to where they stand in relation to copyright laws. To be more precise, there seems to be two camps: those that favor strong copyright protection for artists and their copyrights, and those that favor either a relaxed form of fair use or worse yet, a ‘right’ to appropriate and lift from copyright owners without any legal repercussions. As a friend of mine noticed […] this makes complete sense. Those artists who favor stronger copyright laws are making money from their work, many times substantially. Those favoring ‘free culture’ or, ‘let information flow,’ are usually those artists making little to no money from their artwork. […] Hidden underneath this dilemma is a reality that many artists […] are reluctant to accept: that a viable artistic practice (at least in the so-called ‘art world’) is in fact no different than operating a for-profit business. One can veil or name this what one wants, but the reality is that successful artists […] face legal and business issues similar to those of a bar owner, an employer, a publisher, an Internet company, a shipping company, etc.” - Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento
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The two most exciting things about New York’s New Museum are a) the building and b) the semi-hip abbreviation used when people talk about it: NuMu. Of course, that’s just me, and all I’ve seen at the NuMu was its very first show. Anyway, you have probably heard about the current kerfuffle about the museum, now elevated from Tyler’s blog to all over the web and media world via an article in the New York Times. (slightly updated below)
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“Germany’s most popular women’s magazine is banning professional models from its pages and replacing them with images of “real life” women instead.” (story, via).
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“To me the big thing in this moment is not so much the decline of newspapers but the failure of almost everybody so far to find a way to sustain accountability journalism online.” - Nicholas Lemann
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There are a lot of good and interesting points being made by William Patry in this interview (found here), which, I am sure, will have a lot of people get very upset. I don’t agree with all the various details, but I do agree very strongly with these following statements: “I would rather not draw a sharp distinction between creators and users. One of the transformational attributes of the Internet is to make all of us potential creators. The same is true of fair use: fair use is of benefit to all creators, including large corporations.” and “I would like to see copyright return to the U.S. Copyright Act, where we had a shorter term, and formalities, a copyright law that gave copyright owners enough incentives but not too much.”
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This article provides addresses some of the issues that enter the discussions surrounding Pieter Hugo’s work, and it’s an important read.
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As I noted elsewhere, a little while ago Jim Johnson published a pretty harsh criticism of Pieter Hugo’s work, saying that the photographer seemed “to portray Africa as a freak show”. I’m torn about Hugo’s work, some I like very much (such as Looking Aside or Messina / Musina), some I think deserves to be called out by Jim (this would be The Hyena and Other Men and Nollywood). Of course, my preferences are solely based on looking at the photographs (I own two of the books) and on reacting to them based on a) what I know about photography, b) how I view photography, c) what I like and don’t like in photography, and d) what I know about Africa from reading about it (I have never been there myself) and from talking with a good photographer friend who spent a long time taking photos there. Today, Amy Stein published a piece written by Sebastien Boncy, which makes Jim’s post sound pretty tame. Of course, throwing in the word “racism” means pouring a lot of kerosine into the flames; but hopefully, the piece will initiate a debate that will talk about the issues and help clearing things up a bit.
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“Irving Penn, one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide, died Wednesday morning at his home in Manhattan.” - obit (Rob’s blog alerted me to this)
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Following up on this earlier post, here’s On The Media reporting on ‘Ruin Porn’ (btw, that’s not photographs of naked women in abandoned buildings - the supposed appeal of which escapes me, but that’s another topic). Jerry Redfern, a photojournalist, sent this to me, pointing out the major shortcoming of On The Media’s report: They make it sound as if photographers are sent to Detroit with unlimited budgets and the general instruction to take photos of whatever they want (my way of phrasing this, not Jerry’s). Obviously, that’s not the case. Of course, there are photographers who go to Detroit just because it’s something they want to do, but the photography you see in, for example, Time Magazine was done for that magazine, to illustrate some story. So making it sound as if ‘Ruin Porn’ was just the photographers’ fault really doesn’t cut it: In the world of Time et al. ‘Ruin Porn’ might just be a symptom of larger problems in the world of journalism.
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Here is a classical case of ridiculous Photoshopping meeting the fashion industry meeting corporate bullying: “Last month, Xeni [a boing boing writerer] blogged about the photoshop disaster that is this Ralph Lauren advertisement, in which a model’s proportions appear to have been altered to give her an impossibly skinny body (‘Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis’). Naturally, Xeni reproduced the ad in question. This is classic fair use: a reproduction ‘for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,’ etc. However, Ralph Lauren’s marketing arm and its law firm don’t see it that way. According to them, this is an ‘infringing image,’ and they thoughtfully took the time to send a DMCA takedown notice to our awesome ISP, Canada’s Priority Colo. […] So, to Ralph Lauren, GreenbergTraurig, and PRL Holdings, Inc: sue and be damned. Copyright law doesn’t give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better.”
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“Art that engages with popular culture isn’t necessarily any good - in fact, often it’s the opposite” argues Jonathan Jones
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I won’t pretend I find the photography featured in this presentation very interesting, but I do like the combination of text plus images plus multimedia. This might be the future of magazines - where you “flip through” a magazine online, and if there’s anything that interests you, you can watch some movie or hear some audio file.
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Tyler Green posted some comments on the National Arts Journalism Program’s National Summit on Arts Journalism (as did Ian Aleksander Adams). After Ian’s post I looked at the project, and Tyler’s commentary matches what I thought, in particular: “however well-intentioned, the NAJP project is a lost opportunity. It fails to address significant recent developments and the realities of contemporary journalism, especially as they apply to niche topics such as art journalism. […] NAJP’s decision to focus on profit-generating models is the result of a misreading of the current media environment. Not even the wealthiest, smartest legacy-media companies have figured out how to be profitable in the fast-emerging digital-first environment. […] for the foreseeable future, it is not realistic to expect advertising and traditional, for-profit revenue models (such as those focused on subscribers) to sustain niche journalism.”
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Using the headline Pictures that please us, Lucy Danziger, editor-in-chief of the women’s health magazine Self openly admits and defends her magazine’s retouching transformation of singer Kelly Clarkson for their cover. Before you read on look at this page to see images of what Ms Clarkson looks like on the cover and in reality.
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“This corner says that the Chelsea gallery scene will be gone within a year with the exception of half a dozen megaspaces, feeder galleriess for Fashionland and ClubLand. It is weird right now to see vast swathes of Chelsea territory which resemble the bad parts of Staten Island dotted by visually claustrophobic Frank Gehry buildings and their spawn. When everyone who still has cash is dancing in the High Line sky and staring into each other’s wealthy windows, then the junkies and whores can seize the streets below.” - story/opinion
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Remember the days when you would receive postcards from friends in the mail (and by “mail” I mean that box that’s next to your door, which these days is filled only with junk mail and bills), maybe because they were on vacation somewhere? I don’t know about you, but seeing them “Twitter” something like “Checked in now. Seats 34C and D” is not quite the same experience as holding an actual postcard - even if the information on it is the same or comparable: “We had OK seats on the flight” (Theorists might now start long discussions about the “tangible”).
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Via art collectors I found these useful art gallery terms. Some very funny, such as “Limited edition” meaning “Generally, art produced in sufficient quantities that its practical availability will be unlimited.” (“Isn’t that cute, isn’t that true?” - Dusty Towne) or “Secondary market”: “The art world equivalent of a used-car lot, where work is sold with no benefit to the artist, except the rise or fall of his reputation.”
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Paddy Johnson over at artfagcity certainly claims it is. I don’t see how I am putting an “awfully positive spin on the value of reproductions” given that most photography books - and this is a photography blog - are well, if not extremely well produced objects. Compared with a $2,000 or $10,000 print a $80 book is in fact not only very much affordable (as an aside, some photography might in fact actually work better in book form) but indeed “a valuable alternative aesthetic experience”, because we’re talking about photography here. If you don’t believe it, look at the photography books I have been reviewing on Fridays on this blog! Some of those books are so well produced and printed that you could cut out pages, frame them and hang them on the wall.
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These days, barely a week goes by without yet another announcement of some photography now on sale for cheap somewhere. You will never see the word “cheap”, of course - you might see “affordable”. But regardless, prices seem to be coming down; or maybe the range of prices now extends to numbers, which the art world has not seen in many years. I’d be the first to admit that part of me welcomes this trend, because given that photography has such a wide appeal it should be affordable for large numbers of people.
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“A pair of photograph collectors in Maryland, USA, have uncovered what they believe to be the first and only ever photographic record of Phineas Gage - the railway worker who survived an iron tamping rod passing straight through the front of his brain, following an explosives accident in 1848.” (story) (Updated below)
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If you’re not immensely bored by the Fairey saga (you know, where a hipster/amazing artist took/stole someone else’s photograph to transform/convert/rip off it into a political campaign poster/an amazing piece of art/an utterly shallow piece of nonsense - your picks - and then got sued), here is the latest update: The photographer who took the photo now claims he owns the copyright and not AP. It’s hard to predict what will happen next; but I’m sure there will be new “developments” for a while.
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You might have heard of Chris Anderson’s new book ‘Free’, which, if what I hear is correct (I haven’t read it, yet), is all about how “free” is the new black. It certainly sounds great, right? After “always low prices” there’s now “free”! Of course, just like “always low prices” comes at a price (a new book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, explores this), “free” does, too. Malcolm Gladwell took ‘Free’ apart, and this review from the New York Times also notes quite a few problems.
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Ed Winkleman just published a post about political art, which is worth the read. For once, I do not agree with Ed, even though that doesn’t mean that I feel compelled to embrace each and every bit of art that proclaims and/or pretends to be political. When I think about photography, it’s straightforward to come up with a large number of artists whose work is quite political, while it still is wonderful art. I don’t know whether he would agree, but for me, Brian Ulrich’s work is one of the examples I can think of (there are many others).
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“So the other day, I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Slate’s editors were, ‘ironically, unable to get permission’ to reproduce Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy), 2003 for Sarah Boxer’s slideshow review of ‘Into The Sunset,’ MoMA’s exhibition of photography’s role in creating the concept of the American West. [The irony, of course, is that Prince’s work is actually a rephotograph of a Marlboro Man ad, which was probably photographed originally by Jim Krantz.] And so I blithely grabbed an image of Untitled (Cowboy) online, resized and retitled it, and republished it as my own work, 300 x 404, After Untitled (Cowboy) 2003 by Richard Prince, and offered to let Slate show it instead. Though I’ve written for Slate before, they have not, as yet, taken me up on my offer.” - greg.org; also see the follow-up post.
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A post by Rob Haggart pointed me to an issue of the jury of this years’s PDN Photography Annual being all white (find another take on this here, plus there is the original post that raised the issue here). With a jury of 24 people a complete lack of diversity does indeed look suspicious. I did not want to write something without having spoken with the party in question, PDN, so I emailed them yesterday. PDN told me this morning that they have looked at the comments and discussions following Rob’s post; should they decide to comment, they will do so on their PDNPulse blog. (Updated below)
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This article about Sara Ziff and her documentary about the modelling industry (‘Picture Me’) is currently making the rounds, and it’s a must-read (I found this via Colin’s blog).
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“Ever notice how top 100 in the world’ lists are heavily slanted to their country of origin? This is understandable, I suppose, but it does make me wish for one that convinced me of its objectivity.” - Ed Winkleman
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“A lawyer/collector friend of mine once told me that having a good business card was one of the most important statements you can make to the world that they should take you seriously. […] I know myself that after an art fair or reception, when I later empty my pockets of all the collected business cards, I do make subtle judgments about people based on their quality. Having invested in themselves (as a good card suggests they have), I’m more willing to take them seriously in the abstracted context of remembering our conversation or why I took their card in the first place.” - Ed Winkleman
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“I disagree with Phillip Gourevitch about whether the Obama Administration should release what remain of the unseen photos from Abu Ghraib, but he has written this thoughtful Op-Ed in The New York Times today.” - Jim Johnson
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You can certainly wonder whether blogs should really be called blogs, but they are here to stay. To a large extent, this is due to the efforts of a few truly outstanding individuals whose blogs have become beacons of quality. People like Josh Marshall come to mind, or Ed Winkleman, and, of course, there is Geoff Manaugh and his blog BLDGBLOG.
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“First, a little about the job of New Yorker staff writer. ‘Staff writer’ is a bit of a misnomer, as you’re not an employee, “But rather a contractor. So there’s no health insurance, no 401K, and most of all, no guarantee of a job beyond one year. “My gig was a straight dollars-for-words arrangement: 30,000 words a year for $90,000. And the contract was year-to- “Year. Every September, I was up for review. Turns out, all New Yorker writers work this way, even the bigfeet. It’s “Just the way the New Yorker chooses to behave. It shows no loyalty to its writers, yet expects full fealty in return.” - Dan Baum (via Rob)
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“The tendency to relegate Art to the distaff side of our identity […] is fully intertwined with our more mythical view of ourselves as wild west cowboys and the widely held opinion that art is for sissies.” - Ed Winkleman
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“Coverage of the arts is migrating online but unless someone is prepared to pay for it, the outlook is uncertain” - András Szántó
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This post by Glenn Greenwald is about politics blogs and magazines/newspapers, but you also find what he describes in many other areas. Worth the read!
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I’ve long argued that what makes newspapers fail is not that they’re not fancy enough and can’t compete with flashy websites (even though that might be part of the problem), but rather that they don’t offer their readers what the readers are actually interested in: “Over the past ten years, The Washington Post has won nineteen Pulitzer Prizes. But over that same period, we lost more than 120,000 readers. Why? My answer, unpopular among my colleagues, is that while many of these longer efforts were worthwhile, they took up space and resources that could have been used to give readers a wider selection of stories about what was going on, and that may have directly affected their lives. […] One of my basic concerns is that American journalism has turned away from its own hard-won expertise, and at the very time when readers are looking to us to explain the context of what is happening and what will happen next.” (full story) In essence, newspapers have been trying to compete with TV, and they can only lose that kind of game.
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More talk about art: A summary of a talk art critic Jerry Saltz gave recently.
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This article contains gallerist David Zwirner’s thoughts about the current state of the art market; and I’m still a bit undecided how to react to it, even though some sort of laughter is probably the best reaction.
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“Maybe we could do without even the best art about childhood. Maybe we could ask ourselves the questions art asks on our own. But child pornography law does something worse than chill artistic thought. It allows us to ignore what actually abuses children all the time. Strangely, every single one of the scandals about child pornography in art galleries has involved photographs of healthy and affluent white children. Protection of the most vulnerable children, apparently, is not what concerns advocates of child pornography law. Rational protection of real children against actual abuse is not the highest priority of those who demand censorship of pictures. I almost wonder if it is the contrary. Is a strident demand for censorship of images a decoy? Does it deflect the facts of child abuse, the fact, for instance, that the overwhelming majority of cases of child abuse occur in the home and are inflicted by fathers, step-fathers or boyfriends?” - Anne Higonnet, in a very smart article with a lot of examples (via)
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Over at bldgblog, Geoff posted a smart defense of Twitter (go check it out, especially if you read “Maureen Dodd’s [sic!] brain-dead editorial in yesterday’s New York Times”). Speaking of which, I have been wondering whether Twitter could be used for something, so I “restored” my Twitter account (yeah, it’s true: when you try to delete/close/whatever an account, Twitter never actually deletes it - scary, eh?). I promise I won’t post links to my blog posts or what I’m eating or doing (for reasons which should be pretty obvious). Instead, I’ll post mostly quick thoughts or “rejects” (stuff that somehow didn’t make it onto the blog, for whatever reason). It’s an experiment; we’ll see how it goes.
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This is just an aside: Why are we laughing about this when in fact so many of our interactions with those sorts of people (I just talked to someone at US Airways…) are exactly like that (sometimes literally: My wife told me the other day that someone had actually said “Computer says no” to her)? Oh sure, I can see how laughing about it takes away some of the rage. But aren’t companies just counting on this now, on us getting some relief by laughing about the very behaviour they subject us to?
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Here’s a story for people who are angry about photo book collectors who hoard books to sell them later (c.f. Jeff’s post): ” A collection of rare British-made electric guitars has been discovered in the basement of a house in Cheltenham. […] Guy Mackenzie from West Cornwall, who bought the guitars, described them as ‘the holy grail’ of his collection. ‘I don’t actually play,’ he said ‘but I just love them in the same way that people collect old paintings even though they can’t paint.’” - story
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There appears to be a category of publication that always ends up flying under most people’s radar, for reasons that I don’t find that obvious. If people buy the Sunday edition of the New York Times for the magazine, why is The New York Review of Books not more well known? Sure, they have less photography, but they easily give the Times’ magazine a run for the money as far as quality and scope of the articles is concerned. Likewise, there is Granta Magazine, which actually looks more like a little book, more literary in form, and whose magazines are each devoted to a single topic. And then there’s dispatches, which resembles Granta Magazine in form, but its design looks more modern, and it has more photography.
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The Federal Republic of Germany is turning 60 years today, and German magazine Der Spiegel celebrates with a special edition of its magazine. It truly is a Deutsches Wunder (German miracle) how East Germany and its history pretty much disappear behind the new Reichstag, (West) Germany’s first Chancellor and a kitschy (West) German movie star.
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“I’ve decided to abandon completely the use of the terms ‘blogger’ and ‘blog’ to the extent it is possible. This comes after a not-so-scientific study done while wandering around the Pulse show a few weeks ago in New York.” - DLK
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