New Year, bells and whistles

There is now an image archive, which is a receptacle for all of the images posted to the blog, and then some. That's right, look to your right!

new blog for a new year

Well, I'm trying to be a blogger.

Not much on the page so far, but I'm hoping to put up some sort of observation or other every day.

See it here:

http://hatchetsandskewers.blogspot.com

COPYRIGHT, COPYLEFT AND THE CREATIVE ANTI-COMMONS

http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/index.html

http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/nimustext.html

> A Genealogy of Authors’ Property Rights

The author has not always existed. The image of the author as a wellspring of originality, a genius guided by some secret compulsion to create works of art out of a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, is an 18th century invention. This image continues to influence how people speak about the “great artists” of history, and it also trickles down to the more modest claims of the intellectual property regime that authors have original ideas that express their unique personality, and therefore have a natural right to own their works - or to sell their rights, if they should choose.....

ed. I thought this was a really interesting essay on the "author." We've been mulling over this in the course, "Markets, theory and collecting," but I think this conversation might find its way into other discussions. This is a good read for anyone who engages in appropriation or rails against traditional concepts of mastery and singularity. Oh whee.

The Last Show

In this week's CP: The Last Show at Numark.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arts/2006/gallery1201.html?navCenterBot

So, does any one want to

So, does any one want to talk about relationality and/or autonomy? It seems pertinent to some of the conversations I’ve been having with fellow grads recently. I saw a presentation last year at CAA called “From database and place to bio-tech and bots: relationality vs autonomy in media art.” It got me looking at Bourriaud and Bey. Jeremy, you’ve read Bourriaud, non?

Most of us are functioning as image makers, in the sense that the work will be viewed after the fact via video or photo documentation. As artists, are you complicit in that relationship or do you take it on?

How do some of you use the spectacle in your work? How does your work negotiate a pull towards academicism? Do you employ traditional forms, or go with the aura of the new(er) medias?

studio tour 2

My first post and it´s a plagiarism, shame on me..

this one time i got to first and second base...

so i win the who can post an image first race

i made both of these things

again with the links?

My students are confused

Below is actual text from an actual student e-mail, followed by my response:

Wed, 8 Nov 2006 01:55:57 -0500

You probably already know about this, but Marcel Duchamp!!!!! is coming to the Phillips Gallery this Thursday, to speak from 6-8. Is is possible for our class to go? I know that our papers are due that day, but it just sounds like a cool trip.

Wed, 8 Nov 2006 06:01:34 -0800 (PST)

???

Duchamp is very, very dead.

Will this be a viewing of his desiccated remains?

Confusing.

--Jeffry

Visiting Artist

VISITING ARTIST LECTURE SERIES

Israeli Sculptor Orna Ben-Ami will give a lecture in the WEST GALLERY
(ASY 1309) TOMORROW Tuesday 7th November 11.00 am - 12.30 pm.

Also: Orna Ben-Ami's work is currently on show in Washington D.C.

"LInks: Iron Sculptures by Orna Ben-Ami"
A Hillyer Art Space
9 Hillyer Court, Washington D.C.
November 2nd 2006 - January 25th 2007

"Critically acclaimed for the surprising contrast between the
material and the themes of the sculpture, 'Links' presents a
collection replete with personal content that intersects with
collective memories."

Constable at the NGA

I've got a review of the Constable show at the National Gallery in this week's City Paper:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arts/2006/gallery1103.html?navCenterBot

It's been awhile. Mostly because we're between arts editors right now.

Know any?

Visiting Artist/Curator

George Ciscle will be delivering a talk on Nov 6th at 7:00 pm.

Pictures--or the lack thereof

It's a tired, tired strategy, but so many young painters keep throwing their time and effort into it: Take a piece of canvas or paper--unprimed, or stained with some monochrome wash--and scrawl a tangle of graphic signifiers across it, like you're laying out a picnic spread of pictorial conventions.

I see it with Jiha Moon's blooms of watercolor that carry along fauns and dragons and clumps of silly string at their edges, or Maggie Michael's knots of airbrush, pooled enamel and calligraphy. I saw it at Irvine's old location last year, with Nicola Lopez, who makes apocalyptic doodles using blotches of ink, ruled lines, and cartoonish drawings of drain-pipe labyrinths...and I saw it last weekend at their current front room survey of works on paper--clearing out old inventory, natch. There's Christine Kessler's greatest-hits-of-Rauschenberg-and-Twombly collages, or Susan Jamison's graphite and string drawings of birds, hands, and spiders against blank backdrops, or Peregrine Hong's unicorn kiddie-porn drawings, or...well, it just goes on and on.

Nobody's interested in pictorial space or chiaroscuro or even composition, it seems. The page or the canvas becomes an arena in which to have fey little graphics, detached from context, fumbling around one another--an illustrator's warmed-over approximation of good ol' flat-bed construction.

Decorative, unnecessary, played-out. A lot of gallery-goers mistake these pictures for actual displays of skill. Instead, they're avoidance strategies. Why choose the rectangle if you're not interested in it? Why use the tools of illusionistic rendering to dot the unconsidered page with little episodic meanderings?

What about pictures? And I don't mean illusionistic windows onto another space or anything--just the evidence of an artist looking at the substrate/format and responding to it in some constructive, considered, foundational way.

That's my big, obvious rant for the evening, anyway.

Thoughts?

...with no posts, as of yet.

So, did anyone go to the Numark opening on Saturday? Nikki Lee, Dan Steinhilber, Doug Hall, Shimon Attie, etc.

Very sad that they're shuttering the doors on the space-age garage. Now there will officially be no reason whatsoever to go to Chinatown.

Except for maybe Flashpoint. Which is only almost a reason.

Otherwise, it's vanity galleries in a repulsive Georgetown-like setting. Whee!

I wanted to go, but had to *bring the rock* to the Velvet lounge. Which we did, albeit sloppily. An improvised cover of "Thriller" was attempted for reasons that still elude me.

So, there you have it. Post number two. Thoughts?

Here we are at last.