Egon Schiele, detail from Self-Portrait with Hands on Chest (1910). Schiele’s birthday was this past week on June 12th, and the centennial of his death is being commemorated in Vienna this year. Schiele’s self-portraits remain among the most arresting and psychologically complex in all of art history.

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

June 17, 2018

I am on a big deadline, but wanted to make sure to post a roundup as so much has been happening this past week. Anthony Bourdain's passing, just within days of designer Kate Spade, was especially shocking and deeply resonant on a personal level as I was working on the final draft introduction to an edited book concerning Canadian culinary imaginations-- a project I have been co-editing and working on with Shelley Boyd for the past two years. I had just completed writing a detailed vignette describing Bourdain's recent visit to Newfoundland and its significance to Canadian identity politics. Repeatedly watching and transcribing that episode just hours before learning of his death, I was struck and heartened in the hours and days following the news to see so many people immediately recognize the importance of his legacy beyond celebrity chef stardom. Bourdain understood how food could bridge cultural and political divides, encouraging people to travel and move beyond their comfort zones and break down barriers through the simple act of trying a new cuisine or learning about another culture through their culinary history. Bourdain was also a connoisseur of film, literature, music, and art. His commentary on food was always intersecting with ideas related to the arts, and I am so glad that his voice will be captured in our book, a project harnessing so many important themes related to food and culture that Bourdain popularized and made more accessible through his television appearances. Sadly, mental illness (and suicide) is far too common among creative, risk-taking, individuals. We must all do better to keep our eyes open and remain compassionate and alert to those in pain. Peace.... and enjoy the links.

"What Will Art Look Like in 100 Years? We Asked 16 Contemporary Artists "

artnet.com

"Instagram design guide shows architects how to create "a visual sense of amazement""

dezeen.com

"How Art Museums Can Remain Relevant in the 21st Century"

artsy.net

" Just Write 500 Words"

thecut.com

"Linda Nochlin’s Lifetime Insights Continue to Amaze"

hyperallergic.com

"It Can Happen Here"

nybooks.com

"Japanese Gutai in the 1950s: Fast and Fearless"

nytimes.com

"We, the tenured, must commit to making the university a better place"

universityaffairs.com

"A study on the financial state of visual artists today"

thecreativeindependent.com

"Art Basel 2018 (VIDEO)"

Sándor Pinczehelyi, Small Star Coca-Cola III (1988), oil on canvas. The Hungarian artist was one of many practitioners featured in Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture In Cold War Europe, a book I recently reviewed for H-Net Reviews.

Focus on Ideas: Art, Propaganda, and the Avant-Garde

June 14, 2018

Questions of art and propaganda loom large in the public imagination, perhaps more today than at any moment in history. Consider for example the intensification of visual and screen culture globally, connecting traditional forms of media (photography, film, print, painting, drawing, etc..) with emerging media forms (digital, social media, immersive, virtual, memes, etc..) at the same time that proclamations around "fake news" and the veracity of media's claims to truth grow exponentially. It is a potent and dangerous combination that brings to mind the culture wars that took place between and within communist and non-communist countries during the twentieth century. Art and culture, as a unifier and divider of nations, was actively deployed and weaponized to achieve targeted political ends.

What is the role of the artist in these situations? How can they intervene, question, bring awareness, or even find a way to participate and subvert the status quo? These questions have animated my own research interests for many years and I have worked to understand the emergence of modernism and the avant-garde within the context of the fraught political landscape of Europe as it transformed from the late nineteenth into the twentieth century. Critically, what I have come to believe is that there is much to learn about the current state of global relations, tying the cultural to the political, by studying historical events connected to rise and fall of Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc countries.

As Central and Eastern Europe, and Hungary in particular, has been a big focus of my research to date, I recently accepted an invitation to review Christina Cuevas-Wolf and Isotta Poggi’s edited collection Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary. I invite you to read my review and reflect on the themes raised in the book (I have embedded the PDF below and it can also be found here) and consider what parallels can be drawn to today's political climate. This is especially pressing as the broader authoritarian resurgence in Central and Eastern Europe, linked to the cultural policies of political leaders, continues to grow. Since at least 2010, for example, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s mainstreaming of the far right within the framework of Hungarian cultural politics and policies has been both alarming, but understandable and predictable, given Hungary’s tumultuous history connecting victimhood and ethnocentrism within the context of politicized art and cultural expression. It is also this model of authoritarianism that is admired and replicated in many of the recent policies adapted by the Trump administration in the U.S.

As I argue in the review, a close and more nuanced reading of how propaganda and "socialist realism" evolved during the Cold War is crucial, together with offering alternative histories and theories of the avant-garde, and a deeper dive by art historians into the contingent nature of art and culture under Soviet-backed regimes. As the book makes clear, artists living behind the iron curtain did not operate as a monolithic whole, and the forms of subversion and response by cultural practitioners outlined in the book provide powerful lessons for today's artists.

Inspired by the civil unrest in France from May 2 to June 23, 1968, Joan Miro created May 1968 between 1968-1973 (begun, incredibly, when he was 75 years old) as a meditation on the events. This year, the 50th anniversary of events is being commemorated around the world.

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

June 03, 2018

For the last few weeks, I have been holed up in my home office working quite intensively on several writing projects, and now that June has started, I am beginning to make the final push through summer on several deadlines. There is a lot left to do. Along the way, I have taken some breaks to enjoy attending convocation, to get out of town for a family birthday, and to catch up with friends passing through town. And what this brought to mind as I sat down to assemble this week's round up is how comforting the routines of academic life can be, but also how much the "work" of what we do is mostly invisible.

An article about workaholism in academia caught my attention a few weeks back when it was being widely circulated on Twitter. The story itself, of a tenured prof who collapsed following several years of trying to keep up with an impossible work load, was nothing I hadn't seen first hand as a grad student or faculty member. But what was compelling was the conversation the article sparked on social media, along with comments following the article, that called for a serious reassessment of how success and accomplishment is to be measured in academic work life. Part of the discussion centered on creating personal boundaries, learning to say "no" and getting a handle on priorities and how time is managed outside the classroom, but another important part of the conversation focused on being more forthcoming with family and friends about how much the work of academia is all-consuming and difficult to "turn off." A few summers ago, a reading group I belonged to read The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy and I wanted to bring it up this week as a recommendation for those who may be needing a good primer on how to find that work/life balance. I will be dusting my copy off again this summer for a re-read. Enjoy the links!

"Ten pavilions not to be missed at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018"

dezeen.com

"Art Historians Discuss Strategies for Dealing with Work by Abusive Artists"

hyperallergic.com

"How May 1968 in Paris Changed the Way We View Protests"

artsy.net

"Dad Left a Big Impression: The Renoir Family Inheritance"

nytimes.com

"Kanye West’s Ye Sparks and Sputters"

atlantic.com

"What’s the Role of an Alternative Art Space? "

artnet.com

"Kerry James Marshall on painting, politics and P Diddy’s record-breaking purchase of his work"

artnewspaper.com

"Are Selfie Museums an Affront to the Art World? (PODCAST)"

artsy.net

"Performance and Protest: Can Art Change Society? | How Art Became Active (VIDEO SERIES)"

tatemodern

"Unceded: Voices of the Land / Canada at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale (VIDEO)"

vernissage

An overhead image captured of the royal wedding couple, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, was one of millions circulating on social media this past Saturday.

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

May 21, 2018

Watching the royal wedding this past Saturday, with the other two billion people tuning in, I couldn't help marvelling at how picture perfect and near flawless the wedding was in nearly every aspect. From the sun shining at the correct and best angles as Meghan climbed the stairs of St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle and walked down to aisle, to the careful proportions of the crowds as they filled the street, to the precisely timed ceremony and countless dreamy moments worthy of cinema (that Jaguar ride with the beautiful couple was everything we wanted!), the photo ops were endless and abundant but also calculated and replete with visual meaning. In the hours and days following the wedding, the hundreds of visual cues created around the event were quickly unpacked and assessed by all of us-- from the meaning and symbolism of Meghan's dress, to the colours worn by the Queen and the royal family, to the gestures and narrative created through the traditional and non-traditional elements of the ceremony, right down to the shape and placement of the wedding cake. We all unpacked the wedding-- its form, content, and context-- like a well constructed painting. This of course is fully intentional, and part of the representational power of royal weddings and their special significance as moments marked out in art history.

Centuries earlier, the prospect of a royal wedding had its own set of visual representation challenges that were mostly calculated for final effect in painted form. Every detail, every gesture, every colour and beam of light, carefully chosen for a particular meaning. Without the pressure of the ever-present camera, however, the control over representation was largely negotiated between the artist and the crown, and of course limited to one or two official works of art. Today, that power has transformed to a more democratized and shared form of meaning making via the millions of photographic and moving images, amateur and professional, circulating around social media. Indeed, the most interesting and beautiful still images are certainly not the official ones that have just been released by the royal family. Take for example the photograph I chose for my lead image this week-- an overhead image of the couple from an impossible vantage point-- at once abstract and visually provocative and compelling. One hundred years from now, when art historians look back at this event, it is intriguing to me which set of images will end up marking this historic day. It is also something to keep in mind as we all mark special milestone moments in our life-- events that are mostly out of our representational control. Enjoy the remainder of the long weekend (for those in Canada), and enjoy the links!

"Thoroughly Modern Meghan"

theatlantic.com

"New Database Highlights Overlooked European Avant-Garde Artists"

hyperallergic.com

"1968: Year of Counter-Revolution"

nybooks.com

"Hong Kong’s Youth Culture, Captured in Disturbing Animations"

nytimes.com

"The Gray Market: Why Portia de Rossi’s Art-Tech Startup Has a Hard Road Ahead"

artnet.com

"12 Crucial Takeaways From Last Week’s $1.9 Billion New York Auction Cycle"

artnet.com

"Exploring the Art Market’s Best (and Worst) Practices (PODCAST)"

artsy.net

A New Vision for Ancient Art at the Getty Villa (VIDEO)

thegetty

"Interview Magazine, founded by Andy Warhol, folds after nearly 50 years"

theartnewspaper.com

"Does Performance Art Need to be Experienced Live? (VIDEO)"

tatemodern

"Now the whole party is melted like Dali." Lyrics by Kanye West from "Mercy"; Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)" by Salvador Dalí (1954), Collage art by @artlexachung

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

May 06, 2018

I've sat down a few times this week to compose something coherent to react to the Kanye West fiasco unfolding across every register of social media in response to a recent string of interviews, Twitter rants, and release of new music. I've decided to wait and see until I commit more than a few thoughts in this week's round up, but suffice to say I am watching closely along with the rest of his fan base. Last night on SNL, a fantastic skit "A Kanye Place" summarized the polarized response, capturing the contradiction, fascination, spectacle, and complete frustration that so many of us who have defended Kanye are feeling.

On the one hand, I cannot help making the comparison between Kanye's apparent nod towards authoritarian politics (read Trump) with Salvador Dali's attraction to Hitler in the latter phases of his career. For Dali, the increasing obsession with fascism lead not only to his excommunication from the Surrealist movement, but also to accusations that Dali had abandoned his earlier principles and idealism for fame, money, and popular attention (sound familiar?). On the other hand, Kanye has continued his earlier practice of speaking through comparison, leaving a trail of breadcrumb clues via his Twitter. For example, he raises, very intriguingly, the performative art practice of Joseph Bueys in several instances-- a conceptual artist who bridged performance with social critique through landmark performance works like I Like America, and America Likes Me (1974). To be sure, it is impossible to know right now if what Kanye is doing will ever be coherent as art or constitute a broader plan of political attack (recall he said he would run for president in 2020), but it is very clear that his recent controversial statements (especially around slavery and American history) have landed in a very different way than ever before. He may indeed have jumped the shark this time around, and if so, he may end up like Dali with no road back to his earlier successes.