Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

Reading break was like a godsend this year! After finishing up co-organizing and hosting the fantastic and very well received Canadian Culinary Imaginations Symposium last weekend with Dr. Shelley Boyd, all of my attention turned to grading, catching up on sleep, and generally recharging. I was also happy to get to many of the films I had been saving to watch ahead of the Academy Awards tonight (Room was FANTASTIC and I highly recommend both the Amy documentary (about Amy Winehouse) and Cartel Land). With all of the controversy surrounding this year's awards, I am once again reminding students in my film studies classes about the history of such moments in the Academy. The Oscars have long reflected all that is loved and despised about Hollywood and its many unspoken codes and rules (I chose the Chaplin image above with these controversies in mind). Of course I wonder along with everyone else how host Chris Rock will deal with the tensions this year-- I have a feeling there will be lots to reflect on in the days to come. For now, enjoy (or hate-watch) the show if you are tuning it, and enjoy my round up of links too. Cheers and happy Sunday night!

"Everybody’s a Critic. And That’s How It Should Be"

nytimes.com

"Pussy Power: Carolee Schneemann On The Feminist Magic Of Cat Videos"

huffingtonpost.com

"The Life of Pablo vs. the Life of Kanye"

nytimes.com

"Facebook Reactions, the Totally Redesigned Like Button, Is Here"

wired.com

"We Are Hopelessly Hooked"

nybooks.com

"Andrea Fraser: the artist turning the Whitney into a prison"

theguardian.com

"The Digital Dirt: How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide"

newyorker.com

"The Culture Gabfest “Who Will Criticize the Critics?” Edition (PODCAST)"

slate.com

"Seeing Through Photographs MoMA (YouTube Playlist)"

moma.com

"Watch ‘Bob Ross’ Paint the Happy Little Blood-Soaked Winterscape of The Revenant"

vulture.com

List of Links (for quicker linking):

• Everybody’s a Critic. And That’s How It Should Be.
• Pussy Power: Carolee Schneemann On The Feminist Magic Of Cat Videos
• Watch ‘Bob Ross’ Paint the Happy Little Blood-Soaked Winterscape of The Revenant
• The Life of Pablo vs. the Life of Kanye
• Facebook Reactions, the Totally Redesigned Like Button, Is Here
• We Are Hopelessly Hooked
• Andrea Fraser: the artist turning the Whitney into a prison
• The Digital Dirt: How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide
• The Culture Gabfest “Who Will Criticize the Critics?” Edition (PODCAST)
• Seeing Through Photographs MoMA (YouTube Playlist)

Location| London: Seeing the Canon of Art History Up Close PART 2

The ideas introduced in Part One of this post dealt with my recent visits to the Tate Modern and Courtauld Gallery in London and the observations I made seeing works of art up close that are typically part of the canon of art history. From these first examples, I am once again struck by how easy it is to miss the nuances of materials, composition, and any other special features that often fall flat on the page, the screen, or the projected digital image. Moving along to my next two museums, London’s National Gallery—the granddaddy of art museums in England—and Tate Britain, I had occasion to experience many more instances of surprise and delight when encountering well known works.

Visiting the National Gallery is far closer to the experience of visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the Louvre in Paris. Large scale monumental buildings housing the art of nation. Even midweek on a dreary February afternoon, the place is packed with spectators. Seeing Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed—The Great Western Railway (1844), I note the intimate scale of the piece as it hangs at eye level on the wall. The flurry and destabilizing swirl of tones and the visible texture in the paint almost abstract the image of a train barreling through an industrial landscape. The painting is even more dynamic than I imagined, and seeing the painting this close I can make out so many of the formal and thematic elements that would come to typify Impressionist treatments of the “terrible beauty” of industry. The picture is carefully lit to accentuate the contrast of light and dark, and the way clouds merge with steam.

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J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed—The Great Western Railway (1844). Astonishing contrasts of tone and whirls of abstraction.

A few rooms over, I am greeted with themes of industry again with another Seurat (I had already encountered many of them at the Courtauld), but this time it is the Seurat so many people who have studied modern art history think of when conjuring paintings of labour and class. Bathiers at Asnières (1884) is created forty years after Turner and is far less enthusiastic about the promise of the railway and all that it represents. Representing young workmen taking a break by the river in an industrial suburb of Paris, the large scale composition is both a manifesto of post-impressionist form and content—the divisionist brushwork that separates colour and creates disjuncture in the composition is directly related to the subject of alienated and even exhausted workers trying to find a moment of ritual leisure against the backdrop of a less than pretty industrial landscape. Seeing the painting up close in its overwhelming dimensions (that of a large scale history painting), I wonder how alien yet familiar this subject would have appeared to shocked audiences in the late nineteenth century.

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Georges Seurat, Bathiers at Asnières (1884). Themes of alienation, class, labour, and rituals of leisure are explored through form and content.

As I continue to wander through the modern section of the National Gallery, I swoon seeing Cezanne’s Bathers (1884-1905)—another take on the leisure activity alluded to in the Seurat painting I left behind. Here, all I can see when immediately encountering the image is its form—the contours of the bodies, the many complex shades of blue and green, and its size, which is far larger than I imagined. I get up close and think about how Matisse carried a picture postcard of this work throughout his early career, encountering the original painting in a museum just as I was in this moment. I make visual connections to the Fauves and think of the blues and greens of Chagall’s paintings in particular. The lines of influence and inspiration travel far and wide from just this one declarative work.

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Paul Cezanne, Bathers (1884-1905). Stunning! Matisse carried a postcard picture of this painting as a young artist.

Turning the corner into one especially noisy room, I prepare myself for the “Mona Lisa” moment I normally dread in art museums—the spectacle of the one work of art everyone has come to see. In this case, it is Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) and I decide to patiently wait my turn and get up close for a look. It is undeniable how captivating and energetic Van Gogh’s paintings are in person (see image at top of this post). You see the vibrant colours, the thick impasto style, and the clearly written “Vincent” on the canvas. For most people, however, it is the momentary communion with the cult of artistic genius that is the draw. People snap their selfies and take care to examine every inch of the painting in some vain attempt to take in a hidden message. Meanwhile, many perfectly lovely works of art remain ignored all around the room. I find this especially ironic as sunflowers were considered a lowly crop in Van Gogh’s day. But in this room, and through the kind of semiotic shifts made possible by art history, the sunflower joins the ranks of an heirloom rose by virtue of its status and perceived value.

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The architecture of the Tate Britain is stunning inside and out-- I could not get enough shots of the architecture.

In my final museum visit, I get a very quick walk through the Tate Britain. The elegance of the space while still maintaining a large scale and vast collection strikes a wonderful balance and I get caught up in photographing the architecture of the building as much as any of the art works I encounter. I am immediately delighted to encounter a room with paintings hung Salon style—the way that art works would have been experienced by most audiences prior to the early twentieth century. Notably many contemporary museums and galleries have more recently experimented with curating shows using this style of hanging and it is easy to see why. Audiences spend time engaging and looking, making connections. It is in this room that I spot a number of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, most notably Millais’ famous Ophelia (1851), and I marvel at both the photographic realism of the figure but also the incredible detail of the plants. The work is both clinical and beautiful—an evocative combination.

Salon style hanging of paintings in the main gallery at Tate Britain.

John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1851)

J.M.W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812)

J.M.W. Turner, Shipwreck (1805)

detail of Turner's Snowstorm. Note the way the figures blend into the landscape.

detail from Turner's Shipwreck. Notice how Turner's figures are always fighting the sublime force of nature. Seeing the expressions and narratives up close is marvelous.

Dusk falls on the Tate Britain at the end of my visit-- I promise to return on my next trip to London.

As this is a museum dedicated to British art, I see many more Turners, including two that I routinely teach, Shipwreck (1805) and Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812). Keeping in mind that Turner was working to perfect his representation of the sublime force of nature as a way to counter the power of any one military power (here, he alluded to Napoleon’s diminished strength in the French campaigns against the British), it is remarkable to see just how tiny, irrational, and erratic the men in these pictures appear. Once again, I see narrative elements in the bottom register of these works that are normally obscured in copies. By the end of this particular visit, I have to admit to myself that I will not be able to get through the whole museum this time around—I make a mental note to return here first on my next trip to London—but just before leaving, I make sure to go see Tracey Emin’s installation My Bed (1998).

There are some works of art that just have to be seen up close to be truly appreciated, and this is one of them. As I examine all of the everyday objects littered around the unmade bed in the middle of the room, I recall many heated discussions in grad school about the transgression and representation of feminist thinking and theory evoked in the piece. My mind then turns to the more mundane questions of how this work was installed, how each piece of debris is placed on the floor around the bed (the tampons seem a little too artfully arranged, while the bedding is also quite crisp, but it does all smell, lending another sensorial dimension to the piece…) and I snap many photos knowing that when I next go to lecture about this work, I will have something more, something new to add to my discussion, having seen the art up close and, in this case, very personal.

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Tracey Emin, My Bed (1998). The details and arrangement of debris surrounding the bed captivated my attention, as did the smell of this most famous art installation. 

Location| London: Seeing the Canon of Art History Up Close PART 1

No matter how much art historians of a particular critical training try to convince themselves otherwise, many artworks when seen in person are seductive and beautiful. Period. I have had this conversation a million times with both colleagues and students (and Walter Benjamin’s famous treatise “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Art” notwithstanding) I am continually struck by how much I am awed when in the physical presence of artworks that I write and think about regularly. It also makes me wonder about the critical distance that I have, being situated in Canada and in a city far removed from access to seeing canonical works of art on the regular, and how that might have been different had I completed my training in Europe. Would my insistence on interrogating the myth of the artist genius be as strong? Would I have pursued such an interest in modern and new media art? Would my research interests been dramatically altered? Would this have been for better or for worse?

Pondering all of this while in London, I was still glad to visit many of the works that I routinely lecture about, mostly to look at the nuances of materials, composition, and any other special features I would tend to miss when studying an image from a book or slide. That of course is the primary advantage of seeing art up close—that, and being able to record and photograph when possible these nuances and discoveries. What follows in my shared photos and galleries are some of these chance findings and some of the little insights gained when seeing the canon of art history up close. 

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A panoramic shot of the Gerhard Richter room at the Tate Modern-- a sight to behold.

360 degrees of Gerhard Richter #tatemodern #gerhardrichter #arthistory #artcanon📸 #London #uk

A video posted by Dorothy Barenscott (@dbarenscott) on Feb 6, 2016 at 3:33am PST

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain 1917 (replica produced 1964, original destroyed)

First up, my visit to the Tate Modern. This is pretty much the first place I want to go when in London, and like the MoMA in New York, I instantly feel at home with what I encounter. This time around I was glad to see one of the replica Duchamp Fountain’s (an object that you come to love or hate as an art history student) that are in several modern museum collections around the world. Cased in glass, I chuckle to myself about the preciousness of the display—Duchamp would have hated it— but noted the pristine white surface and organic form of the materials. Clearly Duchamp recognized some measure of aesthetic appeal to the way porcelain gleams when properly lit. These tensions are incredibly pronounced when seeing the work in person. Keeping in mind too that this is a replica, the object still excites audiences for its art historical significance. This alone is deeply ironic, but is an important part of the contradiction brought about by the work.

Moving on, I was also glad to get the rare chance to look closely at a Lee Krasner painting. Krasner, who is mostly treated in the canon as the wife of Jackson Pollock, a footnote in art history, was a tremendous painter in her own right and has even been credited more recently with influencing Pollock far more than previously admitted. Importantly, her painting hung solo at the Tate without any Pollock near by—a real declaration and important curatorial choice— and it was fantastic to see the confident large scale and all over composition of this piece.

Finally, a room filled with Gerhard Richter paintings was both mesmerizing and insightful. Up close, these works are a study in layering and experiments in paint application. They are thick and dimensional. And although I had the pleasure of seeing Richter’s retrospective some years ago at the Pompidou in Paris, the placement of such large scale works in one large room, with nothing else, was a sight to behold. 360 degrees of Richter... uh-oh, I may have even gasped at their beauty.

Lee Krasner, Gothic Landscape (1961)

The stairway leading up to the many galleries of the Courtauld provides an intimate encounter with the art on display.

Walking from the Tate Modern over to the Courtauld Gallery moves visitors not only across the River Thames but also several centuries back in time. Despite any perceptions of “old art,” however, the institution still houses one of the most significant collections of modern Impressionist and Post-Impressionist French art, and that was what I was there to see. Moving from room to room, one of the striking aspects of the Courtauld is the intimacy of the space—being in the gallery feels like a visit (or a sneak into) a grand mansion. The work is strategically exhibited as it would have likely been encountered originally, in the salon or smaller rooms of someone’s home (remember that the Impressionist and Post-Impressionists were mostly excluded from official French salon exhibition). Instead of the grand rooms of the Orsay in Paris where people generally first encounter French Impressionist art, the works at Courtauld are hung over period furniture pieces and distributed in decorated rooms. As a result, works such as Renoir’s La Loge (1874) are made to look even more luxe and gorgeous in such a setting, bringing about that uncomfortable edge that many Impressionists walked between being critical of the society they portrayed or merely celebrating it in all of its superficiality. Seeing Seurat’s Young woman powdering herself brought smiles and the sense that he had a true grasp on stiff rituals of vanity still so much a part of modern individual’s lives. Van Gogh’s self-portrait is far more jarring to behold in this regard, but once again I am struck by so many of the details I have missed before, such as the Japanese-inspired print painted in the background. 

Pierre Auguste Renoir, La Loge (1874)

Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)

Georges Seurat, Young woman powdering Herself (1888-90)

Georges Seurat, Study for ‘Le Chahut’ c. 1889

Edgar Degas, Two Dancers on a stage (1874)

Paul Cezanne, Montagne Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine (1887)

 Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)

I am also delighted to see one of Seurat’s studies for Le Chahut— a larger work on display in the Netherlands. Seeing the small painted studies artists create to produce a larger painting is always insightful and just plain cool. Here I see just how painstakingly Seurat applied dots of paint to the canvas to create his signature pointillism style. I see something similar looking at Cezanne's famous Montagne Sainte-Victoire painting up close. Knowing he painted this scene dozens of times over in order to explore the transience of light and form in landscape, I am reminded that he too saw these masterpieces less as finished works and more as ongoing studies, no matter how they ended up being collected and exhibited.

And finally, I was able to lay eyes on the work I had most come to see—Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. The subject of so many important academic writings on the Impressionists and the work that inspired many artistic treatments on its content (I am thinking here specifically of Jeff Wall's Picture for Women (1979)-- Wall, an artist from Vancouver who studied for part of his career at the Courtauld Institute and would have been looking at this painting regularly in person) it is remarkable that so many details of this painting are only apparent on closer viewing. The strange way the reflections in the mirror look real but also clearly reflected, the places where the painting is sharp and crisp, and the places where it is fuzzy and almost abstract—just like our own memories and experience of time and space. The expression of boredom tinged with regret on the face of a daydreaming barmaid is even more striking when looked at as if you are standing at eye-level across the bar from her. No doubt Wall would have noted every nuance when studying it day after day to give his own final artwork that arresting quality. This is radical avant-garde painting at its most exhilarating, and yes, at its most beautiful, a must-see in person.

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

Mid-February brings Valentine's Day, NY Fashion week, and growing Oscar buzz-- these are the primary themes that permeated my media feeds this week, along with more talk about the US presidential race and the debates around feminism vis-a-vis Hillary and Bernie. Many new art exhibitions are also opening around the world over the next month, so I expect to see more reviews in the weeks to come. On the academic front, It is getting closer to midterms and I am gearing up for a series of posts to help students plan and execute their research and written assignments for the semester-- stay tuned. In the meantime, take a break, grab a coffee, and enjoy my chosen and especially eclectic mix of links from the past week. 

"Misty Copeland uses high fashion to flawlessly re-create Degas' ballerinas"

mashable.com

"The street artist who painted Donald Trump as a poop emoji tells us why he did it"

businessinsider.com

"We Are in the Midst of a Crisis of Higher Education in Art, and Now’s the Perfect Time to Reform It"

artsy.net

"A. O. Scott, Critic Without a Cause"

theatlantic.com

"Artists' Valentines: from Frida Kahlo’s lipstick-kissed note to 'I do' – in pictures"

theguardian.com

"A God Dream: Kanye West unveils a new album, “The Life of Pablo”"

newyorker.com

"When a White Square Is More Than a White Square"

nytimes.com

"CINDY SHERMAN: STREET-STYLE STAR"

harpersbazaar.com

"French Court Rules Against Facebook in Gustave Courbet Lawsuit"

artnet.com

"DoubleX Gabfest: The Bernie Bros Edition (PODCAST)"

slate.com

List of Links (for quicker linking):

• Misty Copeland uses high fashion to flawlessly re-create Degas' ballerinas
• The street artist who painted Donald Trump as a poop emoji tells us why he did it
• We Are in the Midst of a Crisis of Higher Education in Art, and Now’s the Perfect Time to Reform It
• A. O. Scott, Critic Without a Cause
• Artists' Valentines: from Frida Kahlo’s lipstick-kissed note to 'I do' – in pictures
• A God Dream: Kanye West unveils a new album, “The Life of Pablo”
• When a White Square Is More Than a White Square
• CINDY SHERMAN: STREET-STYLE STAR
• French Court Rules Against Facebook in Gustave Courbet Lawsuit
• DoubleX Gabfest: The Bernie Bros Edition (PODCAST)

Location| London: Visit to Whitechapel Gallery Electronic Superhighway Exhibition 2016-1966

“How is the Internet changing art?” That is the critical question posed by Whitechapel Gallery’s major exhibition surveying the relationship between visual culture and new media technology over the last five decades. Having researched these questions and taught New Media focused courses over the past six years, I was excited to visit this exhibition in person while on my recent trip to London. The show, which opened January 29th and runs through mid-May in East London, presents an incredible collection of artists, projects, archives, and writings (past and present) and raises important questions about how artists have been at the leading edge of the debates and questions concerning human relationships with emerging technology.  What struck me when entering the spaces of Whitechapel Gallery was just how dynamic, playful, and thoroughly inviting the exhibition looked and felt. Unlike other new media shows that can tend towards the cool and minimal, there was attention to presenting both traditional and non-traditional media forms in the examination of the core theme of the “Electronic Superhighway” in an engaging way.

The unassuming and traditional facade of Whitechapel Gallery hides one of the most important contemporary public art galleries in London.

Oscillating between themes of resistance and liberation, the show is strategically divided into three large galleries that plot both a chronological and thematic approach to artistic engagement with computers, the Internet, and new media. Visitors enter the main gallery space on the ground floor and are invited to look first at the present (hence the subtitle 2016-1966—a clever curatorial approach) and familiarize themselves with some of the most relevant and contemporary artists and projects exploring the exhibition themes. It was interesting seeing Canadian Douglas Coupland given such a prominent place in the room (and of course his placement here relates to his literary work as much as his visual projects), but I was more drawn to the works done by artists Amalia Ulman, Zach Blas, Evan Roth, Cory Arcangel, James Bridle, Taryn Simon, Jayson Musson, and Haron Farocki (see my gallery for details). 

Olad Breuning, Text Butt (2015)

Interior Shot of exhibition with Douglas Coupland, Deep Face (2015) in background.

Amalia Ulman, Excellence and Perfection (2015)

Cory Arcangel, Snowbunny/Lakes (2015)

Zach Blas, Queer Technologies (2007-2010)

Evan Roth, Internet Cache Self-Portrait, November 24, 2015 (2015)

James Bridle, Homo Sacer (2015)

Taryn Simon, Image Atlas (2012)

Jayson Musson, ART THOUGHTZ (2010-2012)

Haron Farocki, Parallel I-IV (2012-14)

Moving upstairs, the pioneers of Internet and new media based art are showcased, and visitors are greeted with a large scale video sculpture installation of Nam June Paik’s Internet Dream (1994) which many delighted in watching, photographing, videotaping, and generally hanging out with.  I probably took more pictures and notes in this part of the show since it is both rare and incredibly special to see some of the documents and artworks from this much-neglected period of art history ranging from the late 1960’s through 80’s. The highlight for me was finally getting a look at some of the ephemera associated with E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology)—an interdisciplinary group including the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage and many others who attempted to establish collaborations between artists and engineers working with emerging technologies in the late 1960s. A manifesto and several documents were available for viewing—a rare look into a key nexus of activity during the height of the counter-cultural revolution in New York. 

Nam June Paik, Internet Dream (1994)

Roy Ascott, La Plissure du Texte (1983)

E.A.T. Experiments in Art and Technology, ephemera and papers (1966)

Judith Barry, Space Invaders (1981-82)

Cybernetic Serendipity ephemera and papers from the 1968 exhibition

Hiroshi Kawano, Untitled (Red Tree) (1972)

Moving back downstairs, I made sure to check out the related exhibition of German filmmaker Harun Farocki’s immersive computer game video installation, Parallel I-IV. Here, the examination and evolution of gaming graphics was presented in both an interactive and conceptual way. It was also a thrill to see how relevant and cutting-edge Farocki’s final work was (he passed away at 70 years old in 2014) and to note his profound influence on many of the younger artists featured in the larger show (his Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades was also a delight to encounter later in my visit at the Tate Modern). Since his passing, it appears many more institutions have been showcasing Farocki’s work, making his legacy known to a new generation of artists and researchers. All in all, this is a show not to be missed if you find yourself in London before the end of May. Once again, we can see through these kinds of exhibitions how the boundaries and possibilities for artmaking and thinking about the avant-garde are being transformed through the Internet, computing, and emerging screen cultures.

So many books! I have the catalogue on order, but there are many more books related to this exhibition that I will be posting on my Pinterest collection "Books to Explore"