Lorenzo Petrantoni. “The Internet? That’s a world I know nothing about”

Today I caught the last day of Timestory, the exhibition of Lorenzo Petrantoni‘s graphic work at the gallery of Credito Valtellinese in Milan.

The artist was present. I complimented him on the exhibition and had a brief chat with him. We talked about his visual sources such as 19th-century books, and I remarked that Max Ernst too made collages out of old old illustration books.

“But you scan everything and then do the work on the computer, right?”

“No, I actually cut up everything with scissors and do the work by hand. I use the computer only at the end, for finishing.”

“Oh, I had no idea. I thought graphic artists were completely digital by now. See how misinformed I am.”

“And what do you do?”

“Well, I do Internet stuff.”

“The Internet? That’s a world I know nothing about”.

“Nothing? That’s too bad. For example, I’m sure you could buy a lot of old illustrated books for cheap on eBay.”

“eBay? Not sure… But there’s one thing I do I do on the Internet: I buy old books on AbeBooks. After all, I couldn’t very well travel each time to buy them.”

“You see? That’s great. And this here on the tripod is your camera?”

“Yes, I am documenting everything. It is the last day of the show. Kind of sorry to dismantle it.”

“Well yeah, that makes sense. How long did it take you to put up the Timestory on the big wall? You must have had assistants helping you out, right?”

“Yes, there were three of us. But still, it’s 22,000 small pieces of paper, so it took us about ten days. And the exhibition is only one month. The PR did not work out too well. Too bad. Just as it was picking up, people were starting to come…”

“Well, that’s right. I only came myself because my friend Serena tweeted about it yesterday.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Well then. Nice meeting you. Well done, again.”

“Thanks. Nice meeting you, too.”

One wonders, if this charming man had had a thousand Facebook fans, or a hundred Twitter followers, and they had liked and retweeted the news of the exhibition, and their friends and followers had liked it and so on… the exhibition would have been packed on day one (entry was free, too). But he’s just not into it (except for buying the books).

Below: Une Semaine de Bonté, the cover of Max Ernst’s collage book. Two works by Ashley Bickerton. An umbrella by Marcel Wanders.

ILLUMInazioni: 2011 Venice Biennale lives up to expectations

After the confused jumble of the 2009 edition, I wasn’t much looking forward to seeing what was on at the Biennale in Venice. Yet, after the past two days, I’m pleased to report that I found this year’s event much better.

The Director, Bice Curiger, has been Curator at the Kunsthaus Zurich since 1993, and has brought to Venice a much-needed measure of clarity and cleanness. The largest pavillion at the Giardini hosts a truly cosmopolitan Biennial show, built around an unofficial lifetime achievement award to Tintoretto, the most modern of the Old Masters.

The national pavillions are mostly solid submissions, with the German homage to Christoph Schlingensief (presenting the installation Eine Kirche der Angst vor dem Fremden in mir, pictured above) deservedly winning the Golden Lion. Another unmissable work is Thomas Hirschhorn’s installation in the Swiss pavillion, Crystal of Resistance (for which I refer you to the designboom post). Among individual artists’ awards, Christian Marclay’s Golden Lion to for The Clock – read more about it here – is also well deserved.

I keep wondering how much art will be hurt by the global crisis: art keeps bouncing back.

The Biennale is on until November 27, 2011.

The Illusionists: Help fund it on Kickstarter

A few weeks ago, I had drinks with a young filmmaker I had started following on Twitter months ago. Her name is Elena Rossini and she lives in Paris. We talked extensively about her feature-length documentary project, The Illusionists. I’ll let her explain it in her own words:

As you may know, in late June I’ve launched an ambitious fundraising campaign for my feature-length documentary The Illusionists, which I wrote and I am co-producing and directing.

Here is the synopsis of the film:

THE ILLUSIONISTS is a feature-length documentary about the commodification of the body and the marketing of unattainable beauty around the world. The film will explore the influence that corporations have on our perceptions of ourselves, showing how mass media, advertising, and several industries manipulate people’s insecurities about their bodies for profit.

The Illusionists’ Kickstarter page has a video teaser and a longer explanation of the project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1085595579/the-illusionists-documentary-insecurity-sells (its themes, style, and my motivations for making the film).

There are amazing experts already lined up for the interviews, including author & filmmaker Jean Kilbourne (best known for her iconic film series “Killing Us Softly”), psychotherapist Susie Orbach (best known for her books “Fat is a Feminist Issue” and “Bodies”) and Jenn Pozner (author of “Reality Bites Back”; she was recently featured in the New Yorker and on NPR). I’m also hoping to interview Umberto Eco, Gloria Steinem, Oliviero Toscani and Maurice Levy of Publicis, amongst others. 

Thanks to the incredible generosity of friends, friends-of-friends, Twitter and Facebook followers, the fundraising campaign has already achieved some amazing milestones. 12 days in, I’ve reached 43% of the total funding goal, with over 110 backers and more than 1,100 Facebook “likes” of my Kickstarter page. In short, I’m on cloud nine. But the road ahead is still long… if I don’t reach 100% of the funding goal by August 5th, I will lose all the pledges made so far.

On Kickstarter, I am offering “regular people” pre-sales of the film and various other gifts as rewards for donations:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1085595579/the-illusionists-documentary-insecurity-sells (the column on the right). I’m also developing a special package for sponsors whose mission is aligned with the message of the film that would offer exposure on the site, in all press material, and in the end credits of the film.

If this is something that resonates with you, go to Kickstarter.com and fund it. I just did.

Tony Oursler. Alienation, emptiness and videosculpture

Last Sunday I visited one of my favorite places in Milan, the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea. I have had reasons to praise their exhibitions in the recent past (Yayoi Kusama, Franko B., Joel Peter Witkin and Jan Saudek). The current show – until June 12th – presents works by American videoartist Tony Oursler. From the press release:

The work of the artist, since the beginning of his career, has been dominated by themes such as violence, the relationship with media, drugs, mental illnesses, pop culture, consumerist compulsion, sex, pollution. Ourlser’s analysis is focused on how all those things affect man’s corporeity and social and interpersonal relations.

Being all of these topics in which I am rather interested, I had high expectations. They were not fulfilled.

As I walked through the exhibition, I was nagged by the persistent feeling that the artists’ technical virtuosity as a videographer creating three-dimensional animated sculptures had taken over whatever meaning he wanted to convey to the viewer. I left the show not having learned anything about the unconscious, about schizophrenia, about art, or about anything else.

Tony Oursler was also the inaugural contributor to the Adobe Museum of Digital Media, which you can visit online (www.adobemuseum.com), but which at first glance looks to me line an elaborate showcase for Adobe’s Flash.

Hamish Fulton, Walking Artist

It so happened that over the past eight days I saw Hamish Fulton‘s work in four different places, which means I have to write about it. (The places were the land art park La Marrana in Montemarcello; the Museo Transfrontaliero del Monte Bianco in Courmayeur; the Centre Saint-Bénin in Aosta; and the Castello di Rivoli near Turin.)

Fulton is a walking artist. Walking is an integral part of many artists’ practice; two I have recently encountered are Regina José Galindo, also at Rivoli (with her bloodstained footprints around Guatemala City to protest against the presidential candidacy of former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt) and Francis Alÿs, who has a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London until September 5th (and who has been known for pushing a suitcase-sized block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it melted, and walking along an armistice border line in Jerusalem carrying a leaky can of green paint). Landmarks such as the Great Wall of China have attracted their fair share of artists walking its length, from Marina Abramovic to Ma Liuming.

Unlike most of these artists, however, Hamish Fulton does not construe walking as a protest act. It is an artistic act, without apparent political meaning; and his walks are rarely documented on video, but survive mostly through the scant evidence of a few photographs, a watercolor or two, some lines of text painted on a wall or carved on a bench after returning from the walk. His walks do not imply solitude (he will gladly follow sherpas, a Buddhist nun, or any local guide, really) and do not require heroism (the use of oxygen at high altitudes is freely acknowledged). He simply walks.

Here is what Fulton has to say through one of his less verbally restrained pieces:

I am a contemporary artist, not a mountaineer. I have no knowledge of Alpine-style climbing and, I see no reason why I should paint a ‘good likeness’  of any mountain. I employ words but I’m not a writer. I am a ‘walking artist’ and I record all my walks in word form. I do not ‘provide the relief of wordless art’. My art starts with an experience, not a material, I’m not a ‘land artist’. I transform ideas into experienced realities. At sea level, I had the idea to join a commercial expedition and climb mount everest, Chomolungma. In 2009 I stood still on the summit at 8850 metres. Ascending by the Southeast ridge is what true alpinists call: ‘high altitude trekking’. I go to the mountains as an artist.

Artistic vision: The Venice Biennale and Pinault’s new Punta della Dogana

It may be that any Biennial, having a Director whose job is like herding cats (the curators of the national pavillions), is by definition a mixed bag, structurally unable to express any coherent artistic vision. That’s what I came away with after visiting this year’s Venice Biennale, “Making Worlds”, directed by Daniel Birnbaum; in addition to the unpleasant feeling that most of it was looking backwards, instead of straight ahead into the future.

The following day, I visited François Pinault’s new contemporary art center at the Punta della Dogana (pictured), which hosts half of an exhibition titled “Mapping the Studio” (with the rest at Palazzo Grassi). It was everything that the Biennale wasn’t. Instead of the decaying infrastructure of the Giardini and the Arsenale, a freshly restored vast and luminous space, bearing the marks of Tadao Ando’s loving care (and, of course, ample funding by Monsieur Pinault). Instead of a cacophony of voices, a clear curatorial point of view: sure, a provocative, controversy-seeking one at times, but nevertheless an artistic vision, a show of teamwork between the collector and his curators, Gingeras and Bonami. A cross-section of what’s at the edge of artistic creation today, mediated by a discerning taste. Even the works from the 1970s and 1980s seemed fresh and contemporary.

Walking through the Biennale felt like work; visiting the (admittedly much smaller) Punta della Dogana was sheer pleasure.

And how was it for you?

Kunsthaus Zürich, lights and shadows

Upon becoming a member of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft earlier this year, I was surprised to learn that it has over 20,000 members and it is the second largest museum membership program in Europe after that of the Tate in London. This, with a city population of about 380,000 – 1.1m including the suburbs. Which makes Zurich, on a per capita basis, the place with the highest density of paying museum supporters in Europe.

But tonight, leafing through the assoication’s annual report, I found out that in 2008 visitor numbers at the Kunsthaus Zürich dropped to the lowest level in 10 years: only 214,000 visitors (vs. 310,000 in 2007 and the all-time high of 364,000 in 2000, the year of a Cézanne blockbuster). On the one hand, the report says, a few of the 2008 exhibitions (particularly Europop and Rivoluzione! Italian Modernism from Segantini to Balla) fell short of expectations; on the other hand, Zurich and Switzerland hosted a number of Euro 2008 soccer games as well as other competing events supposedly hurting museum attendance. Also, they make they rather unconvincing argument that since the exhibition program stretches over a three-year time horizon, there can be holes that imapct a given year’s numbers disproportionately – if so, we should see a steep rebound in 2009. In the meantime, twenty teams of architects are competing to build an extension to the Kunsthaus, with the winners to be announced in June and construction to be completed by 2015 at a cost of CHF 150 million, half from private sources and the other half committed by the city and the canton.

I have not yet seen any other museum’s 2008 visitor numbers and I don’t know whether the recession has caused other places to lose 30% of their visitors year on year. I would tend to guess, though, that there are places where the media would get at least a good crisis story out of this. Switzerland is probably too distracted by other shock news (unemployment breaking the 5% threshold! UBS announcing layoffs!) to start a conversation about the health of its cultural offerings.

Or, most likely, everybody is waiting for Art Basel in June. Last year’s edition packed 60,000 visitors (myself included) in just five days;  it is the most important commercial thermometer of the art market in the Continent. But with fewer people with serious money to spend, I doubt that even Art Basel will come close to last year’s success.

From the train window: Fischli & Weiss

If you’ve ever looked outside during the short train ride, to your right shortly before Oerlikon if you’re going from Zurich to the airport, to your left in the other direction, you’ve seen this.

From the Channel 4 Big Art project site:

Fischli & Weiss, How to Work Better (1991)
Painted on the wall of an office building, the artists play with the motivational sayings and strategies of the huge corporations that rule our lives and work. The obvious irony and banal treatment here helps to make a break with the corporate and reclaim the language of ordinary common sense (courtesy Peter Fischli David Weiss and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich).

The building is apparently used by the Zurich University for the computer science and psychology departments.

The list is actually not bad advice, everything considered.

Brandeis and the Rose Art Museum: should a university not sell its collection?

The art world is loudly complaining about the decision of the trustees of Brandeis University to face the financial crisis by, among other measures, selling the modern and contemporary art collection housed in the university’s Rose Art Museum. Reactions so far call the decision “astonishing”, “a shame”, “unprincipled”, “a complete wrong message to donors“, and “bad economics” (because art, like other asset classes, is likely to fetch less now than it would have in the good times). The Association of Art Museum Directors said it is “shocked and dismayed” by plans to close the Rose.

It doesn’t end here. The Massachussetts Attorney General is to conduct a detailed review of the decision. A spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office said: “They are saying that civilization doesn’t matter in the name of some kind of bottom line.”

Readers, you know how much I love modern and contemporary art. You know how passionate I am about it. Yet, I have to wonder: have all these people been living with their heads under the sand for the last year or so? I told you months ago that there was going to be less money for art. The writing was on the wall. It is not that civilization doesn’t matter – it matters enourmously, indeed. But in a crisis, you do what you gotta do.

So, let me come out and say it. I think the Brandeis trustees made the right decision. It is indeed a pity that the Rose has become a luxury that the university can no longer afford to keep, but if the alternatives are worse (freezing faculty hiring, cutting back on financial aid for students), then it is the right decision. If Stanford President John Hennessy wrote me another letter, saying this time that the trustees have decided to sell off the university’s art holdings, I would be saddened, but I would not complain. Let alone call the decision “unprincipled”.

The Attorney General’s spokeswoman also said: “It’s essential that students have access to real works of art [...] By subtracting the works of art from a college environment, you are betraying an enormous trust.” With all due respect, this is ridiculous. College fees are high, but do not include the permanent guarantee that you will have an art museum in your backyard, for your convenience. (Annual visitor numbers at the Rose were 13,000-15,000: a tiny number. The archeological digs at Venosa, near Potenza in Southern Italy, pull in more than that, according to 2007 data from the Italian Culture Ministry). For centuries, art students have been used to traveling, to go and study art where the art is. That’s how one becomes an artist (or a curator, or a critic, or whatever). Do we really want a generation of couch potato art students?

Collections are built and dispersed; at the end of February, the collection built up by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé will be auctioned off by Christie’s, in what is likely to be the largest sale of a private collection ever. Sure, those pieces were bought and not donated. But how many donor’s grants to the Rose stipulated that the works could never be sold under any circumstances, including a global financial crisis that shrinks the university endowment at unprecedented speeds? and what does “never” mean? until the donor’s last descendant has died? until the artist’s work has gone out of fashion – and lost value? until the end of the universe? And if you were a donor, would you make such a draconian stipulation? If you were a museum, would you accept it?

Sure, the university could have sought students’ opinions before the trustees had to decide. Yet the students’ protest sounds disingenuous, as they know perfectly well that they would have protested a lot more if the university had decided to save the Rose but cut back on, say, student dorms and have students sleep in tents out there in the snow. The decision-making process could, and probably should, have been more participative. But at the end of the day, students are there to study, and administrators are there to administer: somebody has to make decisions. And Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz and the trustees, in this case, made the right one.

Tag cloud, 1972

A curiously contemporary work from 1972 in the Italics exhibition curated by Francesco Bonami at Palazzo Grassi in Venice. It seems that designers of good-looking tag clouds such as Wordle haven’t really invented anything aesthetically new. The work, “Sì alla violenza operaia” (“Yes to workers’ violence”), is by artist Nanni Balestrini, 1972.