The View from the Edge of the Universe

A $34.99 Gursky: December's Best Buy

The 2006 FIFA World Cup Posters are so cool they made my best buy list.  My faves are Tobias Rehberger, Rosemarie Trockel, Luo Brothers and Andreas Gursky.  They are being sold in a number of ways: individually unsigned for about $35, in a portfolio of all 14 unsigned for about $500 as well as in a signed limited edition version ranging from $600 to about $1,700 and a signed portfolio for about $11,000.  Soccer.com is selling many of them for $34.99.  They would make a great holiday gift! (hint hint)

A French Kiss from Atlanta

A hot chick friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous) writes a blog exquis about all things French.  At la dauphine, she also writes about art, tv, movies, books and whatever else is on her mind.  An admitted francofile, I doubt she'll be calling them "freedom fries" any time soon.  I have to be careful, for when I read her blog, I get the itch to hop on a plane to Paris, my favorite city on earth.

Anyhoo, she has some delightful and picture-filled entries about the Miami art circus that just ended from an Atlanta point of view.  Check them out!

2005 Atlanta Top Ten + 1

1. Gimme Shelter / Maximum Flavor / 5 X 5 at (respectively) Saltworks, the Atlanta College of Art Gallery and Wertz Contemporary - Although thematically unrelated, these three shows contained many of the same artists who I am convinced are what is next.  Attention collectors, here is the list of who to buy now: William Cordova, iona rozeal brown (solo at Saltworks in February), Wardell Milan, Kehinde Wiley (oops too late), Mickalene Thomas, Leslie Hewitt, Hank Willis Thomas and Nicole Cherubini.  Plus, two of Atlanta's better known artists, Eric Mack and Charles Nelson broke through creatively in these shows.  My post on Maximum Flavor here.
2. Joe Peragine at Solomon Projects - it took the combination of three shows to best this knock-out performance. What a show off!  More here.
3. The Contemporary Portrait Gallery at the New High Museum - which includes portraits by Vik Muniz, Philip-Lorca Dicorcia, Chuck Close, Jean Micheal Basquiat, Sigmar Polke and Dawoud Bey.  The Muniz, new photo curator Julian Cox's first acquisition, is so great it brings me to my knees.
4. Suzhou Embroidery at the Carter Presidential Library - I was blown off my high art pedestal and humbled by the meditative skill required to create these masterworks. More here.
5. Shin-il Kim at Saltworks -  Kim's embossed paper animations (done with an inked-out ball point pen) combined Eastern traditions with Western art history in a manner that added up to video art that was new, accessible and multi-dimensional.  It's something you really have to see to appreciate his labor intesive process.  The third video - also referencing art history with a clever twist is a perfect first video acquisiton for a collector - maybe me!
6. What Business Are You In? at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center - When you work for the man (which I did for several years) this show hits home, sometimes painfully and sometimes comically. More here.
7. Bryan Schellinger at Garage Projects  Few artists in Atlanta have the guts to set the bar as high as Schellinger did in his ambitious installation that attempted to place his abstract paintings and drawings into a thematic context.  Although not quite as cohesive as Peragine's (above at #2 who pulled out all the stops as well), Schellinger drew on art history, ultimate fighting and his skills as a chef to make "Sugar Monkey" the most beautiful mess of a show I've seen in quite a while.  More here and here.
8. William Steiger  at Marcia Wood - Remember how marginalized the 19th century great American painters like Eakins, Sargeant, Homer and  Hopper were in their time? The great stuff sometimes happens at the fringes of the art world. Steiger's work is a revisiting of the 19th century Americans filtered through a century of modernism.
9. Drew Conrad at Get This! Gallery - A little Masao Yamamoto mixed with Richard Prince conceptualism and Drew's rock star good looks resulted in an unexpectedly complex yet visually engaging show.  It came just at the time that my ideas about photography were expanding and really hit the mark. More here.
10. Lauren Clay at Eyedrum  For some reason my taste in art is either maximal or minimal - there is no in between.  Clay's cut paper sculptures are delicate, minimal and at the same time electrifying.  More here.
+1. Whitez in the 'Hood - the 2005 Tour Championship at East Lake Country Club - Two things you need to know: 1. Atlanta is still a largely segregated city and 2. The East Lake Country Club is smack dab in the middle of the 'hood.  I found myself completely delighted at the unintentional performance art that started at the Turner Field parking lot where thousands of mostly white golf fans stood on line in their striped polos and khaki shorts to get bused (yes bused!) into the middle of Blacklanta. It was just like the old days, only backwards! The look on people's faces was worth the admission price alone as they watched the neighborhood get rougher and rougher.  Ironically, the only player they cared to follow was Tiger Woods.  Me, I'm more of a Sergio Garcia fan for reasons that have nothing to do with his golfing.

Other noteworthy shows - Chris Verene, Venske & Spanle, Marcus Kenny (all at Marcia Wood Gallery), Conor McGrady at Saltworks, Scott Ingram at Solomon Projects (who will probably have the best show of 2006 with his upcoming installation at the Botanical Gardens), Epilogue, Katy Grannan, David Hilliard (all at Jackson Fine Art), Sandy Skoglund at Fay Gold, Looks Good on Paper at Spruill, Jennifer Cawley at Tew, Susan Krause at B Complex who would have made my top ten if it was a complete exhibition instead of one artist in a good-but-not-great group showcase.

Biggest disappointments - The Atlanta Biennial at the Contemporary and Fay Gold's 25th Anniversary show which amounted to nothing more than an inventory clearance sale despite all the hoopla.

Art of the Beautiful Calculation

Stay with me on this one; it'll be worth it.

To mathematicians and physicists, the holy grail seems to be the perfect, simple answer to everything.  Einstein died unable to arrive at the "theory of everything".  It will likely elude Stephen Hawking as well.  But science and math have discovered a number of, let's call them for lack of a better term "beautiful calculations" as well as some that appear beautiful but in fact are just pretty.
To me, the most simple and beautiful of all, at least for now, is pi.  If you ever asked God to spell his name, I bet he would spell it 3.141592652589793.  Also simple and beautiful is Einstein's special theory of relativity.  Only pretty is the Mandelbrot set.  Why?  Where pi and Einstein's theory are on the surface rather easy to grasp, their implications are profoundly, almost incomprehensibly complex.  On the other hand, the Mandelbrot set, although fascinating, seems to lead to nothing more than variations of a theme.
So what does this all have to do with art?  I would propose that this strategy has been employed by many of the most important artists of today (and of the 20th century) and amounts to the most significant movement in art of the 20th century, something that Picasso himself employed most clearly with cubism. It's Marcel Duchamp though, an early practitioner of Art of the Beautiful Calculation (explained in just a second) whose work seems more apparent in nearly all the art that is deemed important today.
Art of the Beautiful Calculation is an art making strategy where a single, pared down idea (the "beautiful calculation") is proposed by an artist who then proceeds to create numerous applied examples of the calculation in an attempt to illustrate and explore its implications.  The more complex and profound the implications combined with the skill of the artist in effectively illustrating them are the criteria used to evaluate the quality and importance of the art. Its an approach to making art that leaves literally nothing to chance.
Here, just off the top of my head, is a partial list of artists who employ this strategy:
Hilla and Bernd Becher
Andreas Gursky
Thomas Ruff
Thomas Struth
Candida Hofer
Cindy Sherman
Richard Prince
Jeff Koons
Jeff Wall
Takashi Murakami
Vik Muniz
Kara Walker
In Atlanta - Scott Ingram and Kojo Griffin
the list goes on and on an on and on...........

It's a very scientific, "left brain" approach to art making: propose a theory (the "calculation") and then test and prove the theory through experimentation (the art itself).  For someone like me who is very science and numbers oriented, it is no surprise that these artists are the ones to whom I'm most attracted.
The work of Bernd and Hilla Becher is probably the easiest to see this strategy in action and is why they have been identified as being as influential as they are.  Those who find the work uninteresting would most likely find the work of most all the artists listed above to be uninteresting as well.  It's an approach that is not for everyone, especially those who aren't oriented in this way.   My argument is that these artists are entirely oriented towards art making in the same way that a scientist or mathematician is oriented towards their particular pursuits.
Identifying and articulating (even if subconsciously) the "beautiful calculation" put forth by an artist makes it much easier to evaluate their entire body of work.
I think then, despite being an influential early adopter of this strategy, the work of the Becher's ultimately falls short because the implications of their "calculation" are not sufficiently complex.  Ditto for Andreas Gursky: he's reached the end of the line and will ultimately take a back seat to others.  He's the Mandelbrot set of contemporary art.  If you don't believe me, simply read texts written about Gursky's work and notice how hard the writer tries, ultimately in vain, to inject complex meaning into his photos.
Surprisingly, I find the work of Candida Hofer, who employs as strict and narrow a strategy as the Becher's to be more expansive conceptually than either the Bechers or Gursky. 
Next, look at the work of  Kara Walker.  It's no surprise that she was the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant.  Her approach to art making relies on an extremely pared down, completely clear and unambiguous strategy that to date has resulted in artworks with profound social and historical impact. Her artworks (at least at first) were completely void of a single unnecessary element.  But lately, Walker seems to be adding elements to the work that certainly make the works more visually compelling but add little to the scope of her "calculation".  This leads me to believe that perhaps she too has hit a wall, her "calculation" has played itself out and for now, she has no where to turn.  More interestingly though, perhaps she has started to abandon the "beautiful calculation" strategy which actually seems to be where contemporary art is heading.
Kojo Griffin concluded that his "calculation's" implications were not sufficient for him to continue  and has abandoned it.  A very brave, but unavoidable conclusion on his part which takes some fortitude that Gursky may not have.
Incidentally, Picasso hit the wall with his own beautiful calculation, cubism and essentially abandoned it in its original form.
Takashi Murakami has a name for his: Superflat.   As does Jeff Wall: Near Documentary.  Wall has proved the importance and depth of his "calculation"; Murakami is well on his way, but he too may hit a wall some day.
This all brings me to who I believe will be the two artists that history will recognize as being the apex of the "beautiful calculation" strategy: Thomas Ruff and Vik Muniz.
If one looks at the entire body of work by Thomas Ruff, it's becomes so easy and clear to see his "beautiful calculation".  No one to date has been able  to match the wildly inventive and diverse examples that Ruff has been able to produce to prove his "calculation". 
Vik Muniz too, with every new picture he creates, has been able to illustrate another facet of his "calculation".  He also can talk very effortlessly and eloquently about his work.  These guys are scientists in artist's clothes...hence they better  be able to explain themselves both visually and verbally.  What sets Vik apart is not so much the diversity that Ruff possesses, but his astonishing skill as an image maker.
Those with influence in the art world now, even without knowing it, have embraced the idea of the "beautiful calculation" as the strategy that defines what is centrally important in art today.  But that is changing. Read on.
Science has at least for now, has been unable to tidy things up as nicely as they would have liked and instead has moved - in the quest for the theory of everything - to a theory, string theory, so mind bogglingly complex and messy that even the super brainiacs cannot figure out a way to prove it. String theory detractors point to this as its fatal flaw: its an unprovable idea.  As an example, string theory relies on the existence of as many as 13 dimensions which is a concept, despite the fact that I've read and read and read,  I still cannot even begin to grasp.  I can't even grasp one additional dimension.  If the scientists can't explain it well enough so that I can at least begin to grasp the concept, I think they most likely have trouble grasping the concept as well but that has not stopped them from including it as a central element of their theory.
What's next in art is more akin to string theory than to the elegance of pi.  Artists are making work that does not stem from a single "beautiful calculation".  Instead they are, in effect, attempting to create work in "13 dimensions"..many of which are completely unexplainable to them but at the same time absolutely essential to the work.  This approach is far harder to be successful at than the "beautiful calculation" which is why the galleries are so full of not-so-great-but-completely-new art.  At least with the "beautiful calculation" approach, less successful work hits a dead end mercifully quickly.  This "manifesto" of mine grew out of a conversation with an unlikely person in an even more unlikely place:

Jennifer Cawley at Tew Gallery
I went to see Jennifer Cawley's newest body of work last night at Tew Gallery.  She is not of the "beautiful calculation" ilk, she's a string theory artist.  Jennifer graciously allowed me to critique her work and I attempted to do so from a "beautiful calculation" standpoint.  Cawley paid me what I first regarded to be a very validating compliment in that she said my critique of her work is "exactly what Kara Walker said about the work" (she and Walker went to ACA together and have remained friends).  Its no surprise that Walker and I critiqued the work identically.  We both approach art  from the same starting point.  Walker and I, to Cawley and the rest of the world of art makers using this strategy, must sound like string theory detractors:  if you can't prove it, its not valid. 
Later though, I realized how completely inappropriate this approach is when evaluating an artist who operates in a way counter to the "beautiful calculation" approach.  But the question remains, and someone will have to answer it to properly evaluate the tidal wave of this type of work that is coming:  how do you evaluate artwork where not everything has to be so clearly essential to some central proposition?  Perhaps Kara Walker will be the one to answer that: I have the feeling that Walker will abandon the "beautiful calculation" in exchange for the crazy and unprovable world of string theory.

I believe that the continual critiques that Cawley has received from this position have undermined her confidence in the approach that she uses.  Cawley certainly knows how to make compelling paintings that are conceptually complex and ambiguous at the same time.  This is not to say that all of the elements in her paintings are successful.  One cannot simply cry "string theory" and throw in everything along with the kitchen sink.  But to have complete confidence in every element of your work is crucial and Cawley's paintings will improve once she stops seeking advice from those who will not break free of the "beautiful calculation" approach.  In other words, Kara Walker has something to learn from Jennifer Cawley and not vice versa.

 

What an Ultra Maroon

Artforum's annual top ten lists are out and Thelma Golden has reached a new pinnacle of absurdity.  Her number one pick was not the Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, but instead the crowds that attended the retrospective. She even managed to out-idiotic her last-year-number-ten pick: Tom Ford's retirement from fashion. My top ten list will be out soon which will also include a completely outlandish and self-indulgent pick, albeit at the bottom of the list.  If Thelma can do it, so can I.