Note on J Hill

Robert Boyd

This is the last week you can see a small show by sculptor J. Hill at P.G. Contemporary. I recommend it. For this show, Hill seems to be combining personal memories of the 70s with the art history of the 70s. I don't know when Hill was born, but the first show on his bio is from 1993, which suggests a possible 70s childhood. So he would have probably been familiar with televisions with aerials and record players.


J. Hill, Dual (In three parts), 2012, MDF, 14.5" x 14.15", 15" x 18", 14.5" x 14.5"

And it's not just about being familiar--these things were part of our lives (I was 7 in 1970). Somehow, the texture of the MDF, a kind of wood product in which the wood fibers have been broken down and mixed with glue and resin, gives it a smooth, generic quality. Unlike traditional sculpture materials--marble, bronze, real wood--these sculptures seem to be in no way about the material from which they are made. Instead, they come across as pure shape--dreamlike representations of the objects they depict. They are platonic versions of turntables and TVs.



J. Hill, Tim's Retreat, 2012, MDF, 12" x 18"x 8"

It is this quality of being a somehow pure version of the object depicted that makes the centerpiece of the show, Untitled (For 1973, with Love and respect), so astonishing to me.


J. Hill, Untitled (For 1973, with love and respect), 2012, MDF, 50" x 50"

At first you see a tic-tac-toe board, placed in a corner. But as you examine it, you realize that the horizontal elements are sculptural representations of fluorescent lights fixtures and tubes. Suddenly you realize that Hill has created a sculpture of another sculpture by Dan Flavin. Specifically, his is a wooden recreation of untitled (for you Leo, in long respect and affection), a 1978 sculpture by Flavin dedicated to Leo Castelli.


Dan Flavin, untitled (for you Leo, in long respect and affection), 1978,pink, green, blue and yellow fluorescent light, 48" x 48" x 2"

Dan Flavin is lumped in with the minimalists, and one thing he shared with them is a concern for the space which his sculptures inhabited. By using light--particularly by using fluorescent light--his sculptures inherently "fill" any space they are in. A Flavin sculpture, with these uniform linear light sources, is not just a bunch of tubes and supports--it's the light itself hitting every corner of the room. The room itself becomes critically important. As with Donald Judd and Carl Andre, Flavin's pieces are indeterminate--they don't end where the sculpture ends. They are part of the architecture.

This is what makes Hill's Untitled (For 1973, with love and respect) so amusing and revelatory. It takes away the key thing about a Flavin sculpture--its light emitting quality--and forces you to consider it as an autonomous sculptural object. You rarely see a Flavin sculpture turned off. Hill allows you to see this and even more, he allows you to see the fluorescent tubes as tubes--i.e., as long cylindrical shapes.

Of course, there is a tension between the apparent technology of the Flavin work (representing the 20th century) and the seeming low-tech representation by J. Hill. But MDF is a technological product of the 20th century as much as fluorescent light is. We don't think of it that way because of its origin as wood.

The show, it seems, is a tribute to 1973. What happened in J. Hill's 1973, I don't know. Maybe that's when he was born. But for me, who spent my childhood and most of my teenage years in that dazed and confused decade, this show is quite moving. And Hill's homage to Dan Flavin is humorous and touching.

Chinati

Robert Boyd

In my post about Marfa, there is a large Chinati-shaped hole. Without Chinati, Marfa is just a Border Patrol post/cow town. But it happened mostly by accident. New York artist Donald Judd, who had long liked the desert Southwest and had taken his family on camping trips many times, happened to be offered a couple of buildings for sale cheap in Marfa at a moment when he was pondering moving out of New York.

Donald Judd was a successful artist in New York. Certainly he was one of the most famous of the minimalists--perhaps not as well-known as Frank Stella, but up there. His name was known in the art world long before his art was because of his years as an art critic. In some ways, he made as big an impact as a writer than as an artist--his writing style is admirably matter-of-fact. Indeed, it recalls the stripped-down prose of Cormac McCarthy, another transplant to the desert southwest.

Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture. Usually it has been related, closely or distantly, to one or the other. The work is diverse, and much in it that is not in painting and sculpture is also diverse. But there are some things that occur nearly in common. [Donald Judd, "Specific Objects," 1965]

This quote from Judd's famous essay "Specific Objects" doesn't exactly sound like he's talking about Minimalism per se. When we think of Judd, we think of him in the company of Stella, Carl André, Dan Flavin, and so on. One of the things that surprises one about Chinati is that it isn't all striped-down Minimalism. You have work by artists like John Chamberlain, John Wesley and Ilya Kabakov there whose work has nothing to do with Minimalism. Judd had surprising broad tastes, and even in "Specific Objects," he refers with approval to artists who are working far afield from the Minimalist idiom.

His object with Chinati was not, therefore, to build a temple of Minimalism.  What drove him to the sheds and barracks of Fort D.A. Russell was a concern for display. As a sculptor, he had been disappointed with the way museums displayed his work. There was always too much other stuff around it--paintings in particular. His feeling was that sculpture needed to be in a dialogue with architecture, but that the relative clutter of a museum prevented this. (His ideas have been adopted at various newer museums, like the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art.)

To put his concepts of display in practice, he first bought a six-storey building in New York City that would be his home, his studio, and exhibition space for his work and work of artists he collected. But this building apparently became overwhelmed with artworks. He had the same problem as a museum--too much work to show.

In the meantime, Judd and his family had taken many trips to the Southwest, including two summers spent in Marfa. In 1971, he rented two dilapidated warehouses to store a bunch of his larger artwork. He subsequently bought the warehouses and some adjacent property in 1973. After restoration work, these would become Judd's studio and house in 1979.



Donald Judd's compound

The addition of a high wall around these structures give it the look of a compound. It ain't exactly neighborly. It makes me wonder what Judd's relation to the town was.

Today, this compound (and several other buildings downtown) are owned by the Judd Foundation. They contain his personal art collection, which is apparently substantial. I didn't see this work or the insides of these buildings, unfortunately. Despite their close relationship, Chinati and the Judd Foundation are distinct operations (I'd like to know the story behind this). You can tour the various Judd buildings in Marfa is you make a reservation and are willing to cough up $50. I passed this time, but maybe the next time I'm in Marfa, I'll take the tour.

In any case, Judd's personal properties were kind of a dress rehearsal for Chinati. Working with the Dia Foundation, Judd started buying up property around town with the intention of exhibiting some large pieces of art by himself, Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain. The first two properties purchased were the artillery sheds from Fort D.A. Russell. These large brick structures had been used for storing munitions and during World War II for housing German POWs. These buildings had been basically out of commission since 1949. Judd replaced the garage doors on the buildings with large windows, and when the roofs leaked, he added quonset-style metal roofs.



The artillery sheds at Chinati

These two buildings house 100 aluminum boxes by Judd. I'm sorry to say that I didn't take any photos of them--photography was not allowed. I'm sure there is some artistic justification for this, but the effect is to force viewers to buy the Chinati coffee table book, which I did. Here's a picture of Judd's boxes from Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd.


Donald Judd, Artillery Sheds with 100 Works in Mill Aluminum (detail), 1982-86, brick structure and aluminum objects

All the boxes are the same dimensions, arranged in four parallel rows. The large windows allow one to look east at another large Judd sculpture out in the field beside the old fort. To the west are old barracks. This display seems to fulfill Judd's desire for an uncluttered environment in which to view his work. It's easy to see the whole project as a bit megalomaniacal. The sheds were unair-conditioned, and it was cooler outside than in. It made us want to get through it as quickly as possible. But the environment was beautiful. Judd really created a work that made sense as a piece of architecture. The boxes came across as non-functional furniture within the space. It was the combination of the boxes and the architectural setting that made it work. And that was obviously Judd's intent.

The Dia Foundation commissioned the boxes, but all was not well with Dia. The main problem was that the foundation was financed by Schlumberger stock that it owned. (The stock came from Philippa de Menil, one of the founders of Dia and a daughter of John and Dominique de Menil.) I'm assuming that Dia financed Marfa through a combination of dividends and sales of the stock. The problem was that Schlumberger stock tracks oil prices (Schlumberger is an oil field services company). In 1980, the stock reached $21 a share. By 1982, it had reached $8.50. It climbed a bit in 1983 to $15, but it quickly fell and remained at $7 and $8 for the rest of the decade. The price of oil went into a 15 year decline. The Chinati book blandly states,

In 1983 an extremely critical phase began: Dia's financial situation took a turn for the worse. The foundation was financed almost exclusively by the returns on Philippa Pellizzi's Schlumberger stock, and after the price plummeted over a year's time and continued to decline, Dia was forced to take "extreme measures." [...] Marfa was to become a non-profit organization apart from Dia.

The actual story was a bit more complex. When Dia suggested to Judd that Marfa be spun off, Judd sued Dia. There was a great deal of tension between Dia co-founder Heiner Friedrich and Judd. Judd was very aggressive with Dia, and had negotiated a extremely lucrative contract with them. According to New York Magazine, after 1981, Marfa "would be permanently maintained and [...] Judd would get $17,500 a month as a combined installation payment and salary." ("Medicis For a Moment," Phoebe Hoban, New York, November 25, 1985) Basically with the threat of a lawsuit over their heads, Dominique de Menil effected a coup at Dia and tossed Freidrich out on his ear. But no board reorganization could make Schlumberger stock increase in value, so the divorce from Dia was completed despite Judd's wishes. (I'm reminded of the t-shirt that SubPop published when it went through an existential crisis--"What part of 'we have no money' don't you understand?")

This was how Chinati began in 1986--lots of assets but no money. Judd suddenly had to go begging, which must not have been pleasant, particularly for a guy who acted like he was entitled to Dia's millions just a few years before. Nonetheless, he was successful, even if it was touch-and-go for the rest of his life. When he died, his estate was in debt. The Chinati Foundation had to quickly expand its board and secure additional sources of funding. Which it accomplished.

In the meantime, Chinati had grown substantially. In addition to the 100 aluminum boxes, Judd placed a series of large concrete boxes out in a field on the southwest side of the old fort. Unlike the other works in the collection, visitors are permitted to photograph these Freestanding Works in Concrete. But you aren't allowed to touch them.



Donald Judd, Freestanding Works in Concrete, 1980-1984, concrete



Donald Judd, Freestanding Works in Concrete, 1980-1984, concrete



Donald Judd, Freestanding Works in Concrete, 1980-1984, concrete

When I posted a photo of myself posing in front of one of these boxes on Facebook, Dan Havel wrote:

Ahh, good ol' Judd land. Whenever I see those concrete boxes of his, methinks Judd was just influenced by culvert construction...In fact, seen monumental stacks of these by highway that are much more interesting than Judds. On the other hand, 100 boxes is incredibly beautiful in context of the buildings they are in. (Comment on Facebook, August 14, 2012)

This comment was attached to a photo of concrete culverts that he had photographed--which look remarkably like the Judds. And the thing is, these kinds of practical undecorated concrete structures are all around us, mostly unnoticed. Obviously Judd noticed them.



Donald Judd, Freestanding Works in Concrete, 1980-1984, concrete, with concrete cisterns in the foreground

In fact, in the same field as Freestanding Works in Concrete were several old concrete cisterns, presumably dating back to the fort's days as a cavalry outpost. Aside from the fact that they are a bit worn and open on top, they are extremely similar to Judd's artwork just beyond them. Leaving them in the field had to be a deliberate action on Judd's part. He may have been reminding us that these sculptures, though abstract in any ordinary sense, were based on something--the practical heavy objects that people made of concrete.

But to me, when I imagine the way these cisterns have been used over the decades, or when I recall exploring storm sewers and culverts as an unsupervised kid, the preciousness of Judd's works seems slightly absurd. DO NOT TOUCH! I think Freestanding Works in Concrete would be improved by the addition of several teenagers drinking beers and smoking on them.



John Chamberlain Building in downtown Marfa

Not all of Chinati is on the site of the old fort. The John Chamberlain Building is in downtown Marfa. This former mohair wool warehouse sits alongside the railroad tracks that run through town (and which provided Marfa its original reason to exist, as a watering station for trains). The wool industry was subsidized by the U.S. Army during World War II. The armies invading Europe needed warm clothes, so that meant that West Texas, which had never had a wool industry before, was roped into the war effort. After the war, the subsidy and the industry disappeared, leaving behind this vast empty building. In fact, Marfa went into a long decline after World War Two--the military bases which had been so important to the city closed up, and between 1950 and 1957, there was a drought so severe that the area never fully recovered. Many farmers and ranchers simply pulled up stakes and left. When Judd came to town, land and buildings could be bought cheap.

The mohair warehouse was used to house a large collection of John Chamberlain. Again, photography was not allowed. And again, the work in conjunction with the architecture was perfect. I have long loved Chamberlain's work, and I was extremely pleased with his retrospective at the Guggenheim this year, but this was a much finer setting for the work.



Interior of the John Chamberlain Building

The pieces were large and impressive, scattered across the vast floor like boulders rolling off a mountain into the plain. That seemed deliberate. It was as if they wanted you, inside this warehouse, to be reminded of the landscape outside. But the arrangement was not random. It was more like a Japanese garden, where each element has a kind of autonomy while looking beautiful in conjunction with the other elements. A viewer had the ability to walk all around each piece, to step back and come close. But in this process, that viewer was always capturing glimpses of other Chamberlains receding into the distance. This effect worked well with the lockstep 100 boxes in the artillery sheds and worked equally well with this scattered group. It was the size of the spaces that Judd needed to do this. And this notion of massive spaces for large works has been repeated at such venues as Mass MOCA and Dia: Beacon. I propose that in this era of dead malls, defunct superstores, and places like the Astrodome, this concept could be expanded. I, for one, would pay money to tour Dia: Astrodome.

Most of the other works are in the barracks buildings. These U-shaped buildings seem a little awkward for displaying art. Judd initially offered them all to Dan Flavin, but Flavin only wanted six of them. His installations were not completed until after his death, and they are some of the most spectacular of all the installations at Chinati.

You enter one side of the barrack. The room is empty and fairly dark (there is a window at one end, so there is some natural light). The long thin room ends at the bottom of the "U", and the viewer can see some colored light shining faintly from this dark end of the room. When you walk down to the end, you see two trapezoidal hallways. And at the end of the hallways (which can be long or short, depending on which barrack you are in) are a series of colored fluorescent lights and a second bunch of differently colored fluorescent behind them. So each hallway has a different combination of colors.



Dan Flavin, untitled (Marfa project), 1996, installation



Dan Flavin, untitled (Marfa project), 1996, installation

Standing in these halls was extremely disorienting. The slanted lights and walls gave it the feeling of a funhouse. The longer I stood in the halls, the more you felt myself wanting to lean. I wonder if viewers ever fall over. These works show that "minimalism" is not necessarily the right terms for his art. He is using his medium--fluorescent lights and architecture--to create a total experience. It's not about subtracting or paring down. And by using architecture as an element, he was in tune with Judd's conception of Marfa.



Ilya Kabakov, School No. 6 (detail), 1993, installation

The same can be said of Ilya Kabakov, even though he is a very different artist from the others above, and his use of the barrack he was given is likewise very different. He wasn't interested in creating a perfect environment for displaying some objects. He was interested in the barrack's status as an abandoned, defunct space. These barracks had held cavalry soldiers, ready to mount up and push back any spillover from the Mexican Revolution. They were an obsolete corner of the history of the 20th century. Kabakov decided to create another obsolete corner of that history here--a Soviet schoolhouse called School No. 6.

The work barrack is filled with wrecked furniture, papers, straw, dirt, musical instruments, sports equipment, books, school supplies, and vitrines filled with pictures and little written notes. One good reason to buy the big Chinati book is that it translates the notes. They are memories of children of various events the school. Some seem quite universal, and some are very Soviet specific (a pilot donates a matchbook and a single burned match to the school--when he was shot down, he survived in the forest by lighting fires to keep warm as he made his way back to the front. The burned match was his very last one, with which he lit a signal fire and was rescued). The installation depicts a turned page of history.

The courtyard, unlike the other barracks at Chinati, has been allowed to become overgrown with desert plants. The top of the "U" is crudely fenced off. The fence is flimsy and has many gaps--when you look through them, you see Judd's artillery sheds. I think this may have been a little joke on Kabakov's part. He wanted you, standing within this deliberate shambles, to be able to see the clean perfection of Judd's vision.

When Kabakov created School No. 6, he took off the doors and windows facing the inner courtyard. The idea was that the elements would enter the building, allowing the artfully-created illusion of decay to become actual decay. Sand and desert critters would come inside. But when the staff discovered that insects were eating the paper, they asked Kabakov if they could close off the inside from the outside. Kabakov must have been amused by this request, but he assented. A staff of Chinati so dedicated to permanence--DO NOT TOUCH!--couldn't handle the idea that a work was designed to erode away to nothingness.



Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen, Monument to the Last Horse, 1991, aluminum, polyurethane, paint

And conservation is sometimes a challenge. Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen's Monument to the Last Horse was being repaired when I was there. The piece was made out of aluminum (fabricated from a small model by the same fabricators that did Judd's boxes.) But the rough surface was made of polyurethane attached to the aluminum framework. Then the whole thing was painted brown. It's a lovely tribute to the history of Fort D.A. Russell, and as an outsized sculpture of a normally small thing, it simultaneously fits in with Oldenburg and Van Bruggen's oeuvre and fits in with other local monuments--for example, the mammoth roadrunner Paisano Pete in Fort Stockton.

The problem is that the paint was being slowly sandblasted away by nature. The polyurethane was in danger or eroding if the paint went away. When I was there, they were removing the paint by "sandblasting" it with ground-up walnut  shells (a substance that turns out to have a large variety of industrial uses) in preparation for repainting it. The ground around Monument to the Last Horse was covered with reddish walnut shell dust.

In addition to these pieces, there are paintings by John Wesley, sculptures by Richard Long, Roni Horn, David Rabinowitch and Carl André, and drawings by Ingólfur Arnarsson. The base hospital is being slowly converted into a space for work by Robert Irwin.

In the end, Chinati feels like a monument to Donald Judd's ego, but that doesn't bother me so much. Many museums start their lives as monuments to someone's ego. Usually it's some rich guy--"Look, here is the beauty I owned." Why not let an artist do the same? After all, Chinati feels very different from your garden variety museum. Judd was willing and able to give the work he displayed profound dignity--each artist has his own place and room for the work to breathe. It should be noted, however, that his vision is very macho--gigantic pieces made of construction materials, and only one female artist in the whole bunch (and the piece Van Bruggen helped create is itself sort of a male fantasy). You see this and wonder, what would a female Chinati look like? What if Donald Judd had died 1970 of a brain tumor and Eva Hesse had lived on to create a vast collection out in the desert?

These are the kind of thoughts that can come to you as you wander from barrack to barrack, going crazy from the heat.

Frieze New York part 1

by Robert Boyd

I know I'm a little late on this. I wish I could say the reason is that I am going to have some startling original insights on the state of contemporary art or the art world. But really, this is the first big art fair I've ever attended. I was more like the hillbilly visiting the city, slack-jawed and saying "Gaw-ly!" In fact, I'll outsource my opinions to other writers who have had a little more time to process this phenomenon. And in between, I show some pictures of art that intrigued (or outraged) me.

(This post is divided into four parts not because any given part is long, but because so many artists were discussed, I kept running out of room to tag the posts. I only get 200-odd characters for labels.)

John McCracken, Galaxy, 2008 at David Zwirner

Some galleries were practically like museums--at least in terms of how well-known the work being shown was. David Zwirner was such a gallery.

Dan Flavin, untitled (to dear, durable Sol from Stephen, Sonja, and Dan) one, 1969 at David Zwirner

But Frieze was no museum. I met my friends Mark and Paul there. Both are collectors. Paul is an art fair veteran while Mark had never bought anything from an art fair. Mark was curious why they existed. Indeed, it seems strange that you would go to a tent on an island to see work from galleries that are open all year round in Chelsea. (That said, galleries from all around the world had booths here, so there's that.) This was something that Peter Schjeldahl remarked on in The New Yorker:

The whole idea of staging art fairs in New York may seem odd. Isn't the city a permanent art fair, with hundreds of galleries conveniently clustered in a few neighborhoods? But the gallery-centered template of the art business has changed, and the survival of New York dealers, as of dealers everywhere, now demands that they transport their goods and their personnel from their galleries, which present art with museum-like tenderness and gravitas, to the flimsily walled, cacophonous fairs, even if the trip spans just a few blocks. ["All is Fairs" by Peter Schjedahl, The New Yorker, May 7, 2012]

As a gallery owner friend once told me, he can see as many people in one fair as he might see in his gallery all year. So to answer Mark's question, art fairs exist to make money for galleries. A fair is a concentrated locus of buying and selling. A few people at Frieze were like me--looky-loos with no intention (and no means) of buying the art on display. But a good portion of the attendees were serious buyers. And based on what's been reported, they bought big.

Lisson Gallery had a good opening day at Frieze New York:
Ai Weiwei Marble Helmet, 2010 Sold for €50,000
Anish Kapoor Untitled, 2012 Stainless steel and lacquer Sold for £500,000
Haroon Mirza Scream Heist, 2012, Monitor, table top, speaker cable, amp, DVD/AV player, LEDs, Sold for £30,000 / $50,000
Haroon Mirza Rhizomatic, 2012 LCD monitor, strobe, amp, wood, LED’s, circuits Sold for £24,000 / $40,000
Haroon Mirza Important Information, 2012 modified LED display, headphones Sold for £22,000 / $36,000 ["Lisson Sells at Frieze NY" by Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, May 3, 2012]

 I was intrigued that high-tech electronic artwork such as the work by Mirza--full of parts that will wear out and become obsolete in a few years--sold so well. But what I think of as salable artwork (paintings primarily, and photos, and some sculpture) goes out the window at a high-end art fair like Fireze. If you can afford to pay $50,000 for a work of art, you can afford to take care of it, even if it is electronic, even if it requires constant monitoring, and even if it requires expensive modifications to your home to display it.

Navid Nuur, Mineralium, 2011-2012, sugar, magnets and iron filings at Alex Zachary Peter Currie

Navid Nuur, Mineralium, 2011-2012, sugar, magnets and iron filings at Alex Zachary Peter Currie

Mineralium by Navid Nuur is literally a pile of sugar and iron filings. Presumably, if you wanted to display this in your house, Nuur would have to personally come and install it. But does sugar last? And doesn't it attract pests? But presumably anyone with the wherewithal to buy this piece also has the means to store it safely.

Buster Graybill, Progeny of Tush Hog at Jack Hanley Gallery

Austin's Buster Graybill had this work, Progeny of Tush Hog, for sale at Jack Hanley Gallery. That yellow stuff is corn, I think. And that's the idea--these objects are meant to be filled with corn and left out in a field, where wild pigs or other critters can root under them and roll them around (causing more corn to fall out). So to own these (properly, at least), you need a ranch out in the country and you need to refill them with corn periodically.

Jim Lambie, Vortex 'Eau de Parfum,' 2012 at Anton Kern Gallery

This piece by Jim Lambie at Anton Kern Gallery, for example, would require their owner to literally build a wall for it, as the "vortex" portion of it is a fairly deep hole the wall.

Cory Arcangel, Bowl of Soggy Cornflakes at Team Gallery

And the funniest example of this is this bowl of soggy cornflakes by Cory Arcangel. I was at the Team Gallery booth looking at some wall tags for a piece of art when I saw a wall-tag that didn't seem to be for any visible piece. It was Bowl of Soggy Cornflakes by Cory Arcangel. I looked around, and sure enough, on the table where the booth employees sat was a bowl of soggy cornflakes. I asked about it and was told that what you got was the bowl, the spoon, a set of instructions, and a certificate of authenticity. You had to supply the cornflakes and milk, and the contents had to be renewed every eight hours. The Team Gallery gallerina I spoke with described the work as a parody of conceptual artworks that were series of instructions--for example, a Sol Lewitt wall drawing. But I think Cory Arcangel was also making fun of art fairs and the people who buy art in them. What was the most ridiculous thing that someone would buy? (I have an email into Team Gallery asking if it sold, and for how much. If they answer, I'll let you know.)

In any case, a person like me with a decent but relatively modest income needs to step outside his worldview to begin to understand what was happening at Frieze.

At Cheim & Read’s booth, partner and sales director Adam Sheffer was practically giddy. “It feels like 2007 all over again!” he exclaimed. The booth sold several Jenny Holzer pieces — an LED sign for $175,000, a bench for $100,000, as well as a work via JPEG — as well as a Chantal Joffe painting for $65,000, a Louise Fishman work for $125,000, and a Bill Jensen for $25,000. Reportedly on reserve was the 2,000-pound Lynda Benglis sculpture oozing out of the corner of the booth, which required the gallery to reinforce the floors underneath in advance of the opening.

London’s Victoria Miro sold several recent works “in the low to mid-six figures” by Yayoi Kusama, who has seen a rush of fresh interest on the heels of her Tate retrospective. “People are incredibly happy to be here,” said dealer James Cohan, who sold a number of pieces by Berlin-based Simon Evans for $30,000 to $75,000 by early afternoon. “They all say, ‘I guess this is going to become the fair in New York.’”

The swift sales continued over at Metro Pictures, where Robert Longo’s large, black-and-white close-up drawing of a waving American flag sold for $425,000 and a Cindy Sherman photograph from 1977 sold for $950,000. Casey Kaplan and Andrea Rosen reported selling out, or very nearly selling out, everything they had on the walls. Kaplan presented a solo show of Garth Weiser’s large, bright abstractions ($35,000-45,000 each). Rosen mounted a solo room of brand new vibrant paintings and wall collages by Elliott Hundley, all sold for $85,000, and an accompanying room of quieter work by Wolfgang Tillmans and Aaron Bobrow, among others. “I tend to bring work under $100,000 to Frieze,” Rosen said. “People who come here like to feel a sense of discovery, but also buy work they know is still reasonably established.” ["Sales Report: Frieze New York Makes a Convincing Case for Itself With an Opening Burst of Business" by Shane Ferro and Julie Halperin, Blouin Artinfo, May 4, 2012] 

Buying work under $100,000 gives the buyer a sense of discovery?

Lynda Benglis, Quartered Meteor, 1969-1975, lead (yes, lead as in the metal) at Cheim and Read

Sean Landers, Around the World Alone (Ancient Mariner) (left) and Around the World Alone (Slocum) (right), 2011, encaustic, terracotta. metal, wood at greengrassi

Sean Landers, Around the World Alone (Ancient Mariner) (left) and Around the World Alone (Slocum) (right), 2011, encaustic, terracotta. metal, wood at greengrassi

These Sean Landers are perfect for the kid's room!

Paul McCarthy, White Snow Dwarf, Sleepy #1 (Midget), 2012, slilcone (blue) at Hauser & Wirth

Everyone seemed to love the facility. Instead of holding Frieze in an existing building, the organizers built their own mile-long temporary structure. Lord knows what it cost.

Let’s begin with the location, for which there has been endless hand-wringing amongst art worlders. How will we ever get to Randall’s Island? Get a grip, people. A ferry to the Island runs every 15 minutes from 35th street and it’s fucking luxurious. Frieze doesn’t feel like a fair, it feels like an event. It’s not quite Venice, but then again most vaporetti don’t have concession stands. [...]

Once inside, the first thing you’ll notice is the design of the fair. Literally everyone we talked to mentioned how much they liked the lighting, which during the day is mostly natural and augmented by giant hanging fluorescents. We also noticed the spacious layout and booth size. Smaller booths rarely looked cramped, and larger booths often had large window like views into their spaces. So. Great.

But also: Buyer beware. Some art looks better here than it will in your home, which is, well, dangerous, given that a lot of the work is also pretty great. ["The Lowdown on Frieze New York" by Paddy Johnson, Art Fag City, May 4, 2012]

And this was part of the feeling of exclusivity that the organizers sought to create. This was evident in many ways. The ticket price ($40/day was meant to frighten away the looky-loos). The curated selection of galleries, which is apparently unusual if I am reading some accounts correctly. (How do other art fairs select their galleries?) The high quality cuisine--whereas if you have a fair in a convention center, you end up with food from whatever concessions monopoly has the contract (think Aramark).

And while Frieze co-founder Matthew Slotover tells the NYT that he is “very much pro-democratization and a larger engagement” with the general public, the fair’s location on a desolate island, and its sky-high entry fee, and even its galleries all mitigate against that. It’s the galleries who asked for — and received — fewer visitors, remember, and on Friday night I met one gallerist who was complaining that while she met some very high-end collectors on Thursday, the Friday crowd had altogether far too many “lookie-loos”. ["The Business of Art Fairs" by Felix Salmon, May 6, 2012]

(That gallerist was evidently talking about me and my ilk.)

Making my way into the immense white tent that houses the fair, I was shocked. The spaces are wide-open, well lit, generously proportioned, accommodating, sensual. Ceilings soar; a gentle curve in the tent stops vertigo. "How could an art fair feel good?" I wondered. The two-piered New York Armory Show has become drudgy, crowded, comfortably numb. By now I simply assumed that a big art fair in New York wasn't possible. Then I understood what made this art fair completely different than our own: Oxford!

The founders of this fair are Frieze magazine's English executive publishers, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover. In New York and America, we're great at making things big and democratic, and bigger is better — the largest fair, the most galleries, turnover, largest crowds, two piers. That is why the Armory Show is more like a gloomy zoo, giant but visually dreary, shoddy-feeling, and unpleasant. Worse, because it's democratic about which  galleries may participate, the quality level is low. By contrast, the Frieze Fair mirrors the fact that the art business is not democratic but is based on a semblance of talent and ability, a quasi-meritocracy. The fair exudes a tribal feeling. This may strike some as elitist or about who-you-know, but it's actually a good thing, because the Frieze fair is a much better reflection of the serious-gallery landscape than the Armory Show is. An American group starting a fair would find it uncomfortable to screen galleries. The English, by contrast, view it as a responsibility. That process has the added benefit of taking a place that has often become strictly a trading floor and returning it, somewhat, to being a powwow, one where information, not just money, changes hands. ["Why the Frieze Art Fair Could Solve the New York Art Fair Problem" by Jerry Saltz, New York, May 5, 2012]

(Continued in Frieze New York, part 2)

Moving toward the Office Light

By Dean Liscum

Fluorescent lights.

If someone utters that phrase to me in the context of Houston's art scene, I think of Dan Flavin's installation at The Menil's Richmond Hall or James Turrell's The Light Inside at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Fluorescent lights.

If someone utters that phrase to me in the context of work, I flashback to a windowless office I used to occupy in which even the plastic plants wilted.

Fluorescent lights.

In this context, it's actually the medium in Curt Gambetta's Office Light showing at the Lawndale Arts Center from November 18, 2011 through January 7, 2012.  The installation in the Mary E. Bawden Sculpture Garden is twelve 2' x 4' LED office lights in a ceiling grid with a perimeter of 18' x 28'. The structure has a height of 6' which causes the bottom of the light boxes to hover approximately 5 1/2' above the ground.

This design repels most viewers, causing them to skirt the installation.

However, some viewers move toward the office light.

The light sculpture crowds out the cosmos. It illuminates those that inhabit its space. Man-made light sources dominate the nocturnal urban landscape. The light leaks, pools, seeps into the furthest corners of the city. Halogen halos line the streets and form islands in parking lots. Walls of fluorescent light spill from empty office buildings and saturate the side walks and side streets. The artificial light is ubiquitous. It pervades the predawn hours of the sleepwalkers and night workers.

As a "profoundly ambivalent medium of Urban experience" (to quote Gambetta), artificial light has become part of the mythology of modern life like a jet plane's shadow passing over us or an ostensibly profound revelation transmitted by our radios as they automatically scans the stations.

We don't know if they are ominous or auspicious, and we're left contemplating our own luminescent blue aura and it's meaning.

Diana Al-Hadid, Cordy Ryman and Jennifer Riley at Peel

I never know what to think of Peel. On one hand, it's a jewelry store (kind of). And jewelry is something that not only doesn't interest me, but also something which I instinctively feel doesn't overlap with any of my interests. This probably reflects my fundamental dude-ness. I've never worn an earring or necklace or bracelet. I only slip on my class ring for alumni functions. I guess what I'm saying is that my personal indifference to jewelry is probably blinding me to the fact that many people who are deeply interested in jewelry are also deeply interested in art. And Peel seems to have made it a mission to reach people who are deeply interested in both.

The current show, "Nowness," is all art. It was curated by Lea Weingarten, who is probably better known by her married name, Lea Fastow. She spent a year in prison for Enron-related crimes. I am inclined to feel as Obama did when asked about Michael Vick--people who have paid their debt to society deserve a second chance. That said, when I went to the Peel Gallery website and clicked on the link under her name, I got a "Malicious Web Site Blocked" message. The name of her website is contemporaryconnoisseur (dot) com, and I don't suggest you visit it--Norton Safe Web identified it as having 18 computer threats. I still want to believe Lea Weingarten is a reformed member of society, but she really needs to clean up her website which is attempts to download malicious code into the computers of people who visit it. Not cool.

Anyway, the art is the important thing. I enjoyed two of the thee artists here. The best was Diana Al-Hadid.


Diana Al-Hadid, untitled, xerox transfer, conte, shellac, 2008

Her pieces in this show all resemble this--ghostly grey shapes fully of swirling texture. When I saw them, I thought of rubbings from nature--where you take a piece of paper and a soft lead pencil and place it on a tree's bark or a large rock, and rub the paper with the pencil to capture the pattern of texture of the bark or stone. The scale of these drawings tells me that they can't be actual rubbings, but given that they were made partly with xerox, they could be a composite of rubbings, or one rubbing blown up large.

The textures relate the drawings to her sculptures (none of which are in this show, alas), which have highly textured surfaces. Of course, one also thinks of Max Ernst's "frottages"--rubbings--that he used as elements in his paintings. But Al-Hadid's work has a different feel than the often apocalyptic frottage paintings of Ernst. These drawings are spectral and feel like images that can't quite be perceived.


Cody Ryman, Bars and Stripes, acrylic, enamel, wood and fiberglass mesh on Gator board, 2009

Cody Ryman's work is like a cargo cult version of minimalism or color field painting. So you get a little Frank Stella (above), a little Larry Poons (below) and so on.


Cordy Ryman, Nelma Stamp, acrylic, enamel and ink on wood, 2010

Of course, a Frank Stella painting is a highly crafted object made of extremely durable materials. Ryman, on the other hand, glued wood to Gatorboard--which is a kind of heavy-duty polystyrene foam material. Everything about his versions of minimalism is designed to undercut minimalism's austere authority. He's like Frank Stella's hillbilly cousin, constructing items exclusively out of the junk pile in the back yard. It's a parody, essentially, and I find it pretty amusing.


Cordy Ryman, Frosted Corner, acrylic and enamel on wood, 2008

I mean, who wouldn't like a Dan Flavin sculpture where the fluorescent tube had been replaced by Pop-Tarts? That said, this work seems to have nowhere to go. You have a laugh and move on. In this regard, these paintings are quite unlike the haunting drawings of Al-Hadid.


Jennifer Riley, Modernissimo, oil on canvas, 2010

Jennifer Riley also seems to be making a pastiche of early modernist abstraction. But her's is not really all that amusing. I feel like she wants her paintings to be wacky and playful but only achieves dryness. Weirdly enough, her work reminds me of the work of cartoonist/painter Mary Fleener, who refers to her own style as "cubismo" (!). But Fleener's work has a barbaric energy that these lifeless paintings utterly lack. This kind of energy is also present in Ryman's nutty work--placing it in the same room as Riley's paintings was probably a bad idea.