Pan Recommends for the week of December 6 to December 12

This is a relatively slow week compared to last week as we wind down towards Christmas. Here are a few shows and performances coming up that have caught our attention.

Thursday

Interface: Artists and the Digital Age at Williams Tower Art Gallery at 6 pm [up through January 11]. This show has a wide selection of artists, including several that I don't think of when I think "digital" (Aaron Parazette, Lillian Warren, Rusty Scruby). Interestingly, Rachel Whiteread is among the artists. Ironically, this show has no website.

Windows on Main at the corner of Main and Winbern (across the street from Double Trouble), 5 pm to 10 pm. Two installations are part of this edition of Windows on Main: "Congress Applauding (Address on the Program for Economic Recovery, Ronald Reagan, April 28, 1981" by Anna-Elise Johnson and "There was a man bitten by a snake" by Romain Froquet and Rahul Mitra. A nice place for a drink and some art.

Friday

ZZzzzzzz by Nathaniel Donnett (as part of Stacks) at the Art League, 6 pm. I'm not sure whether to expect an installation or a performance or both, but Nathanial Donnett is going to use shredded stuffed animals and the dreams of four volunteers who slept in the gallery to access black imagination. Sounds like a tall order--I'm curious to see what he's done.

Cold War Paintings by Michael Acieri at Avis Frank, 6 pm. Arcieri is an artist who wears the influences of James Rosenquist and Gerhard Richter on his sleeve. Expect a little Mad Men nostalgia in this show.

Saturday

Background Noise, a studio art show by Lucinda Cobley and Nelda Gilliam at 218 Avondale, Houston TX 77006 from 11 am to 6 pm. Two Houston artists show their stuff. Expect abstractions on glass and plastic from Lucinda Cobley, if her past work is anything to go by.

Shaun El C. Leonardo performing Arena at the Progressive Amateur Boxing Association, 2 pm to 4 pm. Part of the CAMH's ongoing series of performances for Radical Presnece: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, this one promises to be action packed.

Autumn Knight and Megan Jackson: La Querelle Des Monstres at Project Row Houses from 7 to 9 pm. More performance this weekend. The description says it uses "conjoined twin culture." I had no idea that there was such a thing as conjoined twin culture, but I'm kind of naive that way.

A Note on End Game

I went to the MFAH "loading dock" sale yesterday. This is a clearance sale that is open to members of stuff from the bookstore. I bought a few ultra-inexpensive books, including End Game.

This is the catalog for a show at MFAH from 2008. It was a show of YBAs (young British artists) from the "Chaney Family Collection." I recall seeing it at the time and not being super-impressed. I loved "A Little Death" by Sam Taylor-Wood (which I had already seen at CAMH) and I always like Rachel Whiteread. But the rest didn't hit me very hard.


Sam Taylor-Wood, A Little Death, video, 2002

So why am I writing about the catalog today? What I didn't think about when I saw the show in the museum was its provenance. This is from the collection of the Chaney family, who are the late Robert Chaney, his wife Jereann and their daughter Holland. Chaney had run a small oil E&P, and after it was bought, formed a venture capital firm, R. Chaney & Partners.

Museums obviously have relations with collectors, and always have. For contemporary art, this relationship is very important for a couple of reasons. First, museums may be reluctant to buy contemporary art because history has not rendered judgment. They may end up with a bunch of junk that had only transitory esteem. But if they work with collectors, they can allow the collector to take the risk. The other reason is that presently, contemporary art is outrageously expensive. Museums must work with wealthy collectors if they hope to acquire any of these works.

But these relationships are controversial, especially now. Here is what Tyler Green wrote in The Art Newspaper.

These shows are unethical, improper and raise questions about the museums’ adherence to guidelines the US government lays down for non-profit institutions. (It is important to note that I’m criticising only exhibitions of private collections, not exhibitions of works donated to museums by collectors.) I’m especially disappointed that the New Museum has planned such a poorly considered show and series. It has a unique history as a feminist-created, experiment-driven, alternative space. Its decision to exhibit private collections turns the museum from a kunsthalle into a vanity space.

There are two main problems with these exhibitions. First, and most importantly, they diminish the role of curators as independent scholars, historians and discerning, informed selectors in favour of the consumerist whims of the richest guy in the room.

Through scholarship and curatorial consideration, museums and their curators determine what work has value to a society, a value that is beyond the mere monetary. These kinds of shows do nothing but exhibit and pseudo-validate the spending habits and taste of influential collectors, indicating that someone’s access to an American Express Platinum Card is as meaningful as a curatorial staff’s expertise. Unfortunately, these exhibitions inadvertently reinforce the notion that art is trophy owned by the privileged few, rather than a means through which intellectuals engage communities and nations in a broader discourse.

I am not suggesting that wealthy individuals should not share their collections with the public. In many places, most notably in Miami, collectors have shown their art in spaces controlled by themselves or their family-controlled-and-funded foundations. This is an honourable thing. That is how private collectors should, if they choose, share their art with the public. If a museum director is asked to exhibit a private collection, that director should remind the collector that a museum is more than a trophy house, that the director has too much respect for the museum’s curators to tell them that they are superfluous, and they should point them toward the Miami model. (Tyler Green, The Art Newspaper, November 11, 2009)

This was in response to an exhibit at the New Museum from the collection of Dakis Joannou, a trustee of the museum. Part of the controversy has to do with the extreme cost of the work. The collectors sometimes buy and sometimes sell. I'm sure Robert Chaney, in his business, was all about getting a maximum return on his investments. Why should his art collection have been any different? I'm not suggesting that the Chaney Family Collection is an investment, but if they were to sell any of the pieces for whatever reason, they would want to sell them for a good price, especially considering what they paid for them. Ditto with Joannou and so many other collectors of blue-chip contemporary art. When you buy a piece, you may be thinking that you love it and will live with it forever--but things change. In the future, you might fall out of love with the piece, or need to raise money, or may have too much art in your collection--and decide to sell.

Given this, what's the best way to guarantee that one's collection retains its value? A museum show might be the ticket--it legitimizes art. And, as Don Thompson wrote, it "brands" the art.

It would be difficult to prove this is the case, but one can't help but wonder. In any case, I am not ascribing bad intentions to the Chaneys--but I am indeed suggesting that whatever other motivations they may have had, the collection-legitimizing aspect of a major museum show may have been in the back of their minds.

Lady Art at McClain

by Robert Boyd

There is something really weird about McClain Gallery's show "A Room of Her Own." OK, the title. We get it. Virginia Woolf. So a show of women artists. But as far as I can tell, the only curatorial idea present in this show is that all these artists are women. I will willingly acknowledge that the art world still has sexism, but it has obviously improved a lot over the past few decades--especially contemporary art. Look at the artists I've written about this year. Look at the composition of the artists going into the Whitney Biennial. And frankly, look at the artists in this show--Kiki Smith, Louise Nevelson, Jenny Holzer, Cecily Brown, Tracey Emin, etc. They are all hugely successful artists, artists scarcely in need of affirmative action. I could see the grouping if there were some feminist idea animating the work, but there really isn't--at least, not that I can see. (Indeed, Inez van Lamsweerde's enormous photographic print, "Kate in Veil", is notable for two reasons: "Kate" is a total hottie, and she is wearing a veil and nothing else. That's one piece designed to appeal to the fellas! Perfect for hanging in your "man cave.")

So maybe a better way to think of the show is that it is a chance for McClain to put on a group show of blue-chip art. That's how I related to the show. And that's perfectly fine. My favorite piece in the show is this one:


Tara Donovan, Bluff, buttons and glue, 2007


Tara Donovan, Bluff detail, buttons and glue, 2007

Tara Donovan's sculpture is really cool, and this one was amazing.The buttons are semi-transparent, so the effect (which you can't really see in the photos) is weirdly hazy and out of focus. Because on the edges of the sculpture, it is transparent, but the deeper you go in, the more the layered buttons block light. The effect is remarkable--it's as if these stalagmite-like stuctures are out of focus. It is literally hard to see the edges unless you get really close. It's disconcerting. Making a huge sculpture out of buttons or plastic straws or paper plates seems like kind of a stunt when you hear about it, but the proof is in the pudding. "Bluff" has a truly remarkable presence.

I was astonished and really pleased to see a piece by one of my teachers from Rice, Karin Broker. When she was teaching us, her main thing was doing huge drawings and etchings of flowers. But that was in the mid 80s and this is apparently what she is doing now.


Karin Broker, Self-Portrait 1, metal, 2009

In the back of the gallery is a separate show of small pieces with another Broker piece. (Sorry for the crappy focus.)


Karin Broker, In the Country, farm box, construction and found objects, 2009

Here's a detail of the Farm Box.


Karin Broker, In the Country, farm box detail, construction and found objects, 2009

It's hard for me to square these pieces with the Karin Broker art I used to see, but I like them a lot. It is as if she decided to take all her strengths (incredible draftsmanship, beautiful sense of light and dark, hard-won skills as a printmaker) and chuck them all out. And that can be a useful strategy if you want to goose yourself to a new or different place, artistically. I think it works here.

One last piece I want to mention, also in the show of small pices in the back. It's by Rachel Whiteread, whose work I have always loved. But she's famous for taking rooms and indeed whole buildings and making full-size sculptures of the negative space within them, right? So what kind of "small" work can we expect from her?


Rachel Whiteread, Secondhand, Stereolithograph of laser sintered white nylon (edition of 400), 2004

It's basically a miniature version of a fairly typical sculpture (positive instead of negative, though). And the means of producing it sounds really high-tech--I'd love to see one being made. I know these techniques are used by industrial engineers and designers when they are producing models of new machines. (I had a summer job at Cameron and was shown some of these 3-D "printed" objects of reciprocating gas compressors that were on the drawing boards.) What is cool about this tiny sculpture is how much it looks like her enormous concrete versions. (And it's fairly inexpensive, given Whiteread's stature. Almost in my price range...)

"A Room of Her Own" is up through December 31, and the "Small Works and Artists Books" show in the back is up through January 2.