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Robert Boyd

Portrait of the Artist. Bob Odenkirk--co-creator of the great Mr. Show and now playing Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad--is also now writing Woody Allen-ish humor pieces for The New Yorker. This week, "Portrait of the Artist," which includes the following passage:

He has never made a film or a painting, nor has he written a poem, taken a picture, or tried to “make” anything. Despite all this, he has fascinated the art world and captivated New York society for the past year. He’s been praised as “unfathomable at best” and “bafflingly circumlocutory at worst” by ArtFinger.

Every day, he puts on his “uniform”: moccasins, tuxedo pants, one of a variety of pajama tops designed especially for him by L. L. Bean, and his signature duck-billed hockey mask.

He wears the same pair of underwear for a month, then puts on a fresh pair over the old pair, until he has twelve pairs on, at which point he knows that New Year’s Eve is right around the corner. ["Portrait of the Artist," Bob Odenkirk, The New Yorker, August 13, 2012]

 Weston Jandacka, title unknown, from the series "Intrinsic Value or This Shit's Hella Expensive"


Bête comme un peintre. I bet Weston Jandacka went through a whole lot of trouble to paint this. To bad about the apostrophe. ["Dear Painter Weston Jandacka," Clark Humphrey, Misc Media, August 7, 2012]

English as she is spoke. The funniest yet most alarming thing I have read recently is "International Art English." It analyses 13 years of e-flux press releases using computational and statistical methods--and a good deal of humor. The result is disheartening but hilarious. Perhaps it is good that Robert Hughes died before he could read it.

An artist’s work inevitably interrogates, questions, encodes, transforms, subverts, imbricates, displaces—though often it doesn’t do these things so much as it serves to, functions to, or seems to (or might seem to) do these things. IAE rebukes English for its lack of nouns: Visual becomes visuality, global becomes globality, potential becomes potentiality, experience becomes … experiencability. [...]

IAE always recommends using more rather than fewer words. [...] When Olafur Eliasson’s Yellow Fog “is shown at dusk—the transition period between day and night—it represents and comments on the subtle changes in the day’s rhythm.”

The question is why. How did we end up writing in a way that sounds like inexpertly translated French?

There has been a battle between the poets and the philosophers in art writing, and "International Art English" demonstrates that the philosophers have decisively won, with their lingo seeping down into even the most modest artist's statement or wall-text. ["International Art English,"Alix Rule and David Levine, Triple Canopy issue 16. Hat tip to Blouin Artinfo]


Bob Adelman, Edie Sedgwick starts to push Andy Warhol into the pool at Al Roons health club, NYC, 1965 (© Bob Adelman)

Photos of Andy. I know the Factory was full of decadent speed freaks, but these photos by Bob Adelman of Edie Sedgwick dunking Andy Warhol in a pool are delightful and, well, innocent. ["Happy Birthday, Andy Warhol!, Slate Magazine, August 6, 2012]



Bob Adelman, Andy Warhol after being dunked in a pool by Edie Sedgwick at a party at Al Roon's health club, NYC, 1965 (© Bob Adelman)

RIP Artnet Magazine

Robert Boyd



I have a really fat RSS Feed, and it sends me posts from many,  many art blogs and online art magazines--Hyperallergic, Art Fag City, C-Monster, Bad at Sports, and many more. For the past couple of years, my favorite reading has come from Artnet Magazine. I liked its lack of theoretical baggage. I liked the fact that the writers wrote as if they had never seen the MLA Handbook. I like the fact that it blatantly acknowledged that art was a thing that was bought and sold. I liked Jerry Saltz's good-natured cheerleading. I liked Charlie Finch's snarky demolition of art world cant. I liked Hunter Drohojowska-Philp and Tony Fitzpatrick. Key word--"liked" in past tense. It shut down yesterday.

But I was a late-comer to Artnet Magazine. As I've been reading its obituaries, I am even more astonished by its story. The magazine, which is part of the larger Artnet art market information service, started in 1995. The internet was still steam-powered back then! And during all that time, it's had one editor, Walter Robinson, who is quite a character.

There is a great profile of Robinson  from earlier this year at GalleristNY. His life in the New York art world of the 70s, 80s and 90s is totally fascinating. Here are a couple of choice bits, but read the whole thing.

It was a fertile time for art writing and publishing, and the deAk-Robinson-Cohn trio began putting out a journal, Art-Rite, on cheap newsprint. “We wanted people to throw it away,” Ms. deAk once told an art historian. “We didn’t want to contribute to raising the value of art.”

“Magazines like Artforum were so adult,” Mr. Robinson said. “If you look back at those Art-Rites, we were so immature.”

Artists designed the covers. Ed Ruscha photographed a wax candle shaped like a devil for the front, an angel for the back. Pat Steir’s had three roses, each a different color. “They hand-printed all of them on the floor of the loft,” Ms. Steir told us. To make the print, they used a potato. “It was cheap,” she said. “No one had any money.”

While producing the magazine, artist Sol LeWitt, Mr. Robinson and Ms. deAk, along with a handful of other artists, founded Printed Matter, the now-nonprofit bookstore located in Chelsea. He bartended and made the social rounds. “He fucked every girl in the art world in the ’70s,” said Mr. McCormick. ["Art Net: The Life and Times of Walter Robinson," Andrew Russeth, January 24, 2012, GalleristNY]

That's an enviable young manhood, if I may say so! If that was all he ever really achieved, that would have been plenty. But he was also an artist and writer and editor. And he started the infamous cable access art show, GalleryBeat (see Guest of Cindy Sherman for some prime GalleryBeat).

“There was that certain ‘bad’ painting aesthetic that he did, but a lot of his work was touching, sweet paintings, that had subtlety,” said Cathy Lebowitz, who joined Art in America in the late ’80s. Mr. Robinson was something of a mentor for her, and after they had known each other for a few years, she joined him and Mr. H-O on their public-access television show, GalleryBeat.

The show started in 1993. The two men regularly visited galleries during the week and one day Mr. H-O decided that it would be worth bringing along a camera. The tone of the show is about as far from the realm of academic discourse as one can imagine. “It came from about the third grade, I think,” Mr. H-O said.

“They would be in the office conspiring,” Betsy Baker, then editor in chief of Art in America, said. Every once in a while dealers would throw them out, as was known to happen at Andrea Rosen, PaceWildenstein and the Dia Center for the Arts, which prohibited filming. After Dia ejected them on camera, Mr. Robinson becomes as incensed as he seems capable of being.

 “The thing about the Dia Center for the Arts is that what they do is bullshit,” he says briskly. “The money floods in from the rich people who write it all off on their taxes. They charge you four bucks to go into this place. They hardly ever do any exhibitions, and they won’t let us in to show you a little TV. It’s the worst things about contemporary art—elitist, snobby and stupid.” ["Art Net: The Life and Times of Walter Robinson," Andrew Russeth, January 24, 2012, GalleristNY]

I love it. I feel that way too about art galleries and museums and art spaces that restrict people (me in particular) from taking photos. Read the whole piece. It's almost an outline of his life, because his life has been so eventful that it's impossible to provide to much detail. The article careens from one thing to another, with Robinson interacting with many of the best critics and artists around before they found success. It's an exhilarating read.

Charlie Finch makes his goodbye on the Artnet site, writing, "Nothing lasts forever, but it is a shame that, at the point at which Artnet Magazine's content is more comprehensive and lucid than ever, that it will disappear. I've worked with Walter Robinson for 15 years. Everything you read about him is true, he's a gentleman, the art world loves him, he's a brilliant painter, he's the best editor of his generation, and he will land on his feet." Finch is a controversial writer, but I love his no-bullshit tone. Hell, if I could, I'd hire him to write for The Great God Pan Is Dead (Mr. Finch--email me!). He, too, will land on his feet and survive to offend again.

Jerry Saltz's writing always appeared on Artnet Magazine (as well as in other places--Artnet seemed to have some kind of blanket reprint deal with him). He wrote a typically generous farewell to the magazine.

My heart skipped a beat when I heard the news. Everything I've written since 1998 has been republished on Artnet — often with pithier titles (supplied by Robinson), always with much better and way more pictures (many taken by Robinson). For years, I wasn't paid at all by Artnet. Even though I was as almost-broke then as I almost am now, it felt fine. Once I got paid, it topped out in the low three figures. I loved every second of it.

Mostly because of the way that Walter edited and oversaw Artnet. No jargon. No unbearably long multi-footnoted, almost unreadable art-historical pieces — except all the ones by Donald Kuspitt, whom Walter loved and defended. Then there was Charlie Finch, a planetoid unto himself, the writer whom everyone read. (Charlie may be the porn star of the art world. Half of all hits go to him.) He played marauding Omega to Walter's laid-back Beta. Never an alpha dog, Walter instead was always eager around, entertained by, and amazed with everything going on around him. He could dis things, even us writers, but with a big heart.["Jerry Saltz on the End of artnet.com's Magazine," 6/25/2012, The Vulture]

Saltz points out that the art market services will survive while the magazine dies. That seems like the way of the world--the art world, at least. Money becomes ever more important (at least in the blue-chip neighborhoods of the art world) while criticism grows more irrelevant. It's a little unnerving that a lively site like Artnet Magazine could die off so suddenly. I'm sure its writers will find new homes--they're good, after all. I look forward to seeing what they do next.

Death-Haunted Houston: Dianne David, Toni Beauchamp, Mark Aguhar

by Robert Boyd

I apologize to all readers about how much death there has been on this blog lately. With Moebius, Dale Yarger, Ken Price, Charlie Stagg and Mike Kelley, it's been a parade of obituaries around here. With Dale, I've been lucky to be in contact with so many other people who loved him. I never knew Charlie Stagg, but since he died, I've heard so many good stories about the man that I really wish I had.

Unfortunately, Death didn't head down to Padre for Spring Break. Dianne David, Toni Beauchamp and Mark Aguhar all died recently. You might not be familiar with all three of these names, but each one is a person who had an affect on Houston's art, and each represents a different generation.



The Dianne David Gallery with a Roy Fridge show from 1966

Dianne David (1938 or 39 to 2012) was the founder of an early modern gallery in Houston, David Gallery. The David Gallery existed from 1963 until 1982 and gave the first Houston shows to a wide range of artists, including Dorman David (her brother), Bob Camblin, Lucas Johnson, Earl Staley, Roy Fridge, Jim Love, David McManaway, Charles Pebworth, Donald Roller Wilson, William T. Wiley, Larry Rivers, Seymour Leichmann, and Guy Johnson. And that's about all I know about it (and her). But this is enough. These are some of the most important artists to emerge in Houston during the 60s and 70s. Gallerists who show local artists are important--they are gatekeepers and taste-makers. Starting a gallery that shows contemporary cutting-edge art by Houston artists is never a sure thing, and in 1963 it must have seemed an extremely risky enterprise indeed. Thank goodness Dianne David did it.


Good, an anthology of writings about Houston edited by Toni Beauchamp

Toni Beauchamp (1945 to 2012) had a definable effect on Houston and its art, but it's hard to put one label on her. Glasstire called her a "patron," but she was much more than that. Even though she and Dianne David were born less than 10 years apart, David started her gallery young (she was 24 or 25) while Beauchamp waited a long time to make her mark. That's why I count them as belonging to different generations. David was a pioneer. Beauchamp's work built on the work of pioneers. For example, her MA thesis was about James Johnson Sweeney, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in the 60s, who brought the museum into the modern age. This kind of local art history continued in many of the publications she worked on for the Blaffer, where she was an assistant director. She was instrumental in bringing modern public art to Houston, and served on the boards of many key local arts institutions. And she edited one of the best books about Houston, Good. When she died, she was working on a similar book about Marfa, which is on schedule to be published.


Mark Aguhar, Transy Girlfriend Looks (Colin S.), watercolor, ink, gouache & lipstick on paper, 2011

 Mark Aguhar (1987 to 2012) was a young artist whose work I had seen only once, at Lawndale in a solo exhibit called M2M in early 2011. I didn't write about that show because its theme of gay male sexuality was something I couldn't relate to. I felt like anything I wrote would lack insight, to say the least. Aguhar was from Houston and studied art at UT. When she died, she was getting her MFA at the University of Illinois. Aguhar, like many artists of her generation, had a large presence online. Aside from her professional web page where you can see her many drawings and sculptures, she had a blog, Blogging for Brown Gurls. Its subtitle was "I'm starting a new blog and it's all about self-acceptance." It's terrible when someone so young dies--and when it's an artist, we are left wondering what kind of work lay in his future that will now never be made.

Days like this make you feel like death is stalking Houston. Drink a toast tonight to David, Beauchamp and Aguhar, OK?

Many Mini Me

by Robert Boyd



I wrote a few weeks ago about Kickstarter campaigns in the Houston art world, and I want to update one of them. You have 9 days left to fund the Many Mini Residencies. For their final push, they've created a new video (above) that explains the whole thing.

At this point, the residents have been chosen and they have been slotted in. Remember, Many Mini is an art residency at Skydive (an earlier incarnation was done in Berlin), but instead of an artist getting space to work for a week or a month or whatever, the artists get space for a maximum of 12 hours. In the end, only Chuck Ivy applied for a full 12 hour shift (as far as I can tell). Everyone else is doing a briefer residency. The schedule is now up on the Many Mini website.


Many Mini schedule

As you can see, there are a lot of artists participating. Some of these residencies will be open to the public, but I don't think they all will. (I assume the website will clarify this soon.) Notice what's happening on Friday, July 15 at 9 am. Yep, I will be doing an hour-and-a-half residency. My plan is to write a Pan post. I may take photos and talk to some of the artists who will be there earlier in the week and write about them. But I'm keeping my options open. And yes, my residency will be open to the public, if you want to stop by and ask questions. (Skydive is on Norfolk near Star Pizza--go check it out. They are usually open every Saturday.)

Some of Houston's best artists will be there, doing their thing--including Elaine Bradford, Linda Post, Jeremy DePrez, Emily Peacock, Rachel Hecker, and many others.

There are some travel expenses for some participating artists involved, as well as some other expenses (the video and the Kickstarter site details this). Consequently, it will be very useful to get this Kickstarter grant, which comes purely from the generosity of folks like you, my dear readers. So if you haven't done so, head on over to Kickstarter and make a pledge--no amount is too small! (But bigger donations get better premiums--just like public radio!)