TIME’s just-published list of “100 People Who Shape Our World” includes a reminscence by Chuck Close on Kiki Smith. He writes:
…While many artists, especially sculptors and installation artists, are steadfast members of a “slacker” generation, Kiki, 52, embraces craft, the dreaded C word of the art world. In myriad materials such as glass, fiber and beads (some associated more with amateurs and craft-show practitioners than with professional artists), she has embraced a dizzyingly diverse vocabulary of the demoted, debased and despised–and she makes you like it…
More from TIME’s list: Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha) on Ang Lee, Stephen Colbert (if you haven’t seen his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, you must: QT / WMP / torrent / transcript), architect Renzo Piano, and the Skype guys.
TIME’s just-published list of “100 People Who Shape Our World” includes a reminscence by Chuck Close on Kiki Smith. He writes:
…While many artists, especially sculptors and installation artists, are steadfast members of a “slacker” generation, Kiki, 52, embraces craft, the dreaded C word of the art world. In myriad materials such as glass, fiber and beads (some associated more with amateurs and craft-show practitioners than with professional artists), she has embraced a dizzyingly diverse vocabulary of the demoted, debased and despised–and she makes you like it…
More from TIME’s list: Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha) on Ang Lee, Stephen Colbert (if you haven’t seen his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, you must: QT / WMP / torrent / transcript), architect Renzo Piano, and the Skype guys.
TIME’s just-published list of “100 People Who Shape Our World” includes a reminscence by Chuck Close on Kiki Smith. He writes:
…While many artists, especially sculptors and installation artists, are steadfast members of a “slacker” generation, Kiki, 52, embraces craft, the dreaded C word of the art world. In myriad materials such as glass, fiber and beads (some associated more with amateurs and craft-show practitioners than with professional artists), she has embraced a dizzyingly diverse vocabulary of the demoted, debased and despised–and she makes you like it…
More from TIME’s list: Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha) on Ang Lee, Stephen Colbert (if you haven’t seen his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, you must: QT / WMP / torrent / transcript), architect Renzo Piano, and the Skype guys.
As a post by Caryn at Art.Blogging.LA reminded me, we created a bumpersticker years ago to give away in conjunction with the exhibition Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s. I don’t really know how it came to be or if we came up with the idea first, so I asked Scott Winter in our membership department who was there from the start:
I believe it came out of a conversation with John Capecci, when he worked in Development. We were looking for a gimmick for the Walker After Hours event that recognized the conceptual art exhibition we had opened in Gallery A. Somewhere between the 2 of us, it evolved. We then went on to think up some more, but we never pursued producing them.
Start Seeing Motherwells
If you can read this, you’re Chuck Close
My Other Car is a REAL Work of Art
Scott adds that the only way we could get the OK from our Registration department–the people charged with peeling them off of art they’d inevitably end up plastered on–was to make them removable:
Modern Art Notes reports that Matthew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation will be named the 2006 winner of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s prestigious Lucelia Award tomorrow. Kriston at Eye-Level has more.
In naming the Walker the Twin Cities’ best museum, the local altweekly City Pages heralds our wonderfulness:
Hands down, for contemporary art, film, and dance, the Walker is one of the best museums in the world. Its free Thursdays feature performances, talks, and workshops that anyone, including a Parisian art snob, could easily appreciate. The family events, lectures, and readings help to feed, support, and educate a growing Twin Cities arts community that’s essential to the health of the cities. Plus, it helps fuel the passive-aggressiveness that Minnesotans are famous for: We can’t fully embrace something new without pointing out that it’s…a little different.
Full disclosure: I’m engaging in selective blurbage; to hear what they’ve got to say about the Walker’s architectural facade and floorplan, you’ll have to find that yourself.
City Pages readers picked us as Best Art Gallery, while editors gave us Best View, Best Place to Watch a Movie Outdoors (for our Summer Music & Movies in Loring Park), Best Concert Venue, and–best of all–Best Single-Artist Show, for House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective.
Kofi Annan (far left) with Kathy Halbreich (far right) and Walker board vice
president Nazie Eftekhari (second from right) in the Walker galleries.
Photo: Art Hughes
When UN Secretary General Kofi Annan came to the Twin Cities this weekend to help launch the Institute for Global Citizenship at his alma mater, Macalester College, he also worked in a trip to the Walker. Director Kathy Halbreich, who joined Annan for a private tour of the exhibition Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980–2005, says Annan was “interested, astute, and an elegant delight.” Of the nearly one-hour tour, which was scheduled to run 20 to 30 minutes, she shares:
When we were looking at Kiki’s work, [exhibition curator] Siri [Engberg] mentioned one of the wax sculptures was of the Virgin Mary. I said, “It’s odd, but nothing stirs people more than a naked body…not issues of race, murder or mayhem.” To which he replied: Maybe that’s because everyone can identify with a body; it’s me or it’s not.
I then mentioned how I found Kiki’s work, rather than dealing with issues of sexuality, revealed how fragile we were as human beings, how our mortality was present everyday.” Kofi then turned to one of his colleagues and introduced him, saying: He’s a Muslim and they deal with death so much better than we do.
Rent-a-Spot: “Instead of using municipal parking spaces to store vehicles, P (LOT) [above] proposes to rent them for alternative purposes. The acquisition of municipal permits and simple payment of parking meters could enable citizens to, for example, establish temporary encampments or use the leased ground for different kinds of activities. A first initiative turns ordinary car covers into portable tents, available for loan at the MUMOK, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna. Interested citizens have the choice to use one of five covers ranging from a common Sedan to a luxurious Porsche or motorcycle.”
Scinema: In conjunction with the Tribeca Film Festival, opening today, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ran a curious contest, a screenwriting competition for scripts dealing with science. Their mission? “Instead of just cops, lawyers, teachers, let’s have movies about people who are working in science, in occupations that have such a huge impact on our lives. Let’s find ways to tell their stories,” the Foundation’s Doron Weber told WiredNews. The festival includes Sloan-supported readings for winners of the script contest (featuring Matthew Broderick and Judd Hirsch), a panel discussion about biology and special effects; and the world premiere of the romantic comedy Kettle of Fish, starring Gina Gershon as a biologist.
What comes around. Filled with fascinating facts–within 60 days, an aluminum can can go from the recycling bin back to a store shelf–I post the Star Tribune’s online feature on the recycling process mainly because I really like the Funnel-esque technical illustrations.
Extreme craft: Theresa Honeywell’s knit motorcycle and a yarn jackhammer are now on view at the Georgia Museum of Art.
Featured on Rhizome, Life vs. Life is an online adaptation of ’70s mathematician John Conway’s classic game Life. Created by Walker New Media designer Eric Ishii Eckhardt and Justin Bakse, it’s a “cellular automata” game that presents players with a grid of cells that are either on (live) or off (dead), just like Conway’s, but this game has two players facing off on arena-style boards. The pair writes:
In this game we have transformed a harmonious solitary activity into an asynchronous competitive experience. A player creates a pattern which evolves through successive generations. When two patterns are placed opposite each other they do “ battle” over successive generations until one side emerges victorious. We have complemented the battles storing the results and displaying them publicly. The resulting game is a player driven natural selection of cellular autonoma shapes.
Up until now, “net neutrality” has been the Internet’s First Amendment, allowing a relatively level playing field for everyone with access. If we use the tired “information superhighway” metaphor, net neutrality means that the roads remain open to everyone, whether they drive a rustbucket or a tricked out Hummer, and they can drive wherever they’d like. But no laws exist to protect this neutrality, and corporate entities are interested in being gatekeepers of internet content. Some ISP’s want to give preference to their advertisers on internet search engines, prevent certain sites from loading, and give priority access to content they deem most worthy (or profitable). As Congress sets out to revamp the Telecommunications Act, the just-launched site SaveTheInternet.com is ground zero for efforts to secure a free internet, with ways to take action, learn more, and spread the word.
Via BoingBoing.
