Off Center

The Year of Living Biblically chronicles the time A.J. Jacobs spent adhering to the more than 700 rules contained in the Bible. He strictly upheld the 10 commandments and many more obscure rules (sleeping in a hut on certain holidays, eating crickets).

What caught my eye though, was the photo progression of his hair growth (thou shalt not cut side hair, in case you needed an explanation). It reminded me of a very different version of the Eleanor Antin performance Carving: A Traditional Sculpture.

As a Philadelphia native, I have been following the fight over the Barnes Foundation for a few years now, mostly with the help of the newspaper clippings my mom mails me. Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes posted a flurry of posts last week about the legal battle that appears to be heating up again with another move by the Friends of the Barnes Foundation to keep the institution in Merion, PA.

I’ve seen the collection both in its native habitat and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and while I was still wowed by much of the work at PMA, the installation, the building, the location, the gardens, and the ghost of stubborn old Barnes combine to create an artwork much larger than any of its parts.

I’ve been prompted to spend a lot of time thinking about the context of the works in our own museum; as you can see in the image above, Barnes’ installation is jam-packed and those aren’t exactly white walls. Are all white walls created equal, or are there certain places that make or break the artwork? I’ve been trying to brainstorm artworks I’ve seen that I wouldn’t want to see anywhere else.

Another example of Philly pride/stubbornness in the arts: does the effort that halted this move signal hope for Barnes?

Images from http://www.new-york-art.com/e/e-mus-barnes.htm

Seventy years ago today, planes from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy made one of history’s more infamous bombing runs — and its first test of the military strategy now known as “shock and awe.” In wave after wave, their low-flying fighters — acting in service of Fascist Gen. Francisco Franco — dropped a cumulative 30 tons of munitions, strafing civilians with machine guns, and setting fire to what remained. By the end of the day, some 2,500 people were dead or injured and three-quarters of the town’s buildings were destroyed, according to the Basque government.

“Guernica, city with 5,000 residents,” wrote the commander of Germany’s Condor Legion in his journal, “has been literally razed to the ground. Bomb craters can be seen in the streets. Simply wonderful.”

The attack, of course, inspired one of Pablo Picasso’s most celebrated and grisly works, a painting, named after the town, that appeared in the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. As he worked on the 25-foot mural, he reportedly said, “In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.”

But beyond inspiring one of the world’s most famous pieces of art, the bombing of Guernica sparked a new focus on peace in the town. The Gernika Peace Museum, which was created in part to investigate and present the truth of the attacks (they were first attributed by German soldiers to “the Reds”), is now seen as an international leader in conflict resolution and peace studies. Its mission is to remind and inform visitors about the raid 70 years ago, but also to inspire them to reflect on the nature of peace in the world and our struggles with it today.

“I think Guernica is a good example of not forgetting and trying to go further,” said Iratxe Astorkia, the museum’s director.

Today’s anniversary has renewed calls — so far refused — for Picasso’s Guernica to make its first showing in the town that shares its name.

These remind me of the boring & non-offensive awesome WACTAC t-shirt.

MORE: Retro Kid & Retro Teen pools on flickr

Your Children’s Manners by Rhoda W. Bacmeister, 1952. Illustrated by Janet LaSalle.
When Children Start Dating by Edith G. Neisser, 1951. Illustrated by Janet LaSalle.

[source: wardomatic’s photoset on flickr]

Jed Perl on the National Gallery of Art’s Dada show, from a subscription-only review in The New Republic:

Like so many atheists, the Dadaists were true believers of a sort. Late in life, when Arp was carving blocks of marble into classical forms that somehow still embodied a Dadaist’s doubts, he reminisced about the Dada years. “The important thing about Dada, it seems to me, is that the Dadaists despised what is commonly regarded as art, but put the whole universe on the lofty throne of art,” he wrote, “we declared that everything that comes into being or is made by man is art. Art can be evil, boring, wild, sweet, dangerous, euphonious, ugly, or a feast to the eyes. The whole earth is art. To draw well is art . . . . The nightingale is a great artist. Michelangelo’s Moses: Bravo! But at the sight of an inspired snow man, the Dadaist also cried bravo.” Put this way, the Dadaist creed is quite simply a celebration of the open-mindedness of the avant-garde, and most of the artists I know would agree with a good deal of what Arp has to say. Not the least of the strengths of Dickerman’s exhibition is that one may leave it believing that Arp, not Duchamp, is the essential Dadaist hero. Arp’s youthful Dadaist optimism puts Duchamp’s withering skepticism in its rightful place--not an entirely dishonorable place in twentieth-century art, but a very small place. Dada deserves better than Duchamp.

Via Brian Sholis.

A story at Discovery Channel News suggests that teenagers and tagging have gone hand in hand since the Pleistocene. From Wooster Collective:

Testosterone-fueled boys created most prehistoric cave art, according to a recently published book by one of the world’s leading authorities on cave art.

The theory contradicts the idea that adult, tribal shaman spiritual leaders and healers produced virtually all cave art.

It also explains why many of the images drawn in caves during the Pleistocene, between 10,000 and 35,000 years ago, somewhat mirror today’s artwork and graffiti that are produced by adolescent males.

“Today, boys draw the testosterone subjects of a hot automobile, fighter jet, Jedi armor, sports, direct missile hit, etc.-- all of the things they associate with the Adrenalin of success,” said R. Dale Guthrie, author of “The Nature of Paleolithic Art.”

Guthrie, who is a professor emeritus in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, added, “I think the full larder (of) success of the excitement and danger of killing a giant bison or auroch in the Pleistocene was the equivalent of the testosterone art today.”

Read it all.