Off Center

Lee Rosenbaum, author of CultureGrrl, blogs about spotting a Richard Prince “joke bag,” sold and marketed under the Louis Vuitton tag, at her neighborhood mall. Rosenbaum wonders “whether a Vuitton boutique may be added to the Guggenheim-organized Richard Prince show that opened Saturday at the Walker.”

A quick answer to Rosenbaum’s query comes with a stroll to the Walker shop, where a table of products timed to the Prince exhibition is stocked with dozens of posters, postcards, DVDs of films Prince selected as personally inspiring, and stacks of handsome, shrink-wrapped exhibition catalogues. Alas, no handbags.

“It’s a very high-end line and a very specific distribution. It’s not something (Vuitton) would just sell to anyone, anywhere,” says Nancy Gross, director of merchandising and facility rental at the Walker. “Will I look into it? Maybe.”

Lost in the shake and shuffle of SXSW this week is Flatstock 16, a showcase of the best and brightest (at times, literally) in concert poster design. Sharing crawl space on the liquor-lacquered streets and floors of Austin, Tex., are several Minneapolis graphic designers hoping to become the next John Van Hamersveld.

Among locals who made the trek down I-35 — cardboard tubes slung over their shoulders, no doubt, in place of guitar straps — are Dan Ibarra and Michael Byzewski of Aesthetic Apparatus (they’ve worked for Frank Black, the Hold Steady, and The New Pornographers, among many others). Other local poster designers postering and partying in Austin are the company Burlesque of North America (Arcade Fire, Rhymesayers), Dan Black and Jessica Seamans of the collective Landland, Amy Jo Hendrickson and an artist going by the name of DWITT. Hendrickson and fellow Minneapolis poster artists Tooth and Lonny Unitus (a vintage Baltimore Colts fan, I take it) recently opened a Northeast storefront (158 13th Ave. NE) featuring limited-edition screenprinted posters and art prints, an on-site design studio and a screenprinting shop.

In 2007, Eric Drommerhausen, an MCAD grad who lives in Albert Lea, Minn., was the grand prize winner of the first Student Flatstock Contest. Presented by the American Poster Institute, Flatstock is an annual series of exhibitions featuring work by leading concert poster artists.

Couldn’t make it to Austin to oggle the latest in wall wear? No problem — check out the live Flatstock Web cam operated by the folks of gigposters.

IMAGE: “The Redwalls” by Aesthetic Apparatus

People in Utah — along with environmental and public art proponents everywhere — are buzzing about the pending plans (and the lease approving them) of a Canadian oil company to drill in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, five miles north of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.

Recent editorials in The New York Times and Salt Lake Tribune have urged Utah legislators to “protect the Jetty,” and reading these, it’s easy to relax in the faith that rational, forward, progressive thought and action will win the day. Then you glimpse at how others are reacting to this story, and it seems entirely sane to fight for a Constitutional amendment allowing the United States to de-accession a state.

Until a couple months ago, my knowledge of social/political cartooning was limited to Garry Trudeau, Ted Rall, Tom Tomorrow and the like. Then I got turned on to Joe Sacco and, as of this weekend, am an official convert to the medium. Will Dinski and Tom Kaczynski were among the handful of Twin Cities cartoonists with tables at the 6th annual Minnesota Center for Book Arts book arts festival. I bought so much of their work Saturday — not to mention my impluse buy of an MCBA membership — that I barely had enough cash to carry to the card room Sunday.

Dinksi is the kind of artist I revere in any medium — dark, witty, irreverent, unafraid, creatively ambitious and wired to what we think but don’t often express (probably a good thing, considering some of his subjects carry guns - notice the hologram in the image at left). Kaczynski, a regular contributor to the comics quarterly MOME, produces such a variety of work that it would be impossible to know it all comes from the same artist. He used the weekend festival to showcase his more abstract, disjointed narratives and series.

Both artists self-produce work in a range of formats — cards, booklets (Dinski makes his own hardcover books), limited- edition prints, pop-out displays and posters. They also planned to be in the audience for Sacco’s talk Tuesday at the Walker. As a primer, check out our Allison Herrera’s interview with Sacco.

“Oh yeah, I’m going,” Kaczynski said, as if the mere question of his attendance was absurd. “Most of us (cartoonists) probably are.”

IMAGE FROM WILLDINSKI.COM

Scary times call for… ingenious outfits?

Aya Tsukioka says she got the idea for her new clothing line from the ninja, stealth martial artists who can blend into any surrounding. She’s created a kimono that folds out to make a full-sized vending machine, inside which its wearer can hide; a purse that expands to a photorealistic manhole cover; a kids’ backpack that mimics the design of a pay phone.

The designs, while impractical, nod to very real fears in Japan. But according to the New York Times they don’t necessarily fit reality: Crime in Japan, at just one-seventh the rate in the US, is actually trending downward.

But the camo couture also speaks to a Japanese trait of laying low, rather than fighting back, as Americans might. “It is just easier for Japanese to hide,” Ms. Tsukioka said. “Making a scene would be too embarrassing.”

For Muslims in an era of post-9/11 fear and stereotyping, survival garb might include something more overt but with room for secrecy. Artist Azra Aksamija, an MIT architecture Ph.D. candidate studying with Krzysztof Wodiczko, has created the Dirndlmoschee (Dirndl Dress Mosque). Designed after the daily outfit still worn by some women in Austria, the piece includes a silk scarf that can be used as a veil, an apron that converts to a prayer mat, and a belt that holds a compass on a caribiner (for finding the direction of Mecca) and prayer beads.

Her Survival Mosque is site-specific for the United States. The burka is covered with the stars and stripes, but a closer look reveals much more:

The mosque is self-sufficient; the prayer rug is supplying its own energy source via photo-voltaic solar cells. It also carries different liturgical and practical features such as washing solution for ablution and for cleaning when a Muslim get spit on, ear plugs against insults, American constitution proofing rights of American Muslims, weapons and amulets, a loud-speaker with speech on tolerance held by President George W. Bush, ablution slippers, Quran, educative books and diverse communication devices. The Survival Mosque can be transformed and camouflaged into interactive bags, which communicate with each other via blue-tooth technology. The bag-speakers reflect paranoia spreading messages regarding terrorism, but they can also function as muezzins; calling for prayer at particular prayer times.

The Walker taps Olga Viso to succeed Kathy Halbreich as director and Halbreich moves on to envision contemporary programming at New York City's Museum of Modern Art.

Tack on Kaywin Feldman becoming director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and, even without citing the Rule of Threes, one could spot a trend - the rise of women in leadership at American museums.

Others saw such a trend long before these recent moves. Halbreich and Viso separately commented on the topic, in 2006, to Tyler Green for a Los Angeles Times piece on the emergence of women as museum directors. Viso, 41, comes to the Walker after 12 years with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the past two as its director.

But dig a little deeper and you'll see not a trend but an evolutionary progression. While men still outnumber women at the tops of America's art museums, women are on greater footing at institutions with an exclusive or primary focus on contemporary arts - that is, art created after World War II.

Beyond Halbreich and Viso, who begins at the Walker in January, women hold top leadership posts with at least two dozen contemporary arts institutions, from museums with international reputations to ambitious regional centers.

A partial list of these women and the contemporary art centers they lead:

Hope Alswang - Rhode Island School of Design Museum

Bonnie Clearwater - Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami

Stephanie Conaway - Center of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

Rachael Blackburn Cozad - Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City

Julie Decker - International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Anchorage

Sherri Gelden - Wexner Center for the Arts, at Ohio State University, Columbus

Claudia Gould - Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

Kay Kallos - Atlanta Contemporary Art Center

Linda Klosky - Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe

Susan Krane - Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

Georgianna Lagoria - The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu

Jill Medvedow - Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Cydney Payton - Contemporary Art Museum of Denver

Ann Philbin - Hammer Museum, UCLA

Lisa Phillips - New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City

Raphaela Platow - Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati

Marla Price - Museum of Contemporary Art of Fort Worth

Susan Purves - Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle

Virginia Rutter - Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, N.C.

Jill Snyder - Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art

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

Here’s the short of it: Steve Kurtz is an artist. The “authorities” end up visiting his house, for an unrelated reason. They see weird equipment, leading them think he’s a terrorist. Now he’s in trouble with the law. Jim Fetterley and Angie Waller created a video documenting Kurtz’s story:

On May 11, Steve Kurtz phoned 911 to report his wife of 20 years was unresponsive. When paramedics came to his house, one of them noticed that Kurtz had laboratory equipment, which he used in his art exhibits. The paramedics reported this to police and the FBI sealed off his house.

Authorities later said that Kurtz’s wife had died of “heart failure,” but he wasn’t allowed to return to his home for two days while the FBI confiscated his equipment, and biological samples. They also carted off his books, personal papers and computer.

The contradiction between the charges for possessing harmful substances and the county health commissioner assessing that no hazardous substances were found in the house leaves only the conclusion - that ideas, when misunderstood or disagreeable, are toxic.

Kurtz is one of the founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, a group whose beginnings in filmmaking over a decade ago have evolved into public performances and videos that educate the public about the politics of biotechnology. All of CAE’s museum and public performances are meant to not only inform the public about the ways their lives are affected by biotechnology, but also to dispel public paranoia that is generated by the media and a lack of understanding.

Steve became the victim of this paranoia, and through the extended powers of the US Patriot Act, he still awaits trial for mail fraud. If found guilty, could face up to twenty years.

More Details [via BoingBoing]

One must ask, if everything is a bomb or a bio-weapons lab, how can artists and technical people create? This story certainly has a chilling effect.

As an aside, the use of showing web pages and highlighting text in the video is a simple technique that I’ve seen more and more lately. It is interesting to see aesthetic style develop from technological necessity.