Look At This

2011-12-25T21:03:00.000-08:00

My Blog has moved to a new site:
http://marshallelliott.wordpress.com/

Older blog entries will stay here while I continue on my way into uncharted realms of art musing, head scratching, late-night rushed updates, and the general flow of unimpeded, life changing information.

Thank you for reading!

Marshall

2011-11-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

"The debris is just debris, but it's not just debris, it's art in its finest way, it's reductive and it's positive, it's got all that thing that you want to have in a sculpture." -David Ireland

Is there a better example of "conceptual art" than David Ireland's debris pile at his 2003 Oakland Art Museum show? It's everything that many fine art lovers hate: a simplistic, insulting elevation of the most mundane to the status of fine art. But there is some material at work here in the backstory of Ireland's methodologies of utilizing found materials that have significance to place. In this case, all the junk of the pile came from less than a hundred yards away, in the very same room it is assembled. As the accumulation of the previous show's structure, the debris pile serves as an open-ended question. Some might see the wastefulness of contemporary art exhibit, others might ruminate on California's propensities for earthquakes reducing everything to rubble. And of course, there is the fundamental aesthetic, the minimalist coloring, the shadows, the texture.

In thinking about Ireland's famous expression "you can't make art by making art," I have been recently questioning the place of intention in artwork, how the mind open to the possibilities of chance and accident might have a more fertile field of potential than one that is rigorously premeditated. The problem, as always, is one of recognition. When do you stop? And when do you save something that might otherwise be thrown away to re-purpose it as a new incarnation of artwork that challenges a viewer's perception? And when is it just junk? For a cascade of questions like these to pour forth from a pile of trash in a gallery, I claim Ireland's concept to be profoundly effective for at least this one viewer.

2011-10-04T21:26:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention my other favorite Nina Katchadourian piece: "Fall's Colors," a play on words with an artificially grafted fake tree limb that appeared out of season, gradually blended in during autumn, and stood starkly out in winter after all other leaves had fallen off. An ingenious look at the too-slow-to-notice change of the seasons through contrast and mimicry.

2011-10-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

I was recently introduced to the work of Nina Katchadourian, and I got excited about an artist for the first time in a while. I loved her "Mended Spiderwebs Series," where she glued thread together to "repair" missing sections of damaged spiderwebs. Sometimes, the spider would return and summarily remove the foreign addition. The use of a more obviously visible material to accent the contrast is beautiful, and the concept of aiding or improving nature is called into question brilliantly. Her work can be seen at: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/index.php

2011-10-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

While biking the other day in North Oakland, I came across some very literal street art. A stencil of a man pulling a shopping cart. I haven't spontaneously broken out in laughter over an artwork in a while. This is a good one. If you've never been to California or any state that has a beverage container redemption fee, you might not fully appreciate it: because bottles and cans are valuable enough here, people travel around, gathering them (often in shopping carts) to take to the redemption center. Notice the detail of the extension handle (usually a tied plastic bag) so the user doesn't bang their ankles while pulling the cart. And of course, it's in the bike lane, because, well, that's where these carts get pulled around. It's a simple observation of fact. It's not just a bike lane, it's a bike-recycling lane.

2011-04-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

This is an image taken by the artist "Moneyless," from Milan, Italy, who was recently visiting the bay area [see more]. This is a photograph of a wire structure suspended (by trees, presumably), highlighted with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. It's a fresh scenic shot, and I admire it's graphic cleanliness without resorting to Photoshop. It's a situation, an actual, physical document of a visual event or construction. The sharp angularity of the geometry echoes that of the bridge, while providing contrast to the organic undulations of the hills in the background. It's like an analog version of the "layers" of Photoshop.

2011-03-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

It's a fairly dull minimalist piece, not nearly as interesting as a Fred Sandback. Until you read the description, from the Matthew Marks Gallery website:

Ink Line
1987
Ink, electric motor, pump, plastic
Dimensions variable

"What?" I think: "electric motor?! pump?!" And then I get it, the piece is moving. And suddenly, my whole conception changes. I love it. This gets me excited. Hidden mechanisms, moving tension, flowing, barely perceptible fluid ink. Kinetic sculpture. Amazing. Paradigm-moving. This is the second Charles Ray piece that I've written about on this blog, the first, "Hinoki," I saw at the Art Institute of Chicago and remember thinking to myself about art in general: "this is the only game in town."

2011-03-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

Here's an image of a Nayland Blake work that caught my eye. This piece, from his website stands out for me in the same way the pieces at Paule Anglim did. I think what is effective for me at this time in my life is the stunning realization that I could have made this piece right now, with the resources I have. I don't have to wait for larger studio space or expensive materials. I am inspired with the possibility of creativity. This has always been for me one of the virtues and ultimate purposes for art: to embolden others into creativity.

2011-03-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

I saw some effective art today that could have been made for virtually nothing, most of it at the Paule Anglim Gallery in San Francisco. The front room was full of work created by artist Nayland Blake, made with materials such as plywood, plexiglass, chain, trinkets, and assorted fasteners found on the street. This was classic "my kid could have made that" art: collaged together with materials that may have been fished out of a dumpster. And yet, the pieces have the magic spark of surprise, the genuine hand of creative montage. It's almost impossible to communicate this, but once you've tried to make something interesting out of scrap like this, you might find that it's harder than it looks. A recent visit to the SFMOMA found me amazed yet again at a Rauschenberg painting that I've seen a few times. What always strikes me about this painting is how he arranged the cutout wooden letters at the top to look like a cryptic writing in hebrew or another unidentifiable language. I can plainly see it: I just can't quite figure out how he really did it. It's a kind of magic.

Likewise, Blake's work struck me with the power of somebody who was skilled at assemblage. This work was surprising, engaging, and fun in the way it used forms. In the back room, two other pieces caught my eye: a framed blank canvas with a deer antler protruding from it, the shadow from a no-longer existent light source drawn in pencil. I didn't catch the artist's name. Another piece that I missed the artist's name was a good-sized rock perched atop a large scoop shovel with the handle replaced by a long piece of bamboo. On the end of that long, elegantly drooping piece of bamboo is a small stuffed (fake) songbird. A beautiful contrast of weight.

Any of these works could have been made for free, or nearly so. I find this incredible, the alchemy of artists turning what might be trash into something radically compelling. This re-introduced curiosity of vision, the second look, the renewed vision: this is the quickening of the pulse of art.

2011-01-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

Went to SFMoMA to see the Cartier-Bresson show, which was amazing, an entire floor of the seminal photographer's works. His eye was stunning. I can only imagine that he had a sense, an inner excitement that came over him that compelled him to push the shutter button at just the right moment.

The photograph that most amazed me, however, was not Bresson's, but Oliver Lutz's "The lynching of Leo Frank ", which you can see hanging on the wall to the right. If it looks like it's totally black, that's because it is. You don't see anything at all, and may at first glance think you're looking at one of those minimalist gestures of painting's contemporary history. But this is in a photography exhibit. It turns out the black paint is infrared-sensitive paint. In the upper left corner, you can see an infrared camera, and standing in the middle of the room on the column, a television showing the video feed. What do you see on the television? The image of yourself looking at the screen, while behind you, the black image isn't black at all, but a photograph of the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish-American in 1915. To put it mildly, it's shocking. An image you can't see that is plainly there to other kinds of seeing. It frames you in the image along with the witnesses of the murder, asking questions about deception, what is hidden and how it is revealed, secrecy, concealment. The show that this piece was in was called "Voyeurism," and this piece explores the ways in which seeing can be secret depending on how you look, and with what sensory apparaatus you are using. Brilliant.

California.

2011-01-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

I moved to Oakland, California last week. I'm excited to be in a large city art environment, even though I'm not so excited to be influenced by large city crime paranoia. It does seem justified: it's not so much a matter of whether your car will be broken into, but when and how many times. Humans are adaptable, however, so even this is simply a new reality to adjust to. Drove up to Tilden park above Berkeley the first night I was here to see a spectacular sunset behind the city and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. A welcoming with beauty.

Brushing my teeth with Duchamp.

2010-08-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

This morning, I was standing brushing my teeth, looking at two sliding, frosted-pane windows, a gap between them showing a verdant scene of ferns and redwoods beyond. And I thought how nice that would be as a painting, the whole thing: the glass windows and the small sliver of the natural world. In my imagination, I entered the world of the figurative painters, who find ways to narrate and to depict. What happened? What was Duchamp's purpose of art? The oft-repeated story is that Duchamp came along and radically re-oriented the art world (over the course of the century) from viewing/experiencing pleasure to intellectual rigor and questioning, which led to our contemporary interest in conceptual art. Sometimes, the two go together, which only confuses things. After all, his signed urinal was a pleasant, smooth form, especially by today's standards. But then: he did end up quitting art entirely and playing chess in his old age, turning himself into the statement of denial, his everydayness his artwork. Or perhaps he was just escaping the gravitational pull of the famous artist myth, escaping the pressure to do one thing better always until the world burns down.

The latest work to get my attention.

2010-08-13T11:29:00.001-07:00

I admit: I'm spending more of this blog talking about the work of others rather than my own. That's fine. I'm not making much lately, and there is much to be celebrated out there. The most recent piece I've come across that gets me excited is Walter DeMaria's "The Vertical Earth Kilometer." (1977, Kassel Germany). See it in the photo? No, not the statue, or the landscaping. It's that square of sandstone in the middle. The 2x2m block has a visible 5cm diameter end of a brass rod . . . The rod is one kilometer long.

The magnitude of the effort involved in this work borders on the absurd. Yet, it is more than simply conceptual: it is an actual reality, a mostly invisible, extremely ambitious undertaking than calls into question what is beneath the surface. Just what does it mean to go that far into the earth? A friend of mine suggested that the work is "almost a violation of the planet, intrusive." Of course, this is one of many: think of the hundreds of thousands of such cores drilled all over the planet. This is just the only one that has been filled back in as if in an acupuncture of the Earth's crust.

I can only imagine that to stand on this platform and reach down to touch the end of this rod is to feel something deep, in the stomach, a kind of encounter with the awesome magnitude of our planet's dimensions and the almost insignificant scale that we occupy.

The link with more info about this work: http://www.diacenter.org/sites/page/57/1378

Why this blog is preventing my success.

2010-06-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

I recently looked up on the web to see if painter Barnaby Furnas had a website. It doesn't appear so. Apparently, successful artists have other people make websites for them. Preferably galleries, museums, and Wikipedia. I wondered: at what point in an artist's career do they abandon the website? It was suggested to me: at your first museum show. So is my attempts at reaching out to the world actually sabotaging my efforts to have a museum show? Probably less than my lack of effort at making large volumes of new work. It does always come back to that, doesn't it?

Apologies to Furnas for reprinting this tiny picture of "The Whale." The painting is the same size as a killer whale: 30 feet long. It completely occupies the field of vision.

SFMOMA

2010-06-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, I visited the San Francisco museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Half the museum was closed for an exhibit installation, so the entry fee was half price, making it slightly cheaper than the parking in downtown SF. Upon my first walk through the 70th anniversary show, I was struck by Jay DeFeo's The Veronica:
It feels alive to me, as if created by the very same natural processes employed in the wilderness. I think that art serves this purpose, particularly for city-dwellers: to get in touch with wildness. To wit: Thoreau's frequently misquoted "In wildness is the preservation of the world."

2010-04-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

India. 9 weeks. And all I saw was this pile of scraps in front of a tailor's shop.

No, there was more. Much more. But that's what comes up first. Color. Lots of color:

Women in the fields lifting large bundles of plants up on their heads, wearing bright red or green or pink sarees. Festivals with neon-colored powder thrown on participants. The orange pigment applied to the forehead in a dot. Even the cows get painted, the horns: one red, one green. The soft fuzzy sunrise in Varanasi, a hot orange blob of sun coming up in a tender pink and orange haze coating the far bank. Bright yellow auto rickshaws zipping around. Bike rickshaws made of shiny sheetmetal nailed onto a wooden frame, handpainted with scrollwork, italic lettering, peacocks, flowers. LED lights in synchronized color-changing pulsing patterns illuminating one of the temples in the BodhGaya complex, beside the Maha Bodhi temple commemorating the spot where the Buddha was enlightened. The deep green of transplanted Eucalyptus trees in Kodai Kanal, where the air smelled like Northern California. The men's "skirts," called Lunghi, with an infinite variety of incredible plaid patterns. Mostly blues and greens, however. Some grey. Almost never red. Temples with every color of the rainbow depicting deities in painting or statues that were also painted with thick shining color. Rivers black with pollution. Bright green parrots. Red-ass monkeys. Corridors between apartments with every color fabric swaying in the wind to dry. Dusty brown dirt fields for soccer. Headlights of trucks and rickshaws replaced with computer-controlled changing light displays. The amazing national bird: the peacock with shimmering green and blue.

2010-01-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

Just finished a residency at the Town of Breckenridge, CO. In their art district, they have a building called the "Tin Shop," where I worked for 10 days. Although I was having a show of my burnt cloth pieces nearby at the Theater Gallery, I decided to focus the residency on exploration, making pieces that I don't usually work on, such as painting, ceramics, and installation. I discovered that working this way, outside of one's comfort zone, is probably not best done in public. However, it is interesting to watch the effects (and possibly the intensification of the feelings because of immediate display). Here is what I ended up with (having to stop after days of not knowing when to stop):

2009-12-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

Since I'm a Denver artist, I feel it is my duty to weigh in on the infamous "Blue Mustang" at the airport.

First, I will admit that I don't believe art needs to be pretty. Or inspiring. Or . . . well, I don't believe that art needs to be anything. And I find it somewhat demeaning to a culture to insist that its public art "needs" to be a certain way if it uses public funds. There's far too much boring art out there that has wasted my public funds on milquetoast expressions. I am glad we have a controversy.

Second: aren't horse's knees a little strange?

Third, I think that the fear of the so-called "evil" horse of DIA is due to misunderstanding. I don't think the horse is evil. I think that's a significant word that should be reserved for truly evil ideas. I might suggest, for example, that the statue of Kit Carson in Pioneer square near the capitol could be considered evil, as it memorializes a person who did participate in evil deeds.

In fact, I believe that the Blue Mustang actually is there to ward off evil. That is to say, it's a gargoyle.
Gargoyles are old. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks put them on their buildings, and the form flourished in the Gothic style of architecture.

Technically speaking, the Blue Mustang would be a "Chimera," and not a gargoyle, since it doesn't divert water, but the concept is the same. It's supposed to be fearsome. It needs to be threatening. It's very function is so when evil shows up, it sees the job is filled and goes somewhere else. Where else would you want evil to be scared off than at an airport? Especially in this day and age?

So the next time you drive past those bright red eyes that become more radiant as you pass in line with them, thank that Mustang for keeping things safe at your airport.

2009-12-26T14:11:00.000-08:00

My latest guilty pleasure is reading Mark Kostabi's advice columns from a few years back. An interesting case study in the history of modern art, some good advice and stories:

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/askmarkkostabi.asp

2009-11-20T11:56:00.000-08:00

Back from a visit to Chicago. Went to the SOFA show and wandered around in this city that I have never been to, places such as the Art institute, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Stunning things to see, that's for sure. Public art by Picasso, Debuffet, Chagall, Calder, and the really amazing "Cloud Gate" by Anish Kapoor (I spoke with a security guard, whose job it was to protect the sculpture from vandals and unthinking tourists who might scratch its mirrored surface: he said in a very blue-collar simplicity "It's not a bean! Who's ever seen a silver bean?") which has to be one of the most successful pieces of public sculpture anywhere.

At the Art Institute, I was in awe of an entire room of Robert Ryman paintings. His work is so bare that if you put it next to anything else, it almost disappears. So it's good for it to have its own room. Such precision: with the brushed aluminum and modern fasteners, it feels like a space-era artwork, something like NASA taken to its mosts beautiful extreme. Other good works there that I really admired were the huge Frank Stella piece and the precarious (but immensely solid) Richard Serra works. And I was most floored by the sculpture "Hinoki" by Charles Ray, hand carved by a Japanese Temple Restoration master. This reproduction of natural decay spoke to me in a particular human sense of freezing, or postponing death, and of course, the overwhelming human effort involved. An interesting event happened to me: on my first pass through the room with this sculpture, I noticed that there was a flat spot where a piece was missing. When I came back two hours later, the piece had suddenly appeared! It's the sharp piece visible in the foreground. Apparently, some viewers had stumbled into it and broken it off, but it had been replaced during the time I was off looking at the rest of the museum. Before/After. Amusing.

The SOFA show was useful for me because it gave me a very clear window into a certain style of art, a world that can be variously categorized as "fine craft" or "decorative arts" or, as the acronym suggests "Sculpture Objects". I kept wondering what the difference really was between this and what we might call "fine art," that is, what is shown at the Chicago Art Fair, or Art Basel, or the Venice Biennale. These are different games that artists play. Different worlds of interest. Perhaps the easiest way to over-generalize and wrongly simplify this divide would be to say that "fine art" is interested in the idea behind the work, the "concept" as we so lovingly use the word, whereas the "decorative art" of SOFA is interested in the surface, the materials, the finish, the craftsmanship, and what happens when this is taken to its extreme. I noticed that at the SOFA show, many people would touch the objects. They were approachable. At a "fine art" fair, this would certainly get you yelled at.

The Contemporary Art Museum had some wonderful works on display. Beautifully precise Donald Judd pieces, and a large installation by Liam Gillick that played wonderfully with color and light. I was quite moved by a work called "It is what it is" by Jeremy Deller, which gave an intimate and up-front understanding of the Iraq war through photos and an actual bombed car, complete with a social "lounge" where visitors could interact with an acutual Iraqi. When I was there, the Iraq woman was a refugee trained as a Laser Physicist, who spoke English quite well and was quite bemused by the position she found herself in, answering a variety of questions from all directions about Iraq, the war, Islam, and others. I found it a fascinating and quite engaging opportunity.

Elsewhere in the museum, there are many "hidden" works of art, such as the piece by Harold Mendez, Nothing Prevents Anything (2007). A worked-over found object (a message corkboard) was brilliantly displayed over by the small lounge beside the elevators. It looked at first glance like it could actually be a message board, but second glance revealed the absurdity of the scnenario: a, empty board in such poor shape, with cracking paint, dirt stains, and hundreds of remnant staples on the wall of a museum that was very clean and put-together. The recognition that this was indeed a very intentional work was stunning: it sparked a kind of curiosity about everything else in the museum: "is this art?" It got to be a bit overwhelming when I began to ask if the guy vacuuming in the corner was an performance artist. Still, it raised the wonderful question of what is art, and what kind of intention does it have to have? Are the pay-phones at the museum an installation? I actually had to consider this, since they didn't have a dial tone (one, in fact made an "out-of-order" tone). Are those trees outside the museum art? Of course they are! Of course, everything bears the intentional act of creation and intentional location. Design is rampant. So what ends up in the museum? Objects that carefully and precisely remind us of this point.

What now?

2009-11-02T12:56:00.000-08:00

Almost finished filling the cloth in on my fourth large open-cloth piece (48x48").

In the post-Halloween world, there is an overabundance of the poison C12H22O11, also known as sucrose, also known as sugar. Despite our awareness of the effect of this chemical compound on the body, we persist in consuming mass quantities and handing it out to children to consume.

Today I have eaten four small candy pieces.
I have also noticed that lately, my response to candy eating contains far less recrimination and more responsibility: when I eat some candy, I also make a point to drink a lot of water. I heard a friend remark on the importance of this act and I have never forgotten it. Indeed, I immediately began to alter my behavior based on that one overheard comment.

Arcosanti.

2009-10-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

Arcosanti, an experimental architectural community/construction site. Cordes Junction, AZ: www.arcosanti.org. Went there to help put on a performance Oct. 3 with the incomparable Human Nature Dance Theater company. Went really well, three new people in the group who seamlessly incorporated. I mostly did the set, making some wings out of thin strips of hardwood and muslin fabric. If they look slighly bat-like, it's because bats are the only large species (i.e. not insect) that has membrane wings. I found that out of necessity of designing with cloth I would have to cut the points between the frames in a caternary curve: which nature already figured out with the bat.

Photos of the set and performance can be seen at:

http://www.illuminatedvisions.com/Dance/Human-Nature-Flight/

2009-10-21T16:54:00.001-07:00

"In visual reading, like verbal reading, the completeness of the reading relates directly to the quality of the reader's stored information. An FM broadcasting station produces an absolutely uniform transmission of information. If the broadcast is picked up in one case by a pocket transistor and in another by a high-fidelity system, there is obviously a tremendous difference in the quality of the message as received."

-George Nelson, "How to See"

I am thinking lately about the resposibility of the audience, how viewers/audiences/specators, etc. are always co-creating a piece by completing the intention of the work and interpreting it through the filter of their own lives. Thus, no matter what, a work is always a dynamic entity and subject to mis-interpretation or re-interpretation often out of the hands of the creator. We do our best to send a clear signal, and the audience hopefully does their best to tune in carefully and then consider what is being broadcast. But it is always participatory. Perhaps even more so with modern art than in the past.

2009-09-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

A day of dyeing. After spending all of last week scouring, tannin-soaking, and mordanting this fabric, I finally got to putting the color in. I used Cochineal dye with Iron Oxide.

It's quite time-consuming to go through the process of natural dyeing. Why am I doing it? I think it has something to do with the immersion into the method, the learning of a new skill, the connection to ancient traditions, the organic quality of it.

Cochineal is an insect, and apparently, this is the closest you can get in natural dyes to a red. As you can see, mine is more violet or fuschia. And probably due to my inexperienced technique, the outcome is a bit mottled. I wasn't worried about this since I'll be tearing the fabric up into strips. Wikipedia has some interesting info on Cochineal, quite a bit of history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal

While making this, I got to thinking about using an insect to color fabric, and looked to see what PETA had to say:

"Carmine. Cochineal. Carminic Acid.
Red pigment from the crushed female cochineal insect. It takes a million corpses to make a kilogram of carminic acid, the more purified form of cochineal extract. Used in cosmetics, shampoos, red apple sauce, and other foods (including red lollipops and food coloring). May cause allergic reaction. Alternatives: beet juice (used in powders, rouges, and shampoos; no known toxicity) and alkanet root (from the root of this herb-like tree; used as a red dye for inks, wines, lip balms, etc.; no known toxicity; can also be combined to make a copper or blue coloring)."

It's nice that they post alternatives. I didn't go and buy they dye, I've had it for years, so I decided to use it. But given my outcome, I doubt I would try it again. I get almost this same color from Logwood, without worrying about the source. Increasingly, I am more concerned about the impact my work has on the world, not just aesthetically, but a moral or environmentally sound consideration as well. When I first starting burning fabric, I was using bed-sheets from the thrift store. Of course, eventually, I got my hands on those that had a lot of polyester in them, which created less of a feathery burnt edge, and more of a thin, melted line. And, I got tired of breathing the toxic fumes of incinerating plastic, not to mention adding that to the atmosphere.

2009-09-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

Went to Beatrice and Woodsley's tonight for dessert, which is my vote for the most visually interesting restaurant in Denver. This photo shows three of my favorite details in the place: the exposed lathe-and-plaster wall, the kerosene lanterns which lower on a gang-pulley system, and the shelves held up with antique chainsaws. B&W saved me from a depressing feeling I had upon return from Portland that there was nothing hip in this town. I have since realized that besides this, there are other places too. But it's nice to see a place that shows such creative effort. And I do recommend the Pot du Creme.

2009-09-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

This is a pond/stream that I built this summer. This morning, I was surprised to find a Cooper's Hawk sitting on the upright rock. At least, I think it's a Cooper's. After this photo, it jumped down into the water to take a bath. I think it likes to hang out around this pool because the pool attracts other birds that it feeds on. There's always loose feathers laying around .

2009-09-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

This is the progress on my new large piece (48x48"). The first Friday in September, I showed the first two of this series at the Space Gallery in Denver on Santa Fe Drive. http://www.spacegallery.org/

I took this picture with the sun setting through the window. Or as Buckminster Fuller and might say, the "earth rising."