art

Who knew that 2009 was going to be the year that modern art got high-profile political again? Just a few months back, we had Glenn Beck telling us about the evil communist indoctrination elements found within the exterior of Rockefeller Plaza and now we have the decision not to hang painter Alma Thomas' "Watusi (Hard Edge)" piece in Michelle Obama's office. Thomas' work had come under attack when it was mentioned that the First Lady would like to hang some of her work in the White House. According to the Washington Post, conservative sites started arguing that Thomas' work plagiarized Henri Matisse -- their point, we suppose, was that by hanging her work, Michelle Obama would therefor become pro-plagerism? Whatever the case, and not to exaggerate too much here, this is clearly the worst instance of pointless, partisan, arguing-just-to-argue ever in the history of universe. Unfortunately, the Post continues, the White House has decided to not hang the painting, claiming it just didn't work in the office after all, but perhaps they just wanted to quiet this absurdly focused pressure. And this apparently wasn't the only piece to catch heat. Does anyone have any info on obtaining Canadian citizenship? We're sick of this.

The most popular vandal in all the world, Banksy, keeps on getting a taste of his own medicine. Just this year, his work has been accidentally painted over and purposefully defaced during his big show in Bristol. But as we've also seen over the past couple of years, people have been defensive of Banksy's work, even receiving requests that he show up to tag in their towns (perhaps due to some correlation with how much his work goes for at auction?). Now the news comes that while neighborhood residents and officials were meeting to discuss what to do with a Banksy on one of their walls, whether they should keep it or not (the vote was an overwhelming yes), nogoodniks were graffiting all over Banksy's graffiti. So now, we're assuming, Banksy's piece, and all of this new street art will be removed. And if that hasn't already gotten too meta for you, here's a quote from one of the neighborhood voters about why they think the piece was defaced:

"The image actually criticised mindless graffiti so perhaps it isn't surprising that the sort of people who do that sort of thing should attack it."

As a lame adult now too old to go out to raucous parties, but young enough not to have kids yet, this writer's connection to Halloween has sadly become distanced. As such, he hasn't really been on the lookout for much spooky, seasonally-appropriate pieces to share with you here. Fortunately, our pals over at Chicago's iconic Art Institute have come through at the eleventh hour for us with their recent post to their Facebook page:

In honor of Halloween, we took an office poll: what's the scariest/creepiest/spookiest work in the collection? Here are some of our picks.

Therein you'll find ten decidedly scary pieces, like Francis Bacon's Figure with Mean (6 out of 10 on the creepy scale), Irving Penn's famous The Angel photograph (3 out of 10), and for those with a decidedly popular phobia, Bruce Nauman's video installation Clown Torture (8 of 10, regardless if you previously had a fear or not). A thanks to the Art Institute for bringing the high brow to a purposefully low brow holiday. We applaud whoever decided this would be a fun idea, because it most certainly is.

Just this past weekend, a friend was talking about Roger Hiorns' Turner Prize-shortlisted piece "Seizure." If you aren't familiar with it, the quick synopsis is that Hiorns dumped gallons and gallons of copper sulphate into a sealed, abandoned apartment, waited a few days, sucked all the liquid back out, and what was left were these beautiful, blue walls of crystals. So it's funny that piece should come up right before we'd heard about this project in Detroit starting to make the rounds here on the internet, which sort of sounds like the American version of "Seizure." It's Gregory Holm and Matthew Radune's plan to pump water into an abandoned house this winter and let it freeze, essentially creating a gigantic ice block around the structure. Throughout the process, Holm will be photographing the effects the ice has on the house, with the whole purpose of the project serving as a statement about Detroit's foreclosure plague over these past decades. The two are currently raising money for the project on their blog, so if you're feeling generous and dig the idea, drop them a few bucks.

We blame the frozen economy for keeping us from this year's Frieze Art Fair in London, but it didn't stop us from living vicariously through others. In addition to requesting various colleagues across the pond to send detailed updates from Regent's Park (sample text message: "Valentino is here. Very, very tan. Tempted to ask him to pose w/me in Ryan Gander's on-site photo studio."), we made invited one particularly indulgent associate to narrate—by cell phone—the whole of his experience at the just-opened Ed Ruscha retrospective at the Hayward. We're happy to report that Ruscha's paintings sound almost as good as they look. Meanwhile, Carol Vogel had a great round-up of Frieze in The New York Times, including this intriguing tidbit:

At Lehmann Maupin, the New York gallery, visitors can fill out questionnaires from the British artist Tracey Emin asking, for example, "Do you believe in God?" and "Is there any color that makes you violently sick?" From the answers, Ms. Emin will create a drawing and a neon piece. The first of her custom-made pieces was sold to Amy Phelan...four other buyers followed.

Print may be dying, but paper endures, whether cut, burned, shredded, scribbled on, or sculpted into elaborate art installations. The Museum of Arts & Design tears into the topic with "Slash: Paper Under the Knife," the third exhibition in its Materials and Process series. On view through April 4 of next year, the exhibition explores the creative possibilities of paper through the works of paper-loving artists such as Olafur Eliasson, who in 2006 reproduced a cross-section of his house (at a scale of 85:1) on 900 sheets of laser-cut paper in a sort of anti-pop-up book, and Kara Walker, whose painstaking paper cut-outs explore themes of race, gender, and the shadier side of American history.

(Photos: Stefan Bagnoli)

Occupying one corner of the gallery is Pietro Ruffo's "Youth of the Hills" (2008), a six-foot-long tank that is studded with nails and covered in cut paper and Hebrew prayer script. More politically-charged paper sure to please the design crowd is the work of Sangeeta Sandrasegar, whose cut-outs insert war imagery into the distinctive shapes of iconic chairs designed by the likes of Marcel Breuer and Charles and Ray Eames. "The chair and image provoke constructs of looking/seeing: as bystander, spectator, onlooker, observer, and as such the range of power/powerlessness these positions convey," writes Sandrasegar on his blog. "Additionally, between the depicted image of war and the chair template lie other gulfs of of contrast: between first and third worlds, the safe worlds in which designer furniture exists, and the unsafe worlds in which bombs and raids exist, creation and destruction, wealth and poverty."

Previously on UnBeige:

What with the sluggish economy and soaring airfare prices, our passport hasn't seen the light of day for some time and is now threatening to sell its Smythson case on eBay. Our heady days of 4 a.m. gift shopping sprees at Keflavik International Airport may be a thing of the past, but The New Yorker is helping us feel better about the passport atrophy. Tickets go on sale tomorrow for the magazine's fifth annual Passport to the Arts event. The art gallery crawl, evening cocktail reception, and silent auction benefitting Friends of the High Line takes place on Saturday, November 7. A ticket (yours for $45 here) gets you a "limited-edition passport" that each of the 24—and counting—Chelsea galleries on the self-guided tour will stamp with a replica of a featured work of art. And with a list of participating galleries that includes Lehmann Maupin, Mary Boone, and Zach Feuer, it promises to be quite a trip.

What do pioneers of twentieth-century modernism eat for lunch? Kentucky Fried Chicken (extra crispy), served on a three-tier hospital-style rolling cart. That was a typical—and presumably finger-lickin' good—meal at the suburban Connecticut home of Josef and Anni Albers, according to Nicholas Fox Weber, who shared it with them on a fall day in 1970. Weber sheds new light on the life and work of the Alberses, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in his forthcoming group biography, The Bauhaus Group (Random House). Among the delicious revelations in the advance excerpt that appears in this month's issue of ARTnews is that of Josef Albers' deep appreciation for the salad bar at a Boston chain resturant called the Plank House. "For this," writes Weber, "there were many reasons":

The clear plastic domed shield that served the purposes of hygiene while one looked at the produce was...a perfect match of a modern material with multiple goals. The array of salads and condiments thrilled him—especially the pickled beets and the various seeds, which reminded him of some of the tastes and textures of his youth. But what was best of all was the way that the serving bowls and the plates were all kept chilled. He noted particularly how the metal containers retained their coldness even longer than other vessels.

He didn't just make casual comments about these details; he marveled at them. They reflected an intelligence, a knowledge, and a clarity of thought that had, he told me, been the very essence of what he had tried to impart at the Bauhaus.

We're all for fun art pranks. Love them, even. We saw the first Yes Men documentary and we'll likely see the new one, too. But if you're going to pull one, make sure you're not just copying someone else, okay? Otherwise, it just comes off as contrived, because that's a word that artists don't usually like to be associated with. Guilty party is the New York-based painter Mat Benote, who secretly hung his artwork on the walls of a variety of museums like the Saatchi Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum, some of which stayed up for a couple of days before officials noticed them and they were removed. If that sounds at all familiar, it should. Banksy did the exact same thing back in 2005, which by our count was the first big step in turning him into an internationally-recognized household name. Case in point: shortly thereafter he'd landed on NPR and was the subject of a feature story in the New Yorker. Benote has also tried to remain mysterious, not telling the Daily News what part of New York he lives in, nor how old he is. This also sound like some super famous street artist you've heard about? In fact, it sounds so similar that maybe it is Banksy and he's just offering up a critique about the uniqueness of art or something? For a little more reading, here's an interview with Benote who has apparently been doing this for a while and often gets this Banksy critique.

Surf's up for Shepard Fairey, Raymond Pettibon, Barry McGee, and 22 other artists who were invited to interpret the world's most iconic waves for the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the world's oceans. Thanks to a cherished (and yes, fluorescent) childhood t-shirt, we've heard of Mavericks and Pipeline but had to consult our surf-crazy left-coast colleagues for the scoop on the rest of the famed waves, which include the vividly named Superbank, Restaurants, G-Land, and Swami's. Fairey (that's his work, pictured above) used spray paint and stencils to take on Jaws, the monster swells off the north shore of Maui, while Andy Moses painted a cool abstract on concave canvas in homage to Peru's Chicama. All 25 works go on the block next Friday evening in Los Angeles during the Surfrider Foundation's Art for Oceans auction, part of the organization's 25th anniversary gala. Can't make it? Get in the spirit of things with the surftastic beach towel that Pettibon created for the Art Production Fund.