OLD NEWS

PLUTO AT NIGHT
<https://tinyurl.com/254l3bdj> _NASA

>>>

THE ELEGIAC ART OF ROBERT FRANK by Hilton Als
There’s a built-in elegiac quality to the work of Robert Frank; indeed, one could say the same about a lot of photography—that the document exists because of what the photographer didn’t want to forget. But Frank’s genius was in knowing that life moves on, even if we want to stop it, or aspects of it, in a frame. (“I think of myself, standing in a world that is never standing still,” he once said.) His landmark work, “The Americans,” was not only an outsider’s view of the world—Frank was born in Zurich, in 1924, and, despite living much of his life in New York after 1947, never entirely lost his accent—it was an outsider’s view of photography: that it could do so much more than had previously been tried. It’s wild to think that this is his first retrospective at MOMA, given that his interest in form and volition is an ethos that the museum generally celebrates. But the curator Lucy Gallun is so full of love for Frank’s various turns as a great and sometimes not-so-great creator that you can’t get mad.
<https://tinyurl.com/2atebfdg>
The exhibition “Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue” starts off with Frank’s earliest work in black-and-white photography and moves through his turns as bookmaker, diarist, and filmmaker with ease—everything is well placed and considered—without being too brief, or condescending. Although his works as a self-consciously “visual” artist fall flat—he wasn’t a good painter—it’s still great to see the influence of his partner, June Leaf, on his desire to draw and make assemblages, because he loved the ones that Leaf made. Again and again, Gallun shows us Frank working with various friends and muses and subjects, including Mick Jagger, who is one of the stars of Frank’s funky and exciting documentary “Cocksucker Blues,” shot in 1972. (The cover of the Stones’ 1972 album, “Exile on Main St.,” is a collage of Frank’s photos <https://tinyurl.com/229nz7op> .) In the galleries and downstairs, near the museum’s auditoriums, you’ll find an array of diary films that Frank made between 1970 and 2006, some of which will remind you of Jonas Mekas’s historic diary movies, but not as jumpy and frenetic. It’s very touching to see a vanished New York there, along with footage of Leaf chatting with folks on a trip to Russia, or taking a photograph of the photographer. It’s an important show, and a wonderful way to be reminded that making art depends on a kind of restless curiosity, and openness. _NewYorkerMag

>>>

TOOK
<https://tinyurl.com/23z7n7ms> _DavidShrigley

>>>

MARSDEN HARTLEY’S WHITE YUCCA FOR ARLIE KUNTZ by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/28lov4jy> selling today at Sotheby’s
After meeting him on the street in St Paul de Vence, Adelaide and Arlie Kuntz befriended Marsden Hartley and persuaded him to move to Aix-en-Provence with them. For the spring and summer of 1927, they painted together in Cezanne’s old studio, which was surrounded by flowering white yucca plants.
In 1928, Kuntz, 30, was killed in a motorcycle accident before ever having a public show of his work. For the remainder of Hartley’s life, Adelaide remained a significant patron of Hartley’s work, and some time around 1933, Hartley asked his dealer to get this painting to her.
In 2014, the Greenville County Museum of Art and Driscoll Babcock Gallery organized a two-artist show of Kuntz and Hartley, with works acquired from Kuntz’s daughter’s estate. She had long since sold off White Yucca. And Driscoll let his domain name expire _greg.org

>>>

TFW WHEN JOHN THE BAPTIST GETS DRESSED UP ALL SPECIAL FOR YOU
<https://tinyurl.com/27unkjzn> _JesseLocker

>>>

BARRY LE VA - SMASH HITS by Adrian Searle
<https://tinyurl.com/2bwu4ly9>
The gallery is quiet. Perhaps too quiet. I can’t hear the gunshots or the sledgehammer. The bullet-holes peppering the wall, the glass smashed on the floor and the taped-off area by the doorway, demarcated “Slow Death”, are all a kind of evidence, but of what? Watch where you tread. Mind those ball-bearings and the vicious looking shards by your feet. And what about the chemical symbols and the diagrams, and the missing vanishing point? What’s with all that white powder? Do we need an art critic or forensics?
Barry Le Va liked the idea that the viewer should approach his work as a detective might, to figure out what he had done. But we’re not all Sherlock Holmes. The idea of the artwork as a puzzle to be solved has never interested me much. Once you’ve found the solution, you might well walk away and never return. If we keep going back, it is for other reasons.
<https://tinyurl.com/2audjze4>
Le Va died in 2021 at the age of 79, but we find ourselves in the middle of things, suspended between beginnings and endings at the Fruitmarket, in a much-reduced version of the retrospective that was recently at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. “I didn’t want to complete anything. I wanted to leave everything incomplete,” the American artist said. His art presents us with a succession of arrested moments. Clean and dirty, messy and ordered, sprawling and contained, annotated with diagrams and instructions, isometric drawings and woodcut plays on shadow and silhouette, Le Va’s art spills across the walls and floors. Although intimations of violence and danger are inherent to some of what he did, and that actual violence and its aftermath were sometimes involved (he once ran into walls till he bled), his art was as much about space and sightlines, architectural projection and the ways in which art can inhabit a room as it is about psychology and the presence of the spectator. He has been called a post-minimalist but there are ways in which Le Va’s interest in materiality and presence goes beyond labels.
In the most dramatic work here, from 1968-71, four large sheets of glass are perfectly aligned in a stack on the floor, then hit with a single strike of a sledgehammer. A fifth sheet of glass has then been lowered on top of the cracked layers, trapping the crazed point of impact, with its cratered residue of pulverised glass, which optically hovers somewhere beneath the plane of the floor. At the end of the show the broken glass will be swept away, and the topmost unbroken sheet used for the next iteration of the work.
Le Va began using the floor as a field in 1966, and a year later made an arrangement of objects and materials that spill across an open area. Different lengths of shiny, square section aluminium bar, set at right angles to one another (and to the gallery walls) cross the floor. Cut squares of grey felt sit alone and in neat piles, or are thrown down like cards in a game of chance. Lengths of the same felt are rolled up or are partly unfurled around and between the aluminium bars, and further shreds of the stuff are sprinkled around. Ball bearings the size of marbles form rows and little clusters. Some have rolled away, driven by boredom or gravity. The whole thing made me think of Giacometti’s surrealist 1931-2 No More Play <https://tinyurl.com/2dx89j3o> , a sinister gaming board with little objects whose rules we can never know.
<https://tinyurl.com/242llzoz>
The first time he made Equal Quantities: Placed or Dropped In, Out, and On in Relation to Specific Boundaries, it took Le Va all day to arrange the disparate elements. After the artist had left for the night the gallery janitors threw it all out, thinking it was discarded rubbish. Maybe they’d read the title. Le Va came back the next day and remade the work. It took 10 minutes, he said, and was no better nor worse than his original attempt. A short film, showing the artist remaking this work in 2020, shows him throwing his little scraps of felt, like a TV chef going large with fistfuls of parsley.
Sculptor Richard Serra acknowledged Le Va’s early influence on his own art, saying that Le Va’s scatter pieces “were a breakthrough that enabled countless other artists to expand on Barry’s original concept”. Serra’s early strewn and shredded rubber fanbelts and flung molten lead were but an early example of innumerable riffs on Le Va, made either knowingly or not by other artists (whether by Serra or Carl Andre, Martin Creed or Sarah Sze , Karla Black or Richard Long). There are undoubtedly precursors to Le Va, too. Nothing comes out of nothing. One thinks, primarily, of children arranging toys and other objects in their floor-bound imaginary kingdoms and battlefields, and of Lego strewn underfoot.
Le Va said he didn’t find the works he made with meat cleavers, thwacked at regular intervals into gallery walls and floors, violent at all. “I find them very calming,” he said. In other circumstances, this gruesome remark might worry an interviewer, or weigh heavy in the custody suite. As it is, the Fruitmarket has the wrong kind of walls and the wrong sort of wooden floor to have cleavers whacked into them. They tried.
<https://tinyurl.com/2ab2533a>
Nor could the gallery allow anyone to shoot holes in the wall (they checked with the police). So a section of wall had to be taken to a firing range to get shot at, before having it reinstalled and plastered seamlessly back into place for Shots from the End of a Glass Line 1969/70. A one-inch diameter steel tube, like a rifle barrel, protrudes from the wall at eye-level. A marksman, standing a few feet away, aims at the hole in the tube and fires several shots (to avoid the danger of ricochet, the tube was replaced by a small target for the purpose of the exercise). Beneath the metal tube a low pile of broken glass snakes its way across the floor, marking out the firing line, from the position of the shooter to the pipe. When Le Va made this piece, the Vietnam war was at its height. In May 1970 the Kent State massacre took place. The following year the artist Chris Burden presented a performance during which he was deliberately shot in the arm by a live .22 caliber rifle round, fired by an accomplice. No one in the audience intervened. Art could not avoid real life and real violence, then as well as now.
One wants to see Le Va in full, at his most extreme. The big geometric forms he shunted about, the gigantic bowling balls, the splays and mess, the order and flux between discipline and play need full reign. What we miss above all is the artist himself. There was a way in which his sculpture and interventions were always performative, and depended on his eye and his actions, his rigour and his sense of space, his mischievousness and whimsicality. He likened his drawings (of which there are many here) to musical scores, and what Le Va probably needs now is for other artists, rather than dutiful curators, to reinterpret and install his work. Running with it keeps it alive. _GuardianUK

>>>

THE PASSING TRAIN (1890) BY MARIANNE STOKES
<https://tinyurl.com/29wpbglq> _WomensArt

>>>

44. URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD, GUSTA by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/226ga9o9>
In Spanish, gusta can mean tasting, enjoying, and loving. Ursula von Rydingsvard’s sculpture by that name looks like a sort of mushrooming wine stopper when viewed on a screen, but in person, it’s a massive tower of craggy, raw cedarwood that very much commands the room. The wall text suggests it might be read as a sort of ancient guardian or fertility figure, though again, in person it doesn’t invite anthropomorphizing. Rather, this is an invitation to an earthy, primal kind of gusta, impassive in the way of nature. You enjoy it as you do a mountain or a tree. _TheImpatientReader/MFAH100

>>>

MARY CASSATT SHOW AT LEGION OF HONOR SF,
at which I learn that the prints of the mother and child paintings
that hang in maternity wards everywhere
are actually almost all of nursemaids and their charges. _GinaBeavers

>>>

CHICANA ARTIST’S ONCE-CENSORED MURAL FINDS A NEW HOME IN LA
<https://tinyurl.com/28pltb3b>
After more than four decades, Barbara Carrasco’s 80-foot-long mural “L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective” is finally getting a permanent home. The painting was initially commissioned for the city’s bicentennial in 1981 by the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), which eventually rejected the work on the grounds that several scenes were too controversial. This weekend, the mural will be unveiled as one of the main attractions of NHM Commons, a new wing of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
“I’m just really grateful,” Carrasco said
After receiving the commission for the mural in 1981, Carrasco engaged in months of research to select her subject matter, consulting with Bill Mason, the NHM’s in-house historian at the time, who gave her access to the museum’s vast photographic archives. He told her that the Spanish named the city “El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Ángeles” (“The Town of the Queen of the Angels”), a detail that became the mural’s conceptual framework: 51 scenes from the city’s history embedded in the flowing locks of a proud, brown-skinned female figure modeled on the artist’s sister.
<https://tinyurl.com/29g99tzz>
Carrasco portrayed the area’s original inhabitants, the Gabrielino/Tongva people; episodes from its Spanish and Mexican history; and notable figures and events, both well known and unheralded, painful and celebratory, that have marked its transformation into the heterogeneous, sprawling metropolis it is today.
The CRA deemed 14 of the 51 scenes too controversial, including those illustrating the 1871 lynching of 22 Chinese men and boys; the displacement of families in Chavez Ravine to make way for the Dodger Stadium; the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, in which US servicemen attacked Latino pachucos in downtown LA; and the whitewashing of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s 1932 mural “America Tropical,” an indictment of US imperialism depicting a crucified Indigenous figure. (Siqueiros’s mural was restored by the Getty in 2012.) Mason’s portrait was also considered inappropriate by the agency.
When they asked her to remove the images, Carrasco refused.
<https://tinyurl.com/2yo5boet> _Matt Stromberg_Hyperallergic

>>>

TIL THAT AS A YOUNG ARTIST JACKSON POLLOCK MADE DESIGNS FOR BOWLS,
including this one now in Met Museum collection
<https://tinyurl.com/2ddlzcxv>
We know that Pollock made more than one such design,
since the Crystal Bridges Museum has an intriguing object in its collection:
a sketch by Thomas Hart Benton, at one point Pollock's teacher,
documenting one of Pollock's (presumably now lost) bowl designs
<https://tinyurl.com/25svhzjm> _MichaelLobel

>>>

S.F.’S ART MUSEUMS ARE STILL STRUGGLING. ARE MORE OF THEM AT RISK FOR CLOSING?
More than half a dozen nonprofit arts and cultural institutions reviewed by the Chronicle have experienced significant revenue decreases, most say attendance remains below pre-pandemic levels and some have had issues with fundraising in recent years. Many have opted for layoffs and most have or will be seeing leadership changes. One will be shifting online for much of the next year. Another reported a $30 million deficit last year.
Most are located downtown, where commercial vacancies and perceptions about crime and safety have been leading issues since 2020, though institutions far removed from the city’s financial and cultural center are facing similar problems.
While some leaders of these institutions have been making dramatic changes to appeal to their communities, all said they continue to feel a financial squeeze from declines in foot traffic and tourism, increasing expenses and shifts in philanthropy. The current climate leaves them vulnerable to disruptions. There is also growing concern about reduced federal funding in the future, amid a changing political landscape.
Locally, city resources are strapped. Outgoing Mayor London Breed has directed millions of dollars to fixing San Francisco’s battered downtown in recent years. But, with the city also facing significant budget issues, hope that a new mayor could provide a lifeline might be futile.
The Asian Art Museum, for instance, said it has seen a reduction in city funding that has paid for about one-third of its operating costs at its city-owned building near City Hall.
The announcement of the Jewish Museum’s closure came as another setback to downtown’s sluggish economic comeback, which city leaders insist has gained momentum over the past year due to targeted efforts to boost retail and live entertainment and address commercial vacancies. But the investment hasn’t trickled into the Yerba Buena neighborhood south of Market Street where the Jewish museum and scores of other art and culture institutions are located — at least not yet, according to stakeholders.
“The Jewish museum’s closure is a terrible blow to the critical mass of Yerba Buena, which was always intended to be the city’s primary cultural center. It really hurts the whole downtown recovery,” said John Elberling, president of the Tenants and Owners Development Corp.,
On that block, across the street from the gardens, a roughly 50,000-square-foot city-owned space that has long been earmarked as the new home of the Mexican Museum at 706 Mission St. has sat empty since it was constructed more than four years ago. Concerns about that museum’s finances sparked a city audit earlier this year.
Andy Kluger, chairman of the museum’s board, said that since the start of the pandemic, much of the philanthropic and federal dollars have been geared towards basic services for local communities aimed at “housing, food, health and other essentials. … That creates a challenge for arts and culture institutions, including those in and around the Yerba Buena Gardens and other parts of San Francisco.”
Kluger said another struggle is engaging younger crowds that increasingly “rely on the internet for virtual entertainment and socializing,” which he attributed to stay-at-home orders during the pandemic and the subsequent rise of remote work.
At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, leadership is watching these developments with a wary eye. Located around the corner from MoAD and across the street from the gardens, attendance at SFMOMA in the last fiscal year was recorded at 598,000 people and is projected to tick up to 600,000 this year — an improvement, but still significantly below the 892,000 visitors in 2019. The museum eliminated 20 staff positions last year. SFMOMA reported a close to $30 million deficit in tax filings for the last fiscal year, and has seen its revenue declining over the past three years, while expenses have grown steadily
In San Francisco, the Fine Arts Museums, which administers the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, last year saw 1.3 million visitors — the most since 2018. A spokesperson said that attendance doubled on Saturdays, after the institution began offering free admission to Bay Area residents
There has also been a new art addition to downtown San Francisco, with a financial model that entirely relies on individual giving. The 2-year-old Institute of Contemporary Art, or ICA, moved from the Dogpatch neighborhood to a Financial District office building at 345 Montgomery St.
The ICA offers free attendance, and a vast majority of the contributions it has received so far have come from its board members.
“Philanthropy is a hard business model for a startup,” said Ethan Beard, a tech entrepreneur who serves as ICA’s board chair. “We have a lot of tech supporters. I think that more and more, donors, investors and supporters want to see the issues of our times reflected in the things they support.”. _SFChronicle

>>>

BENSON BOWL BENSON, AZ
<https://tinyurl.com/283dl5m4> _RuralIndexingProject

>>>

BERLIN COURT CONVICTS CURATOR OVER SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS
A Berlin court has convicted a culture worker of criminal activity over social media posts they shared in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The sentencing comes after lawmakers recently approved a highly controversial resolution to combat claims of antisemitism in Germany amid the Israel-Gaza War, heightening tensions in the country’s arts and culture scene.
Edwin Nasr, a Lebanese curator and writer based in Berlin, stood trial at the Berlin-Tiergarten district court on Monday, November 11, for social media posts they published on Instagram on October 8, 2023. One of the posts featured a collage of people fleeing Supernova festival, which Nasr captioned “poetic justice.” In another, Nasr wrote that the “anti-colonial struggle inherently entails bloodshed.”
Judge Karin Nissing convicted Nasr for condoning a criminal act, meting out a fine of €1,000 ($1,050), to be payed in allotments of €20 ($21) across 50 days. Her decision is not final and can be appealed.
Nasr added that the posts were not intended to justify the death of Israeli civilians and had been shared by media outlets without their proper context. “Nevertheless, I would like to apologize if I have hurt people,” Nasr said. They said the fallout from the posts has resulted in them receiving death threats and losing their livelihood. _artnet

>>>

FLUNKING THE TALENT TEST” 2024 BY PETER SAUL (B. 1934)
<https://tinyurl.com/23un93cs> _WalterRobinson

>>>

WILL A ‘TRUMP BUMP’ HELP THE ART MARKET’S
Will the art market go bananas again, like it did before the pandemic, now that Donald J. Trump has been elected to the White House on promises to cut taxes? Speculative investments like cryptocurrencies have risen in anticipation of a new Republican administration’s anti-regulatory agenda, and the auction world hopes that it can ride an economic boom to recovery after nearly two years of declining sales. _NYTimes

>>>

ALLES MARINERIS: THE GRAND CANYON OF MARS
<https://tinyurl.com/24t2r725> _NASA