more of that art crap
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Parkett is one of my favorite art magazines, a quarterly, but it's a little to pricy to subscribe to. It's published in Switzerland. I look at it at the newstand every month. I didn't realize their web site had as much stuff there as it does. Nice feature: one page shows the spines of editions over the years lined up, and I didn't realize that the little image fragment on each spine, when stacked in order, make larger images. You can read the name of the artist who selected the image that would be revealed over several editions. Fun, sneaky, clever, thoughtful. Parkett usually focuses on two artists per issue, lots of images and a fair amount of text, in depth, high quality production. They also have a multiples project (multiple in this case means something produced in a limited edition- can be sixty, one hundred, one hundred fifty, etc.; some highly-valued prints might be in editions as small as thirty or forty); an artist per issue produces a multiple that is usually fairly inexpensive, by international art standards, and if one bought the multiple each quarter you'd have a nice little connection of some fairly idiosyncratic pieces. You can see the multiples on the site.
I used to get Artforum. Also too expensive now. Published in NY, very NY oriented. And sometime back in the mid-nineties I got really disgusted with it, as it was becoming an "arts" magazine, and not an "art" magazine. I still look at it at the newstand.
Magazines pile up. They're hard to throw away. I like looking back through old magazines, but they take up lots of room.
My favorite art magazine, Arts, also published in NY, stopped publishing very suddenly around 1990 or so. They had good writers (I particularly liked Jerry Saltz's monthly column focusing on a single artwork; he now writes for Artnet), a comprehensive number of reviews, a slant towards abstraction in it's varioius forms, but also covered a fair amount of other work. It was not a fluffy magazine. They didn't do the Artforum thing of including dance, theater, film, architecture, and fashion because somehow all those others might be art-related. It was about visual art: painting, drawing, sculpture, installations, some video.
Artweek was a weekly Bay Area visual art publication that I started reading at the age of nineteen in 1976. It covered the western states, but was mostly about California art. It was good to have a publication focusing on the west because all those NY pubs sure didn't. Sometime in the late-80's it seems they had financial problems and became biweekly, then were sold, and now I don't know how often they're published. I looked at their site and they don't state it explicitly. I assume by currently featuring the April 2001 issue that they are now a monthly. I don't know. I don't read it anymore. I thought that the writing was, with a few exceptions, never terribly strong. It was a good publication just for keeping current with local and state art, especially the gallery listings, but now with the web I don't need that delivered. I want good writing, sharp criticism, and good reproductions. I maybe look at it twice a year at the newstand. YOu can't read much online. Man, why have a site?
I still get Art in America. Production-wise it's a high quality magazine: heavy paper, high quality images, nice layout, very respected critics. It keeps me informed, more or less. No web site except for subscribing.
One thing art magazines have is lots of adds. That's what I liked about Arts; many fewer adds. Maybe that's why they went out of business.
Now there are some decent online art magazines: Artnet, ArtSeenSoho, AskArt (not a magazine, but a database)- I'm leaving some out, can't think. Artnetweb is moving and doesn't have much to show, but at this page are two things I should read: THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REPRODUCTION,
An Evolving Thesis, 1991-1995 by Douglas Davis; ART IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL PRODUCTION, Or Are Virtual Toilets As Good As The Real Thing? by Saul Ostrow
Others sources I read for art stuff: The New York Times, especially on Sundays; Salon, but only very occasionally; The New Republic now and then, (here's a nice example of good solid reviewing by Jed Perl); The SF Chronicle, of course, which now has tow very good critics- Kenneth Baker, and the old Examiner critic David Bonetti.
I came across a 1996 report by John Watrous, Chair, Art Department, Santa Rosa Junior College, on a discussion at a conference that is still relevant, related to things on my mind, and which also mentions Jerry Salz:
The session on painting was a rollicking, highly charged discussion with art critics Jerry Salz, Steven Westfall (Art in America) and painters Joan Snyder, Amy Sillman, and Paul Bloodgood. The panel was put together by Diane Burko, a New York painter who teaches at the community college level. The topic was about painting's viability in the digital age. What does it mean to work in the traditional medium of painting these days? Jerry Salz made some of my favorite remarks. He said that his generation (he's in his early 40's) grew up hearing the Marshall McLuhan statement, "the medium is the message". Salz argues that the statement is wrong. He says that the medium is the medium, and the art is separate. He said that there is no movement right now in painting, that this is healthy, but that painters get nervous during times when there is no dominant movement. Salz said that painting generates and reabsorbs everything; it is a long, long freight train. Painting is obsessed with its own history. Rather than saying that painting may not be equipped to deal with today's problems, Salz said that today's world may not be equipped to deal with painting's problems.
Amy Sillman made the point that the critical discourse is now the painting discourse. She also pointed out how text has had a role in much recent feminist art because text can play in the high stakes game of critical discourse, which equals legitimacy. I thought this was an interesting point because it shows how people can be seduced by the power of language and of the word. There can be a mistrust of the visual.
Joan Snyder just showed her slides of abstract, highly textured paintings. Her position was that painting is doing great, there is no need to agonize over the critical theory stuff, just go in the studio and do some work.
Paul Bloodgood seemed interested in asking what it means to be a painter. What is a painter? Are there any painters left? Is a painter someone who is not able to do anything else? He talked about what he called male silence. This is when an artist such as Robert Ryman uses materials and the support in a way that says "the painting is what it is." He then does not have to deal with a message or content or any critical position.
When asked if he though art has evolved beyond a point where painting can go, Steven Westfall tried to make a distinction between art and painting. He pointed out that painting has been going on for 25,000 years and is a fundamental human activity that isn't going to stop. He thinks that paintings would continue to be made even without a critical discourse to inform them. Westfall is a real proponent of all kinds of painting and said that you cannot rid painting of the magical. He wasn't saying that he thinks there is no art left in painting, he just wanted to point out the absurdity of the critics who say, about every 20 years, "painting is dead."
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The view through and out my office window.
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