Bernard Frize, Suite Segond 100 No 3, 1980
Household paint on canvas
51 x 64 inches

 January 14 – March 10, 2012

The Indiscipline of Painting is an international group exhibition including works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected by British painter Daniel Sturgis, it considers how the languages of abstraction have remained urgent, relevant and critical as they have been revisited and reinvented by subsequent generations of artists over the last 50 years. It goes on to demonstrate the way in which the history and legacy of abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.

The contemporary position of abstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with a modernist moment that has long since passed, and an ideology which led the medium to stagnate in self-reflexivity and ideas of historical progression. The Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

The show brings together works by British, American and European artists made over the last five decades and features major new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley alongside other lesser known artists such as Tomma Abts, Martin Barré, Mary Heilmann and Jeremy Moon.

The Indiscipline of Painting is a collaborative project between Tate St Ives and Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre. The exhibition travels to the Mead Gallery and opens on the 14 January 2012, running until 10 March 2012.

As part of The Indiscipline of Painting, Newlyn Art Gallery has commissioned John M. Armleder to make a major new work. John M. Armleder is at Newlyn Art Gallery 8 October 2011 – 3 January 2012.

The exhibition will be showing works from the following 49 artists (in alphabetical order):

Tomma Abts born 1967; John M. Armleder born 1948 ; Tauba Auerbach born 1981; Martin Barré 1924 – 1993; Francis Baudevin born 1964; Daniel Buren born 1938 ; André Cadere 1934‑1978; Ingrid Calame born 1965 ; Keith Coventry born 1958 ; Michael Craig‑Martin born 1941 ; Karin Davie born 1965; Peter Davies born 1970; Gene Davis 1920‑1985; David Diao born 1943; Moira Dryer 1957 – 1992; Bernard Frize born 1949; Michelle Grabner born 1962; Tim Head born 1946; Alex Hubbard born 1975; Katharina Grosse born 1961; Peter Halley born 1953; Jane Harris born 1956; Mary Heilmann born 1940 ; Jacob Kassay born 1984; Richard Kirwan born 1969; Imi Knoebel born 1940; Bob Law 1934‑2004; Sherrie Levine born 1947; Jeremy Moon 1934‑1973; Olivier Mosset born 1944; Carl Ostendarp born 1961; Blinky Palermo 1943‑1977; Steven Parrino 1958-2005; David Reed born 1946; Gerhard Richter born 1932; Bridget Riley born 1931; Ruth Root born 1967; Robert Ryman born 1930; Sean Scully born 1945; Frank Stella born 1936; Myron Stout 1908-1987; Daniel Sturgis born 1966; Cheyney Thompson born 1975; Niele Toroni born 1937; Richard Tuttle born 1941; Dan Walsh born 1960; Andy Warhol 1928‑1987; Peter Young born 1940; Heimo Zobernig born 1958.

The exhibition has been selected by British artist Daniel Sturgis, and curated with Martin Clark, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives and Sarah Shalgosky, Curator, University of Warwick.

Mary Heilmann, Primalon Ballroom, 2002

October 8, 2011 – January 3, 2012

The Indiscipline of Painting is an international group exhibition including works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected by British painter Daniel Sturgis, it considers how the languages of abstraction have remained urgent, relevant and critical as they have been revisited and reinvented by subsequent generations of artists over the last 50 years. It goes on to demonstrate the way in which the history and legacy of abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.

The contemporary position of abstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with a modernist moment that has long since passed, and an ideology which led the medium to stagnate in self-reflexivity and ideas of historical progression. The Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

The show brings together works by British, American and European artists made over the last five decades and features major new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley alongside other lesser known artists such as Tomma Abts, Martin Barré, Mary Heilmann and Jeremy Moon.

The Indiscipline of Painting is a collaborative project between Tate St Ives and Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre. The exhibition travels to the Mead Gallery and opens on the 14 January 2012, running until 10 March 2012.

As part of The Indiscipline of Painting, Newlyn Art Gallery has commissioned John M. Armleder to make a major new work. John M. Armleder is at Newlyn Art Gallery 8 October 2011 – 3 January 2012.

The exhibition will be showing works from the following 49 artists (in alphabetical order):

Tomma Abts born 1967; John M. Armleder born 1948 ; Tauba Auerbach born 1981; Martin Barré 1924 – 1993; Francis Baudevin born 1964; Daniel Buren born 1938 ; André Cadere 1934‑1978; Ingrid Calame born 1965 ; Keith Coventry born 1958 ; Michael Craig‑Martin born 1941 ; Karin Davie born 1965; Peter Davies born 1970; Gene Davis 1920‑1985; David Diao born 1943; Moira Dryer 1957 – 1992; Bernard Frize born 1949; Michelle Grabner born 1962; Tim Head born 1946; Alex Hubbard born 1975; Katharina Grosse born 1961; Peter Halley born 1953; Jane Harris born 1956; Mary Heilmann born 1940 ; Jacob Kassay born 1984; Richard Kirwan born 1969; Imi Knoebel born 1940; Bob Law 1934‑2004; Sherrie Levine born 1947; Jeremy Moon 1934‑1973; Olivier Mosset born 1944; Carl Ostendarp born 1961; Blinky Palermo 1943‑1977; Steven Parrino 1958-2005; David Reed born 1946; Gerhard Richter born 1932; Bridget Riley born 1931; Ruth Root born 1967; Robert Ryman born 1930; Sean Scully born 1945; Frank Stella born 1936; Myron Stout 1908-1987; Daniel Sturgis born 1966; Cheyney Thompson born 1975; Niele Toroni born 1937; Richard Tuttle born 1941; Dan Walsh born 1960; Andy Warhol 1928‑1987; Peter Young born 1940; Heimo Zobernig born 1958.

The exhibition has been selected by British artist Daniel Sturgis, and curated with Martin Clark, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives and Sarah Shalgosky, Curator, University of Warwick.

Installation view.

May 10 – September 25 2011

The first special exhibition of the Daimler Art Collection to be held in the Mercedes-Benz Museum (built by UN Studio), which first opened its doors in 2006, showcases key exhibits from the collection as well as new work commissioned by renowned international artists in various thematic stages – integrated into the company’s history on a floor area of 16,500 m².

The exhibition will also include numerous works created as studies of the models and design of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, thereby entering into an artistic dialog with the history of Mercedes-Benz automobiles. These include the legendary CARS series by Andy Warhol, originally designed by the pop art icon 25 years ago for the 100th anniversary of the automobile.

In addition to further works with automotive ties including pieces by Bertrand Lavier, Robert Longo and Vincent Szarek, as well as new commissioned works by Sylvie Fleury, Nic Hess, Philippe Parreno and Michael Sailstorfer will be on display for the first time at the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

A separate exhibition area of 600 m² will present the key thematic areas of the collection: The exhibition ranges from classics of Constructive and Concrete art from the Southern Germany to videos and photography by international contemporaries. Around 250 pieces by about 120 international artists will be on exhibit.

This exhibition, hitherto the most comprehensive presentation of the Daimler Art Colllection, will be accompanied by a comprehensive supporting and educational program. Special publications such as an essay on the “Stages of Modern Art in Stuttgart 1986 – 2011″ and the “ABC of the Daimler Art Collection for Students” are being designed for the exhibition. In addition to this work book for high school and college students, there will also be an accompanying book with training programs for teachers.

Installation view.

March 3 – May 27, 2011

Works by Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, Otto Muehl, Dan Colen, Paola Pivi, Piotr Uklanski, Rosemarie Trockel, Blinky Palermo, Franz West, Richard Tuttle, Lynda Benglis, Julian Schnabel, Ana Betbeze, Andy Warhol, and more.

Ron Agam, Endless Universe, 2010
Ink and resin on canvas mounted on panel
36 x 36 inches

May 5 – June 6, 2011

Bertrand Delacroix Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of paintings by Ron Agam. Agam brings fresh, new elements to his work where he further examines the interaction of colors. He seeks to expose the harmony and effective balance of these varying colors with placement and scale.

Agam’s personal exploration in the world of painting is a testimony to his childhood, where he was influenced by the works of the masters of the early stages of geometric abstraction, such as El Lissitzky, Malevich, Mondrian and later Josef Albers. In various sizes, these paintings are meant to resonate beyond the two-dimensional surface and to utilize the varying energies of the colors that fuel his vision. Agam asserts that are the expression of an artist that lives in the present, creates for the future with a deep respect for the past.

Ron Agam was born in Paris and raised in Rehovot, Israel and Paris. From an early age Agam was encouraged by his father, artist Yaacov Agam, to pursue art. Ron studied at New York University, where he was captivated by the local art scene and the stimulating environment of the artists of that time, among them Andy Warhol. Throughout his career, Agam has exhibited across Europe, the Americas, and Asia, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; New York Historical Society, New York; Mitsukoshi, Tokyo; and Zurich Kunsthaus, Zurich. His work has been featured in major news publications, such as Time and Newsweek.

His commitment to art as well as political efforts to bridge nations demonstrates his unique position as an artist and humanitarian. In 2008, he received the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the Government of France, the highest honor in France.

Kris Chatterson, Blue Copper, 2011
60 x 66 inches

February 19 – March 26, 2011

Western Project is proud to present the second solo exhibition of paintings by Kris Chatterson. Living and working in New York, the artist has created a body of work using printing, painting, digital imaging and iPhone drawings. Clipping and selecting gestures from previous prints, drawings and paintings, Chatterson excavates his past; a kind of digital surgery and recombination process. He presents the natural calligraphic gesture as synthetic, abstract elements; transforming the physical object-ness of the mark into non linear spatial compositions. The results are a kind of futuristic weather; informed by static patterns – both visual and audio; and enhanced by iPhone drawings as familiar yet displaced marks. Chatterson’s images seem to map immense territories or conversely, unseen microcosms. They reference his interest in fractals; beginning with his approach of building the images from a matrix to find unlimited possible combinations of forms. But akin to Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Warhol, Chatterson uses repetition, and a lo-fi printing to construct his paintings. The messy production of his printing and rubbing contrast with his high tech realms; visually reminiscent of Stella’s work from the mid 1980′s, or the haunting emotional tones of Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The paintings provide a mirror of the world of destruction and creation we are all a part of; as formal inventions they evidence the short distinctions between the physical and the abstract world of phenomena – the difference, being merely language and concept.

Installation view

The Jewel Thief explores new ways to think about and experience abstract art. Using divergent forms of display, the exhibition focuses attention on art’s intersection with the decorative and functional elements of architecture. Beginning in the museum’s atrium, the exhibition continues into the large Wachenheim gallery, filling the space with a diverse range of artwork, including painting, sculpture, textiles, wallpaper, chandeliers, video, and photography.

Artwork is presented through the lens of several opposing yet fluid categories that exist in our everyday lives, such as private and public, intimate and spectacular, and hot and cold. Hot might relate to feelings of passion, authenticity, expression, and the hand-made while cold might be attributed to restraint, intellectual distance, controlled execution, and the machine-made. The Jewel Thief explores how artworks negotiate the distance between these constantly shifting categories and how space affects this negotiation.

Discarding the notion that abstract works are devoid of content, The Jewel Thief maintains that beauty and pleasure in artworks are full of meaning. The exhibition draws parallels between questions and attitudes seen within individual artworks and various means of display our culture traditionally uses. Defining boundaries and edges determines how we understand the limit of an object and experience. The establishment of such definitions requires a kind of invention—a shared abstraction—that alters what is possible for us to do, think, and be. These abstractions lead to the building of fences—real lines being drawn around things—and to shared understandings about the distance required for personal space.

The exhibition features artworks from the Tang Collection and on loan by artists Anni Albers, Polly Apfelbaum, Gary Batty, Alex Brown, Richmond Burton, Kathy Butterly, Patrick Chamberlain, Stephen Dean, Dorothy Dehner, Anne Delaporte, Francesca DiMattio, Cheryl Donegan, Roy Dowell, Brad Eberhard, Rico Gatson, Joanne Greenbaum, Joseph Grigely, Christopher Harvey, Elana Herzog, Jim Hodges, Peter Hopkins, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, James Hyde, Betsy Kaufman, May Kedney, Martin Kersels, Bill Komoski, Nicholas Krushenick, Lisa Lapinski, Liz Larner, Michael Lazurus, Barry Le Va, Sherrie Levine, Charles Long, Virgil Marti, Chris Martin, Andrew Massulo, Jane Masters, Allan McCollum, Joan Mitchell, Carrie Moyer, Victoria Palermo, Jorge Pardo, Janet Passehl, Marion Pease, Jerry Phillips, Ann Pibal, Josh Podoll, Richard Rezac, Ednah Root, Nancy Shaver, Cary Smith, Joan Snyder, Jessica Stockholder, John Torreano, Rosemarie Trockel, Andy Warhol, Stanley Whitney, Lawrence Weiner, and Richard Woods.

The Jewel Thief is co-curated by Ian Berry, Susan Rabinowitz Malloy ’45 Curator of the Tang Museum, and Jessica Stockholder, Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale University.

John Zinsser, Geometry and Ego, 2007
Enamel and oil on canvas
30 x 28 inches

December 18, 2010 – February 12, 2011

Get Me to the Church on Time
It was a simple enough assignment, drive the painter Marcia Hafif to her opening at Larry Becker Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. What I couldn’t have predicted was that a massive wreck on I-95 would shut down the highway completely. The trip became a seven-and-a-half hour odyssey, zig-zagging across strip mall New Jersey with no GPS, to arrive, finally, already late, to the opening.

The Trip
Hafif was unflappable, an intrepid traveler, centered and calm throughout. I was in a state of nervous agitation. I had been looking forward to catching up with this great monochrome painter, whom I had first met in 1988, when we both were doing shows at Julian Pretto’s tiny storefront gallery in SoHo.

Anxiety and Its Influence
The episode on I-95 describes, to some extent, my larger protracted history with a family of reductive artists a generation older than me, a case of “anxiety of influence,” in the words of literary critic Harold Bloom.

You Can Take a Guru to a Mountain,
But You Can’t Take the Mountain
There was a time in my life when I tried to think of Hafif as a possible guru figure. There was much to admire in her adherence to material-specific methodologies and the literal nature of color application and its receivership. She didn’t so much tell me what I was, as what I wasn’t: “a monochrome painter.” She liberated me by declaring me: “a duochrome painter.”

A More Thoreau Understanding
But there was more to it than that. In our verbal exchanges, I came to realize that Hafif wasn’t so much a practitioner of Zen (as many would no doubt falsely believe) as she was, ultimately, a “self-reliant” American pragmatist of the first order. If I came away with a lesson, it might be this: “If you do something, then it is appropriate to do.”

Monochrome and its Moment
Over the past 25 years, I have continued to study the American monochrome painting movement since the 1970s. Robert Ryman is the best-known among this group, but it also includes, notably, Marcia Hafif, Olivier Mosset, Phil Sims and Joseph Marioni. All emerged directly from core issues raised by “The New York School” of the 1940s and 1950s.

Collapsing History
For my generation, the three great movements of post-war painting – abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop — are not so much antithetical to each other (i.e., movement/counter-movement, assertion/repudiation) as they are part of a larger ongoing redefinition of the form of painting itself.

After Warhol
Yet this trajectory, the developing “DNA” of painting, was radically altered by Andy Warhol’s re-invention of its most basic structures. Not only are his works more “mechano-morphic” in their execution, they further heighten “objectivity” through the photographic repetition of imagery and the reduction of color to a single, planar presence. The affect is startling: all abstract painting is now “seen” differently as a result.

Drawing Legacies
Larry Becker and Heidi Nivling came to me a year ago, expressing interest in a series of drawings that I had just begun: representational renderings of abstract and reductive post-war American paintings. I was working from photographic reproductions from auction house catalogues — Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips — along with their accompanying texts.

A “Devotional” Practice
I came to informally refer to these drawings as “devotionals,” as I was working like a monk on an “illuminated manuscript” version of the originals. At first, the issue of the “cultural currency” of such images seemed important. In other words, a painting, in its original form, is so material, visceral and immediate. Yet in its entry into shared visual culture through reproduction, it becomes “iconic” in a much different fashion.

The Impossible Act
These follow the age-old tradition of artists drawing from respected originals to learn from them. Yet, in my case, they’re made from “respected” reproductions. In the act of drawing, they return to a primacy of act. The painting is re-transformed anew through direct material engagement.

A Room of One’s Own
Drawing an Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, or even an Andy Warhol became a way of getting inside the form. There is a moment in the process when the work “becomes” my own: my hand, my eye.

Pre-Cognition and Viewer Response
When a viewer looks at these drawings, they bring their own pre-association. From having planned many art history lectures, I’ve come to call it “a mental slide carousel.” That is, one “projects” one’s own foreknowledge of the known icon “onto” the newly-drawn image, seeing it through the terms of one’s own subjective receivership.

You Knew It All Along
Of course, in doing this literal “devotional” act, I came to discover that I was only reinforcing and repeating what I had been doing all along for the last 20 years. My paintings are largely a “response” to that which I have already visually “internalized.” Between material and action, what emerges, seemingly on its own, is a fully developed “iconography” of that which we already know.

Beginning Again
And so the DNA cycle regenerates itself, through mutation and adaptation, all over again.

—John Zinsser, New York, January, 2011

Installation view

September 10 – October 30, 2010

As the Cedar Tavern played a role in the formation of abstract expressionism, Max’s Kansas City galvanized a younger generation of artists from when it opened in 1965 to when it closed its doors in 1974. This exhibition will feature the amazing diversity of artists from every major reference point in the New York art world of the period: Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual and Performance Art – a creative efflorescence rarely seen in art history.

Max’s Kansas City was a social venue where ideas could be thrown out, tested and formed. But a salient distinction was signaled to the art world at Max’s as important new art was installed; and the art was a “permanent installation,” as Donald Judd phrased it, rather than a changing show. John Chamberlain’s galvanized iron sculpture imposed itself dramatically at the entrance while Dan Flavin’s bold red florescent sculpture defined the corner of the back room and cast a glow over the entire space. Frank Stella’s large abstract painting dominated the side wall, while the frame of Dorothea Rockburne’s folded paper collage gathered nicotine above the bar and Forrest (Frosty) Myers’ laser beam ran from the front window to a mirror on the juke box and then across the entire restaurant to the back room.

The commitment at Max’s to the current generation was communicated and understood by everyone in the bar, and it prompted the idea that this was the locus of serious art talk and thought. At the front of Max’s stood owner Mickey Ruskin. Regulars included John Chamberlain, James Rosenquist, Larry Rivers, Larry Poons, and Robert Rauschenberg.

In the back room Andy Warhol held court with his entourage of film and factory people including Brigid Berlin, snapping Polaroid pictures and making audio-tapes of conversation. Hard drinking “heavy hitters,” in contrast to the clientele in the back room, gave off an aura of testosterone in the front room. The virtual hegemony of men there prompted the appellation “hetero-holics.” Women artists nevertheless were seen at Max’s, including Dorothea Rockburne, Lynda Benglis, and Alice Aycock.

In this exhibition we attempt to recreate with curatorial accuracy the art that hung in Max’s and that artists traded with Mickey for bar tabs. Increasingly this art is seen to rank with the most extraordinary periods of history in centuries.

Artists:
Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Alice Aycock, Larry Bell, Lynda Benglis, Brigid Berlin, Ronald Bladen, John Chamberlain, Dan Christensen, Willem De Kooning, Friedel Dzubas, Dan Flavin, Al Held, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, Forrest Myers, Adrian Piper, Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Dorothea Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Robert Smithson, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, Neil Williams, Larry Zox

This project has been organized by Maurice Tuchman for Loretta Howard Gallery. Interviews with many prominent artists by noted video documentary filmmaker Bill Maynes will be on view in the Gallery.

Loretta Howard Gallery’s exhibition runs simultaneously with Steven Kasher Gallery’s exhibition Max’s Kansas City which will feature over 100 vintage and modern photographs and large-scale sculptures and paintings by some of the artists of Max’s Kansas City. The exhibition will be accompanied by the launch of the book, Max’s Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll by Steven Kasher with an afterword by Lou Reed (Abrams Image; September 2010).

Amy Granat, Chemical Scratch (Return of the Creature), 2003
16mm film transfered to DVD, sound

May 24 – June 28, 2010

Arranged by Front Desk Apparatus

Participating Artists: John Cage, Jesse Cohen, Quentin Curry, Philippe Decrauzat, Matias Faldbakken, Amy Granat, Gareth James, Jacob Kassay, Jutta Koether, Amir Mogharabi, Steven Parrino, Seth Price, Josef Strau, Andy Warhol

Every image is offered our gaze is only presented, in its very obviousness, by means of the disconcerting economy of paradoxes that are always tied up with other paradoxes. Every image is offered only as a maddening, often sublime, intensity of simultaneous contradictions, a meeting of heterogeneous orders that move unhindered between thing-representations and word-representations. But in this “freedom” of imaginary associations, we have to recognize a true fact of structure, where every image becomes clear only in passing within view of all the others, however disparate or dissemblant they are among themselves. –Georges Didi-Huberman

Nathan Hylden, Untitled, 2009
Acrylic on aluminum, 34 x 28 inches

October 1-31, 2009

Paul Kasmin Gallery presents “Affinities,” a show that juxtaposes new paintings by Nathan Hylden with works by Josef Albers, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. Curated by Meredith Darrow, the show connects Hylden’s geometric forms and repeated gestures with those of his art historical predecessors.

Like Albers, Stella and Warhol, Hylden uses a regulated process to create variations within a systematic sequence and to continue Modern Art’s redefinition of pictoral space. Starting with a stack of identically sized aluminum panels, Hylden adds layers of paint and ink to these reflective surfaces, changing the order of operations for each panel. As the series progresses, older panels are used in the creation of newer ones— for example, vertical bands of white paint bridge the borders of separate panels, forming an indexical link between these individual works within the larger series. Another unifying motif presents itself in the screen-printed image of a one-to-one photograph of a blank canvas hanging on a wall. Hylden deliberately chose the loaded notion of a “blank canvas” to evoke long-standing concerns about the relationships between the illusory depth of an image and its physical support. Grounding itself in Albers’s pure geometry, Stella’s insistence on the potential of formal abstraction, and Warhol’s interest in serialized imagery, Hylden extends the conversation to the next generation of artists and viewers.

Nathan Hylden was born in 1978 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the Art Center in Pasadena and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main. His works have been shown in several international group exhibitions, as well as solo exhibitions at Richard Telles Fine Art in Los Angeles, Misako & Rosen in Tokyo, Art: Concept in Paris and Johann König in Berlin.

Meredith Darrow is an independent curator living and working in New York City.

Installation view

September 12, 2009 – February 28, 2010

‘Drawing Sculpture’ is presenting a selection from the Daimler Art Collection’s wide-ranging holdings of works on paper for the first time, complemented by sculptures, videos and picture objects. About 60 works by 28 artists are being shown, dating from about 1960 to the present day. In each case the presentation will stage dialogues between classical Minimalist positions from the 1960s and international contemporary art.

The exhibition is not addressing drawing as a tool for sketches and preliminary stages leading to actual works of art, but presenting it above all as an independent and potentially creative medium. Drawing’s conceptual possibilities resulted from developments in the course of the 20th century, especially in connection with the move away from figurative to abstract art. Here the changed perception of the work of art not as a completed unit but that of art as a process has an important part to play.

One further aspect addressed by ‘Drawing Sculpture’ shows drawing’s potential for working in three-dimensions. Again and again it is sculptors who exploit drawing’s ability to explore an exciting relationship between line, surface and three-dimensional presence, and who have paid attention to the creative function of line in outline and internal structure, in other words to disegno. Drawing in the present perception of art, also includes work that has been produced not by classical drawing but as a working process, and that suggests the essential character of drawing as the origin of order and structure, and its quality as a sensual and tactile expressive form.

The concept of dialogue between works from different periods and styles will be drawn into focus once more, and taken outside the exhibition gallery by a special exhibition called ‘Auke, Giorgio, Ignaz & Oskar’. The Dutch sculptor Auke de Vries has chosen works from the collections at Daimler, the Gemäldegalerie and the Bode Museum in Berlin and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. These will strike up a conversation, as originals or large-format photographs, with de Vries’s sculptures, which are both abstract and richly allusive in their motifs. The artistic dialogues can be seen at Daimler Contemporary and at Bode Museum in Berlin.

Participating Artists:
Leonor Antunes (P), Eva Berendes (D), Hartmut Böhm (D), Monika Brandmeier (D), Christo (BG), Dadamaino (I), Katja Davar (D), Gia Edzgveradze (GE), Ulrike Flaig (D), Adolf Fleischmann (D), Marcia Hafif (USA), Rita Hensen (D), Georg Herold (D), Oskar Holweck (D), Claude Horstmann (D), Markus Huemer (A), Robert Longo (USA), François Morellet (F), Rupert Norfolk (GB), Silke Radenhausen (D), Eva-Maria Reiner (D), Jan Scharrelmann (D), Oskar Schlemmer (D), Lasse Schmidt Hansen (DK), Jan J. Schoonhoven (NL), Auke de Vries (NL), Andy Warhol (USA), Georg Winter (D)

Steven Parrino, Untitled, 1993

October 11, 2009 – January 3, 2010

The MAGASIN is starting its season with a portrait of the artist Olivier Mosset. The exhibition takes the form of a tribute, gathering works by different artists, but never showing Olivier Mossetʼs own work. The artists are of all generations, from Carl André to Stéphane Kropf including the famous group of artists 1m3 among the youngest. As a key figure of the artistic scene and part of a family with the same artistic sensitivity, Olivier Mosset keeps close links with them. He collects or swaps works with them. He has today gathered an important collection, most of which was offered to the Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds. Other works are to be found at the MAMCO in Geneva, the Consortium in Dijon and in Tucson.

The exhibition aims at drawing a portrait of the artist through a series of rooms organized around different specific subjects. A first room will introduce his roots, with Chardinʼs engravings (given each year by his grandfather to his colleagues), or Gregoire Müllerʼs portrait. Another one will highlight portraits of Olivier Mosset with Steven Parrinoʼs photographs of him and acrylic paintings by Walter Steding. Another room will reveal quotations, borrowings and copies (from Hugo Pernet in particular). The following rooms will show monochrome paintings, floor-based works, and the indestructible link between Olivier Mosset and the bikers world.

Participating Artists:
Donald Alberti, Carl André, Ian Annul, Janine Antoni, Matthew Antezzo, John Armleder, Art Club 2000, Richard Artschwager, Olivier Babin, Fia Backström, Donald Baechler, Francis Baudevin, Jérôme Beauvarlet, Lisa Beck, Ford Beckman, Joseph Beuys, Alexandre Bianchini, Mike Bidlo, Dike Blair, Philippe Bodenmann, Serge Bramly, Gavin Brown, Neil Campbell, François Chessex, Robert Colescott, Collectif 1m3, Michael Corris, Mark Dagley, Jamie Dalglish, Ricardo De Olivera, Steve Di Benedetto, Alain Dister, John Dogg, George Dupin, Gretchen Faust, Helmut Federle, Sylvie Fleury, Roland Flexner, Christian Floquet, Catherine Eyde, Jonathan Genkins, Fritz Glarner, Janine Gordon, Christophe Gossweiler, Dan Graham, Amy Granat, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Bill Gruner, Wang Guangyi, Raymond Hains, Marcia Hafif, Isabel Halley / Joanna Avillez, Peter Halley, Stephane Huitmere, Nicole Hassler, Drew Heitzler, IFP, Alain Jacquet, Kyle Jenkins, Michael Jenkins, Kim Jones, Donald Judd, Allan Kaprow, Ben Kinmont, Yves Klein, Serge Kliaving, Jeff Koons, W.J.M. Kok, Joseph Kosuth, Frank Kozik, Stéphane Kropf, Alix Lambert, L/B, Bertrand Lavier, Louise Lawler, Louise Lawler/Sherrie Levine, Ange Leccia, Serge Lemoine, Lépicié dʼaprès Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Renée Levi, Sherrie Levine, Sol LeWitt, Russel Maltz, Christian Marclay, Jackie McAllister, Matthew McCaslin, Allan McCollum, Mathieu Mercier, Haley Mellin, Tom Merrick, Jonathan Monk, Elena Montesinos, Valentine Mosset, Grégoire Müller, Chuck Nanney, John Nixon, Cady Noland, Eric Oppenheim, Dimitry Orlac, Elisabeth Oser, Virginia Overton, Steven Parrino, Laurie Parsons, Nicolas Pasche, Yan Pei-Ming, Luciano Perna, Hugo Pernet, Gilles Porret, Philip J. Reilly, Delphine Reist, Bettina Rheims, David Robbins, Christian Robert-Tissot, Walter Robinson, Gerwald Rockenschaub, David Row, Claude Rutault, Lisa Ruyter, Frederic Sanchez, Adrian Schiess, Peter Schuyff, Michael Scott, Donald Sheridan, Tara Sinn, Howard Smith, Keith Sonnier, Walter Steding, Frank Stella, Valentina Stieger, Rudolf Stingel, Vincent Szarek, Blair Thurman, Jean Tinguely, John Tremblay, Li Trincere, Allan Uglow, Günter Umberg, Lily van der Stokker, Jean-Thomas Vannotti, Ben Vautier, Not Vital, Joan Wallace, Wallace & Donohue, Dan Walsh, Joan Waltemath, Andy Warhol, Stephen Westfall, Larry Weiner, Peter Young, Michael Zahn.

Installation view

September 17 – October 24, 2009

Gagosian Gallery announces “Monochrome Age,” Anselm Reyle’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Reyle finds inspiration in his immediate environment, from the typical socialist architecture that dominates much of the landscape of post-war Germany to the flea-market finds that signify the march of global capitalism. Conflating all manner of extant social artifact with motifs from the annals of recent art history, he imbues them with new vigor and decorative allure. He works with found objects from diverse cultural backgrounds, treating and displaying them equivalently and without further comment. By reifying the cast-off material culture that surrounds him, he indicates its shifting signification in a country that has had such seismic effects on the social and political developments of the twentieth century.

In his first major institutional survey at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 2006, provocatively entitled “Ars Nova,” Reyle pointed to his interest in the epochal concept, a moment in time elected as the origin of a particular era. In the sequel “Monochrome Age,” he offers a synthesis of modernism thoroughly subsumed together with the oppositional austerity of Arte Povera through his use of color (monochrome) and the specular power of reflective surfaces (chrome) as derivated from humble materials. White Earth (2009) reinterprets the neutral kaolin surface of Piero Manzoni’s Achromes as a shiny, lacquered surface, the result of several elaborate production processes, while the physical ambiguity of the cast aluminum paintings is central to a reconsideration of the abstract sublime.

Reyle has designed “Monochrome Age” to create vistas in the vast white spaces of Gagosian Gallery Chelsea punctuated by pure color or pure reflectivity in the form of huge monolithic sculptures that embody his preoccupations with monumentality, economy of means, seduction, and desire. Eternity, a large, plinth-mounted sculpture directly inspired by an African tchotchke found in a local flea market, is enlarged then rendered to the point of fetishistic obsession using a lacquered patina normally reserved for cars. With a nod to Andy Warhol’s transcendent Silver Clouds (1966), Straw Bales attests to an ongoing belief in the alchemical potential of banal materials whilst evoking diverse narratives, from the agrarian conditions of pre-industrial life to Rumpelstiltskin, the dwarf of German fairy tales who spun straw into gold. The modules comprising the massive works entitled Relief and Philosophy are both derived from design objects that Reyle found on the premises of the East German Robotron computer company. While Relief is “charged” with morphing LEDs to create a mesmerizing Op-Art effect like a giant lava lamp, Philosophy derives its perfect luster from chrome-plating, an industrial technique borrowed from the car industry.

The exhibition will coincide with the publication of a fully illustrated monograph published by Dumont, with essays by Laura Hoptman and Jens Asthoff and photographs by Hedi Slimane.

Anselm Reyle was born in 1970 in Tübingen, Germany and lives and works in Berlin. His work is featured in the Boros Collection, Berlin; DaimlerChrysler Collection; Rubell Family Collection; and Collection Francois Pinault. Recent solo exhibitions include “Ars Nova” at the Kunsthalle Zurich (2006) and “Licht und Farbe” (light and color) at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (2004), and “Acid Mothers Temple” at Kunsthalle Tübingen in Germany (2009).

Just came across this interview with Steve Reich published in Frieze Magazine back in 2006:

“Steve Reich is one of the most important American composers of the past 40 years. With influences including Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, John Coltrane, African drumming, Balinese Gamelan and Hebrew sacred music, Reich’s music has been a major inspiration for subsequent generations of musicians such as Brian Eno, Bang On a Can and Sunn0))). Often misdescribed as ‘minimalist’, Reich’s music is characterized by a complex integration of harmonic invention and rhythmic construction; from groundbreaking early works using multiple tape loops and a rigorous focus on process, through multimedia collaborations with his wife, the artist Beryl Korot, to his recent major compositions for voice and orchestra You Are (Variations) (2004) and Daniel Variations (premiered this autumn). On the occasion of ‘Steve Reich @ 70’, an international series of concerts celebrating the composer’s 70th birthday, Dan Fox and Mark Godfrey talk to him about his music and relationship to visual art

Mark Godfrey: From the beginning of your practice there’s been a strong relationship between your music and the visual arts. You were aware of seriality in American art in the mid-1960s, as in the work of Sol LeWitt, for example. However, seriality meant something completely different in terms of the dominant European music of the time. Could you explain a little what the difference is between seriality in music and seriality in visual art?

Steve Reich: In serial music the 12-tone series of notes has no harmonic relationship between one note and another, and cannot really be heard as a pattern. Maybe Pierre Boulez could hear it, but this was something most musicians would have to take on faith, not something they could perceive as listeners. Visual serial art was very obviously repeating a given image or varying it in some way that one could walk into a room and immediately grasp it. You see Andy Warhol’s many Mona Lisas, and within five seconds you know you are looking at many Mona Lisas – you don’t have to be given a theory. In my music what I was striving for was something much more connected with American serial art. It was a rejection of European musical seriality…”

Installation view

March 7 – March 28, 2009

“I believe the work that is considered to be mine is someone else’s…anybody’s… the whole world. My work is a cultural event, an inevitable event. If all artists were to disappear, art would be produced by others with a different understanding, different means and different materials. As an individual, an artist simply fills a void. He is the means to an end, so that this arrangement, this accumulation of events can be organized.”

– John Armleder, “Une sorte de salade russe sans oublier la mayonnaise”, a conversation with Christian Bernard and Françoise Ninghetto, Semaine no. 01.

On January 15, 2009, the Galerie Andrea Caratsch in Zurich opened an exhibition showing new works of Olivier Mosset. When it closes on March 7, 2009, John Armleder will open an exhibition with the title Olivier Mosset New Paintings on the same day and in the same place.

This exhibition will consist entirely of the preceding one: while the paintings of Olivier Mosset were created by him and while the display in the gallery is exactly the same as the show that closes on March 7, the new exhibition is that of another artist. Although nothing will change, it is
nevertheless something entirely different. 

With Again (2008), the Galerie Andrea Caratsch already presented an example of a similar aspect of Armleder’s work: an exact replica of the frieze in the large room of the adjacent Kronenhalle restaurant – which leads me to believe that Again (aka Kronenhalle) is the most recent example of a radical strategy of relocation, delegation and sabotage of the legitimacy of authorship – of which Olivier Mosset New Paintings is yet an even more extreme expression.

Both projects address the questions of the ready-made, of the artist’s hand, of the exhibition space (and even of the subject of the exhibition itself), of the identity of the object exhibited, of the de- or recontextualization, of theft and appropriation, as well as the question of déjà vu. (1) Since the late 1960s, John Armleder has produced a number of projects – some were realized and some were not – without any physical intervention of the author, which involved the borrowing, without any modification, of a site, a situation, or an event, as the object of an exhibition.(2)

This type of practice seems to be of the Zeigeist, and many artists today are guided by similar concerns. Among Armleder’s works, it is worth mentioning the exhibition as artwork, without any other intervention, of a gallery wall (3), and the display of a painting by another artist (4). Other less “passive” interventions partook of the same spirit: for example, repainting a (white) gallery white, while the work of another artist was on exhibit5; displacing a piece of furniture inside a museum (or elsewhere), or his more well-known works from the period between 1960 and 1970 (such as the ones where he served tea to the visitors, or where he invites museum guards to display works of their own choice in their cafeteria, those where he kept the light on after the gallery closed, or where he showed the period between two exhibitions in a gallery.) At the 1976 Biennale de Paris, he displayed toys in his assigned space and instructed the guards to let the children take all of them. As a result, his room was empty one day after the opening and it remained bare for the duration of the exhibition… More recently, a part of Don’t Do It at the Mamco in Geneva (1997) consisted of a number of films shown in real time on monitors and displaying a canvas mounted in a frame elsewhere in the museum, without the slightest intervention of the artist (who neither personally made the films, nor select the canvases to be filmed). Some of these works were initiated by his collaboration with the Ecart group or other artists with whom the group maintained ties (in
1969 the Ecart group showed, without touching it, a field of snow in the Jura Mountains, and a part of Lake Geneva).

The same spirit lives in several of the artist’s publications, such as Steal These Books (2 Times) from One Star Press (2003) where he asked that a facsimile of the publisher’s current catalogue be published as an art book. A more recent association with the new show at Andrea Caratsch in Zurich is John Armleder’s exhibition at Le Parvis in Tarbes in 2008. It involved an exact reproduction of the one he had presented in the same space in 1997, Peintures Murales 1967-1997. He does not consider this to be a re-actualization, but rather “a new exhibition, simply consisting of identical works, in this case murals – where the exhibition itself is to be viewed as a work of art“ (6).

Olivier Mosset New Paintings is the first realization of a project pertaining to this series of works. It follows a simple principle: showing the preceding exhibition as a work of art in itself, and in this case, the exhibition of another artist. Armleder appears to have done this at Gallery Marika Malacorda in the 1970s already, although with one of his own exhibitions – a sort of prolongation in the eyes of the visitor, a new creation in the eyes of the artist. Here in Zurich, some will also view the Mosset display as a prolongation, others will see nothing at all… or the latest deception of a lazy artist. Armleder considers himself to be at least honest and lazy – and he is exceptionally prolific.

Appropriation, from Marcel Duchamp to Maurizio Cattelan, and via Elaine Sturtevant, Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman or Mike Bidlo is an old battle horse of modern art. While Cattelan, for example, presents it playfully, even farcically, in a specific context, one could assume without a doubt that Sherrie Levine takes quite a different, more radical stance. Armleder, while acting formally, shows no conceptual, political or partisan approach in this kind of work. In fact, he utilizes cooptation like any other tool he may have available in his studio… And he uses it almost coincidentally. There is no intent or purpose. These add-ons develop out of their own volition. They are, in the artist’s mind, “outlets”, and sometimes they are even therapeutic.

Armleder believes that the issue of authorship is hackneyed. He goes as far as saying that there is no author. And yet, this exhibition, which grew out of somebody else’s, is his own only by virtue of his custodial signature. It is therefore only his quality as an author, even by appropriating a show as ready-made, which permits John Armleder to show an exhibition that has nothing to do with him. And Armleder’s work Olivier Mosset New Paintings is the logical conclusion of this. One needs to know, however anecdotal this may be, that there was no premeditation of this project. It was, knowingly or unknowingly, not planned at the time the exhibition of Olivier Mosset opened. Any other show at Caratsch could have served the same purpose: Andy Warhol, Giorgio de Chirico, George Condo or Jiri Dokoupil, for example. Would it have produced the same effect? Armleder would maintain that it certainly would; personally, I am not quite as sure… If we assume that the concept is similar, that the means itself is the end, we would tend to agree with the artist; however (to his great displeasure), all his paintings which follow the same principle (Pour Paintings, Puddle Paintings, Dot Paintings, and even his Furniture Sculptures) are not equivalent or even similar. Finally, we detect a hint of ambiguity in the selection of Olivier Mosset: Armleder and Mosset have often exhibited together. Several times in the past, they have been mentioned together by critics, and a certain degree of complicity has occasionally been attributed to them. The choice, with respect to Mosset’s oeuvre, also does not appear to be entirely innocent: It is well known that Mosset painted exactly the same painting about two hundred times between 1966 and 1967, and in 1994, unless we are mistaken, Olivier Mosset gave John Armleder a number of aquatints he considered to be inadequate (thinking that Armleder would doubtlessly use these for packaging materials or something of this nature), and then Armleder published them under the title Olivier’s Rejects (7)…

Armleder’s project Olivier Mosset New Paintings was presented to Olivier Mosset almost as a fait accompli, without a doubt because he was not expected to be annoyed, in spite of a practice certainly more relentless, radical, and in Armleder’s opinion, more “authentic”.

We still need to understand what we are actually looking at. Let’s think for a moment of the long admired works of great masters, which were suddenly found to be those of other, less renowned artists. Such a painting thus changes, because it was created by somebody else. Nevertheless, the original remains intact. It is not Armleder’s intent to take over Mosset’s paintings. They will remain recent works of Olivier Mosset, as the title suggests. At the most, he appropriates the exhibition of Mosset by prolonging it, and thus making it a new creation, possibly his own. If we go to a shop, mustn’t we at least know what must be weighed? For example, a dealer could sell Armleder’s piece on one side and offer Mosset’s paintings on another. If one goes by the status quo, he would be better off finding one single collector for the whole lot! One must know that Armleder’s conceptual creations of this kind follow the formula of the music score. The piece therefore has a current title, Olivier Mosset New Paintings, but the composition (the reprise of an earlier exhibition) would effectively allow the use of Rembrandt, l’oeuvre tardive or Le mécénat dans les musées de province. In the context of music, an interest often observed in Armleder, one would add the aspect of time. This piece, once it has been realized, is assumed to last a minimum period of time. The artist does not elaborate on these facts, but he appears to prefer a length of time similar to the preceding exhibition. He told me that the prolongation of the earlier exhibition by one single minute would produce a different outcome, as would the remake of another’s artist exhibition at a different point in time (meaning not right on after it) – versions which, incidentally, he considers realizing one day… 

In an earlier conversation, John Armleder said that he dreamed of one day going to an exhibition and seeing a painting he did not identify and then, reading the label, to find out that it was actually his own. He would therefore have created a work sufficiently removed from his own personality for him to ignore it. Today, in a sort of back flip, a work which is not his own is attributed to him at his own discretion… although he always runs the risk, when visiting his exhibition, of paying more attention to another’s work than his own.

The repertoire of the artist (John Armleder) is a work in its own right and allows anybody exposed to it to understand each individual detail separately, his paintings or sculptures, for example, or at least to assess them under a presumably coherent perspective. This is the goal that the Galerie Andrea Caratsch pursues by undertaking to showcase the production of such a versatile artist, avatar after avatar, through a series of quasi-thematic presentations. However, John Armleder has good reasons to play more than one card. He only needs these to shuffle them, from porridge to flan, to pudding and aspic. His affinities with Zen also tell him to turn the gaze inwards as often as possible. And to see nothing. 

–Willy Parker, Aspen 2009

(1) For other examples of the artist’s work involving other strategies ad-dressing this problem, see the document published by the gallery on the occasion of Again.
(2) Some of these pieces were neither announced nor published anywhere.
(3) Galerie Marika Malacorda, Geneva, undated work.
(4) such as the painting by Jean Fautrier during the Teu-Gum Show at the Centre d’art contemporain in Geneva in 1981.
(5) Armleder realized this project several times without prior announcement. In 1978, when he had the keys to Gallery Marika Malacorda in Geneva where he occasionally worked, he took down an exhibit one night, repainted the walls, replaced the exhibit with a new one and did not announce it until several weeks later.
(6) Artist Michel Aubry is curretnly lauching a second part to his exhibition.
(7) He followed a similar strategy in La Decima Ora which consisted only of the rolls of carpeting used to display the work of Maurizio Cattelan La Nona Ora.

Carl Ostendarp, Aaarrgh, 2009 (detail)

February 13 – August 23, 2009

The RISD Museum of Art presents Carl Ostendarp, “Pulled Up,” an exhibition in its Lower Farago Gallery that not only borrows its title but also its optimism from the 1977 Talking Heads song of the same name. “Pulled Up” will feature works chosen by the artist from the Museum’s collection together with new paintings of his own. Ostendarp (American, b.1961) has taught and exhibited widely, and his artwork is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other museums.

Ostendarp came to the attention of Judith Tannenbaum, the Museum’s Richard Brown Baker curator of contemporary art, when she encountered an installation at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, called All Tomorrow’s Parties. In this work—which took its name from the 1967 Velvet Underground recording with German singer Nico—Ostendarp presented Pop Art classics by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and others against bright pink walls bordered with red drips. Last year, the Elizabeth Dee Gallery (New York) presented an 18-year retrospective of Ostendarp’s work; a review in the New Yorker described the installation as “tangy conflations of Pop, minimalism, color-field, and cartoons.”

After seeing Ostendarp’s work in Frankfurt and New York, Tannenbaum invited him to produce an installation at The RISD Museum. During a visit to view the collections, he was drawn to works on paper by a range of master artists in styles as varied as Dada and Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Pop. In the completed installation, these works from the collection will be juxtaposed with two new paintings by the artist and hung on a two-color, drip-pattern mural designed by Ostendarp and painted by him with the assistance of several RISD graduate students. The works from the collection range from Odilon Redon, Hans Arp, and Joan Miró, to Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Roy Lichtenstien, Andy Warhol, John Wesley, and Ed Ruscha, among others.
While pulling works from the Museum’s collection, Ostendarp was keenly aware of the 1970 intervention at The RISD Museum by Andy Warhol for his historic “Raid the Icebox” exhibition. Ostendarp also has been inspired by music in much of his work and for the RISD installation, he borrowed the title from the Talking Heads because of their connection to RISD– Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz are both graduates.

Ostendarp’s work is both cheerful and sly. Typically spare and often including simple biomorphic forms or words, his compositions are flooded with flat color. Often inspired by music, Ostendarp will create multi-sensory experience for visitors by playing the Talking Heads 1977 album in the gallery, producing a total experience that invites visitors to see these older pieces in a new light.

PROGRAMMING
Carl Ostendarp Lecture
Thursday, February 26, 6:30 pm
Michael P. Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center
In his lecture, Ostendarp talks about this project as well as his interest in late Modernism, including Pop Art and Minimalism.

“The Rose Art Museum on the Brandeis campus houses what is widely recognized as the finest collection of modern and contemporary art in New England. With more than 6,000 objects — paintings, sculptures, works on paper and new media — the Rose collection has particular strengths in American Modernism, American Social Realism, post-War American, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Surrealism and Photorealism. Recent acquisitions include works by Nam June Paik, Anri Sala, William Kentridge, Thomas Demand and Matthew Barney. These names comprise a virtual “who’s who” of art since the 1960s. With its mission to “engage its communities in the experience of modern and contemporary art,” the Rose maintains an active exhibition program, presenting new art while embracing its foundation in historical modern art.” (excerpted from the museum’s web site)

In a move to correct its current operating deficit and shore up its lagging endowment, Brandeis University’s board of trustees recently voted unanimously to close the Rose Art Museum and sell off its collection of art.

A few quick thoughts come to mind:

1. Stop treating your museum collection like an ATM machine. Art is not cash.
2. Art is a critical component of a liberal arts education. Your museum is as important as your library.
3. Why not temporarily shutter the university’s athletic programs and facilities instead? Are these critically important to the university’s education mission?
4. Most of the works in your collection were donated. As an alternative, why not return them back to the artists who toiled away –- mainly in poverty – to make them.  They should benefit the most from their work’s appreciation in value.

Recent News Articles

Brandeis to sell school’s art collection, by Geoff Edgers and Peter Schworm
The Boston Globe, January 26, 2009

Brandeis to Sell All of Its Art
Inside Higher Ed, January 27, 2009

Outcry Over a Plan to Sell Museum’s Holdings, by Randy Kennedy and Carol Vogel
New York Times, January 27, 2009

Museum backers seek halt to selloff, Say art should stay at Brandeis, by Geoff Edgers
The Boston Globe, January 28, 2009

Hawk this gem? Unconscionable, by Sebastian Smee
The Boston Globe, January 28, 2009

Brandeis may keep art, says president, Reaffirms need to close museum, by Geoff Edgers
The Boston Globe, January 29, 2009

The Rape of the Rose, by David Bonetti
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 29, 2009

Brandeis on the Brink, by Judith H. Dobrzynski
The Daily Beast, January 30, 2009

In the Closing of Brandeis Museum, a Stark Statement of Priorities, by Roberta Smith
The New York Times, February 1, 2009

Museum director assails Brandeis’ plans
The Boston Globe, February 2, 2009

Is the University’s Museum Just a Rose to Be Plucked?, by Daniel Grant
Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2009

Audio Interview with Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz, by Tracy Jan
The Boston Globe, February 4, 2009 

Museum Rescue Sought, by Carol Vogel and Randy Kennedy
The New York Times, February 5, 2009

Letter: Brandeis president apologizes for handling of museum issue, by Geoff Edgers
The Boston Globe, February 5, 2009 

A Letter from the College Art Association (published on January 29, 2009)

The College Art Association (CAA) was shocked and dismayed to learn of the decision by BrandeisUniversity to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its entire art collection for operating revenue.

CAA supports the Codes of Ethics of the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, which clearly state that works of art in museum collections are held as a public trust and that any proceeds of sales must only support the acquisition of new works. However, perceiving an entire art collection as a disposable financial asset and then dismantling that collection wholesale to cover other university expenses is deeply troubling for all college and university collections.

The closing of the museum at Brandeis will be devastating to the academic community, not only affecting our colleagues at the museum and students and faculty in the Department of Fine Arts, which offers programs in both studio art and art history, but also depriving the entire arts-loving public in New England and around the world. The teaching of art and art history in higher education is untenable without the direct study of physical works of art, and it appears the Brandeis Board of Trustees has disregarded the kind of scholarship and creativity that have been the hallmark of CAA members for nearly one hundred years.

According to news reports, neither Brandeis University nor the Rose Art Museum is on the brink of economic collapse, nor are they unable to maintain the collections. Given that no clear explanation has been offered on the school’s financial exigencies, the closure of the Rose Art Museumand the sale of its collection appear to be in violation of professional museum standards and of academic transparency and due process; the decision also demonstrates a lack of academic responsibility and fiduciary foresight. We appeal to the Trustees of Brandeis to revisit and reverse their decision.

Paul B. Jaskot
Executive Director, College Art Association
Professor of Art History
Department of the History of Art and Architecture
DePaul University

Linda Downs
President, College Art Association

New Facebook Group
Save the Rose Art Museum

MINUS SPACE welcomes your input! Comment below.

Born in Los Angeles in 1932, New Yorker art dealer John Weber had a prominent role in the contemporary art world and was one of the first dealers in Soho in the 70s, leaving his mark on New York’s art scene of that period. Owner of the popular John Weber Gallery, which opened in West Broadway in Soho in 1971, he then moved to Chelsea in the ’90s where he began his rise in the art world. After leaving the Navy, Weber accepted a job at the Dayton Art Institute as member of the curatorial staff. Later he attended the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and worked for the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. He then made the successful move to the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles, where he was involved in many outstanding shows and worked with artists like Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, Arman, Yves Klein, Franz Kline, Sol LeWitt, Andy Warhol, Richard Long, Jeff Koons, Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke and many more, collaborating as well with the Fluxus Group and the Arte Povera movement. (courtesy: Flash Art Magazine)

Purchase on Amazon.com

March 2 — May 12, 2008

Color Chart celebrates a paradox: the lush beauty that results when contemporary artists assign color decisions to chance, readymade source, or arbitrary system. Midway through the twentieth century, long-held convictions regarding the spiritual truth or scientific validity of particular colors gave way to an excitement about color as a mass-produced and standardized commercial product. The Romantic quest for personal expression instead became Andy Warhol’s “I want to be a machine;” the artistry of mixing pigments was eclipsed by Frank Stella’s “Straight out of the can; it can’t get better than that.” Color Chart is the first major exhibition devoted to this pivotal transformation, featuring work by some forty artists ranging from Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Richter to Sherrie Levine and Damien Hirst.