Megan and Murray

Laura Owens and the Sculpture Garden at the Dallas Museum of Art

Laura Owens, Untitled, 2004

A week in Dallas means trips to as many of the splendid area museums as we can talk our patient family members into accompanying us, starting, naturally, with the Dallas Museum of Art. Fault the DMA if you will for succumbing to the King Tut cash cow, but the Dallas institution will always have my heart: it's my hometown museum and the first place I fell in love with art. And what fun to see one of my favorite LA painters, Laura Owens, (one of Christopher Knight's "top 45 LA painters under 45"), now part of its permanent collection.

We also saw a surprising exhibition of Indian painting that kept us under its spell for far longer than we had planned. Chock full of narrative works that had much in common with contemporary graphic novels. Also, the Phil Collins three-part video installation, the world won't listen, part of the DMA's Concentrations series is slapstick funny and sad and profound all at once.

Ellsworth Kelly, Untitled, 1982-1983

Mark Handforth, Dallas Snake, 2007

Zaha Hadid, Bench, designed 2003, executed 2006

Of course, you can't go to the museum without spending time in its gorgeous sculpture garden. When it's 67 degrees a few days before Christmas, there's not much better than taking in an Ellsworth Kelly from a Zaha Hadid bench in the bright winter sun.

Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting
November 18, 2007–January 27, 2008

Phil Collins: the world won't listen
November 9, 2007–March 23, 2008

And here's an excellent interview with LA painter Laura Owens.

Donnie Darko (2001)

[source]

[source]

Donnie: Why do you wear that stupid rabbit suit?
Frank: Why do you wear that stupid man suit?

Donnie Darko is number 73 on my [work-in-progress] Favorite Films List. It's darkly mysterious but not horror--think Time Bandits (1981).

Last night we watched the newly released limited edition with extra scenes with director commentary (on the extra scenes only). This is a must-see for Darko fans. The director, Richard Kelly, lowers his cards enough to reveal exactly what this extremely enigmatic film was designed to symbolize.

Although this might come as a shock, it turns out that Donnie Darko's medication is actually only placebo sugar pills--so, apparently, all of the surreal events are not merely in his head. A second key note: Kelly thinks of Frank the rabbit as "divine intervention." Kelly explains in the notes that he wanted the film to "leave room for interpretation" so most, if not all, conversations about God were removed in the final edit.

The only remaining divine intervention clues in the movie are subtle: the movie Donnie leaves to burn the child pornographer's house down is The Last Temptation of Christ.

Christmas in Dallas

Vik Muniz from the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book [source]

If you're still wondering what to get your loved ones for the holidays, may I suggest consulting a tried and true Dallas institution, the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book. For $110,000 you can buy a "His and Hers Double Portrait in Chocolate" by Vik Muniz. The perfect gift for the art lover in your life.

From the catalogue:
Maybe he sent bonbons after the first date. Certainly, untold chocolate has been exchanged over the years. To celebrate that entertaining, exasperating, enduring thing you call love, try our His & Hers portrait by Vik Muniz.

The brilliant Brazilian lives and works in New York, crafting internationally famous art out of literally anything: caviar, dirt, diamonds, toys even! Here, he will capture your likenesses in a double helping of Bosco® chocolate syrup. You come away with a framed 60" x 48" museum-quality photographic work of art, a limited edition of one, thank you.

To grow the good karma you've started, Vik is donating his proceeds to Centro Espacial Rio de Janeiro, the charity he created to bring social and art projects to life for underprivileged young people in Brazil.

More here: Neiman Marcus Christmas Book Fantasy Gifts and Brazilian Artist Vik Muniz has Some Sweet Paintings

As for us, earlier this week, we left the 14 inches of snow on the ground back in New England and flew down to Dallas to celebrate Christmas with family.

Unmonumental at the New Museum

New Museum of Contemporary Art [source]

Kristen Morgin, Lion, 2006 [source]

The New Museum of Contemporary Art's new building and location opened a couple weeks ago in NYC and I've been looking forward to seeing it and their inaugural exhibition, Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, which runs until March 23, 2008.

My expectations were high: with a four word, to-the-point mission statement--new art, new ideas--and an mysterious exterior designed by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA [with Gensler, New York, serving as Executive Architect], I'm sure I wasn't the only one. However, as is the case just about every time I enter an experience with high expectations, I was disappointed with both their new building and their first exhibition.

What's impossible to ignore about the building is that it's designed for one person to use at a time. Stairwells--which are unavoidable due to the sole elevator's small size and slow speed--and hallways are only wide enough for one person. Museum visitors awkwardly negotiate paths with each other while grumbling. On top of that, the details betray a too-small budget: stair railings seem residentially-rated and the lobby ceiling seems borrowed from a mall.

Unmonumental has its gems like Kristen Morgin's Lion and Elliot "I can do no wrong" Hundley's fragile paper sculptures, however much of the work does not seem new or contain new ideas. To anyone who experienced the Hammer Museum's Thing sculpture exhibition in Los Angeles a couple years ago, Unmonumental might seem conventional and, well, trendy.

That said, it's not everyday that a new museum opens and in particular it's not everyday a museum opens with such a forward vision. They will receive a lot of criticism because their audience is loud and has unreasonable expectations, but they will survive and I can't wait to see what they do next.

Close Looking at Kent Gallery

All the Whales, 2004, Emily Prince, Graphite on vellum, 19 ½ x 22 ½ in.

It's not a bold statement to say that artists are close observers, so an exhibition organized around artwork that studies and analyzes the surrounding world faces the steep challenge of saying something new in the process of its examination. Kent Gallery's current show in Chelsea, Close Looking, tackles this theme by highlighting the work of six of the gallery's artists.

From Dennis Adams's four-channel DVD installation, Seize, which observes a rock-wall climber's ascent up the Walker Museum's facade via cameras attached to his ankles and wrists to Emily Prince's folksy drawings of various seemingly random groupings of images and objects in her own home, Close Looking looks closely at the everyday world without its context to reveal subtle patterns and orderings that might, otherwise, pass un-noted.

R.E.M. VI (After Seurat), 1996-97, Heide Fasnacht, Graphite and hand punctures on paper, 15 x 20 in

Of all the work in the show, Heide Fasnacht's drawings take observation and reorganization one step further to reveal the structure beneath the eye's very act of observing. Based on the work of Robert L. Solso, a cognitive behavior scientist from MIT who devised a machine called the eye-tracker to record people's eye movements as they scanned a painting, Fasnacht's R.E.M drawings track the eye movement associated with Seurat's Les Poseurs. By using a painting by Seurat, an artist also interested in the way that the eye breaks down images, Fasnacht adds another layer to the work.

While Close Looking doesn't venture into new curatorial territory, the show succeeds in unifying a diverse group of artists by virtue of a skill that informs all their various explorations.

Close Looking
through Dec. 21
Kent Gallery
Chelsea, NYC

Course Review: Sculpture

Phill Stott, 2007

Phill Stott, Couch Model, 2007 (made on our new 3D printer from a computer model)

Trist MacDonnell, 2007

Nick Preston, 2007

Josh Payne, 2007

These works are from the senior Sculpture course I teach at Roger Williams University. My art department is delightfully a part of the architecture school. This means fun toys like laser cutters and 3D printers and also means I regularly work with architecture undergrads and graduates (four of the five images above were created by future architects).

Our final project was to fill the School of Art and Architecture with installations. Phill Stott answered this by building a 35' paper sculpture using a fraction of the collected waste our department creates in 2 weeks.

Course Review: Digital Media

Nima Khabiri, 2007

Heather Hoekstra, 2007

Brent Gentile, 2007

Tanya Zilewicz, 2007

This is my first semester at Roger Williams University where I teach intermedia and sculpture. These works were produced in Intro to Digital Media, my sophomore course.

The course consisted of 3 projects: 1) the Life Environment Project: students create where they are or where they've been 2) the Analog Digital Project: students combine the best physical and electronic techniques (Heather Hoekstra cleverly manipulated image transparencies over a scanner to create her work above) and 3) a Flash web site: although students usually choose to make portfolio sites, some prefer interactive artworks.

I like students to recognize and follow their interests.

Next Project, Beginning Stages

For our next project, we're working on a video that we'll shoot in January that will be part a video installation show we'll be installing in LA in late February. We've been researching refugees and are particularly taken with the architecture of the burdens you see in almost every image: groups of people with towers of necessities and belongings. We are interested in what contemporary Americans might carry along if they were forced to evacuate. What "stuff" would be worth piling on our heads, backs and shoulders; what would we want to take with us for the next life?

Nancy Murphy Spicer: Drawing Sessions

Hanging Drawings 1 (20 Successive Drawings, Unique and Unrehearsed), video still, 2007 [source]

"As part of the 20th Drawing Show/Drawing the Line currently on view at the Mills Gallery at The Boston Center for the Arts, Nancy Murphy Spicer is presenting her work Hanging Drawings 1 (20 Successive Drawings, Unique and Unrehearsed). The artist invites individuals to interact with her work by signing up to have their own drawing session in the gallery. No preparation is necessary and those signing up should allow approximately 30 minutes for the drawing session.

Drawing sessions can be scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, December 8 and 9 as well as Saturday, January 5, between 12-5. To sign up, please email (using the subject line: 'drawing session') with your choice of day and time (choose a time on the hour: noon, 1pm, 2pm etc.) and include your email and phone. The artist will contact you to confirm your session. Email: nancy@murphyspicer.com." [from the invitation]

Sackler and Fogg Art Museums at Harvard University

Leonardo Drew, Number 122, 2007, installation, Fogg

Leonardo Drew, Number 122, 2007, installation detail, Fogg

Louise Lawler, War is Terror, 2001/2003, photograph, Fogg

East Pediment of the Temple of Aphaia (Original), Greek, c 490-475 BC, marble and Warrior's Head (Copy), synthetic marble, Sackler

The art museums at Harvard are better, in my opinion, than Boston's august *Museum of Fine Arts... and a ticket to all three is half the $17 price-tag of the big museum. The last image is from the current show at the Sackler, Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity, on view through January 20, 2008, which is the most comprehensive and educational grouping of painted reproductions of ancient sculpture I've seen.

* I'm holding out hope for the "new" MFA.