Category: Contemporary

Contemporary

Congenitally opposed to the macho tone

Leah Garrett / July 21, 2015
Congenitally opposed to the macho tone of so many avant-garde polemics, suspicion of the manifesto comes naturally to feminism. And yet, as the credibility of the manifesto declined over the past 40 years, feminist skepticism informed numerous landmark appropriations of the genre: Valerie Solanas’ “SCUM Manifesto (1968), Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ “Manifesto for Maintenance Art” (1969) and Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg…

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Contemporary

The trope of woman as nature

Leah Garrett / July 19, 2015
Though the trope of woman as nature (or vice versa) had been a conventional one long before the various Interwar artists took it up, Brassai’s use of this trope is unique. He presents us with an eerie landscape that, within the historical context of World War I, seems at once precise and vague. He offers us a body of water…

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Contemporary

Male and female homosexuality were not always viewed in the same manner

Leah Garrett / July 19, 2015
Male and female homosexuality were not always viewed in the same manner. Female homosexuality, while reviled by the general populace, was generally acceptable for the artistic purposes of the Surrealists. For them, lesbianism was sometimes parallel to idealized heterosexuality (l’amour fou). The representation of lesbian lovers in their art, I would suggest, often becomes heterosexualized. It often assumes a male…

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Contemporary

The sense of depaysement

Leah Garrett / July 17, 2015
The sense of depaysement implies an overtly political project as much as it does an aesthetic one; the Surrealists of the 1930s conceived of aesthetics and politics as closely allied. As Brassai’s work was an important addition to Breton’s Surrealist journal Minotaure, it seems logical to consider the political philosophies espoused within the journal as well as the photographs themselves,…

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Contemporary

Taylor Savvy’s 2002 recording Ladies and Gentlemen

Leah Garrett / July 17, 2015
Taylor Savvy’s 2002 recording Ladies and Gentlemen is among the greatest musical accomplishments in the history of mankind. To say that it is also unique is an understatement. Having noticed that the chorus is the catchiest part of the song, Savvy decided to compose songs consisting exclusively of choruses, which he calls slogans (sample lyric: “Big dicks are all I…

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Contemporary

I REALY SHOULD

Leah Garrett / July 15, 2015
Kelly Mark’s sound installation I Really Should … (2002) is mounted discreetly in the long entry corridor at Paint My Photos Gallery. Entering the space, visitors hear Mark’s quiet monologue: “I really should try to absorb all I can, I really should take a walk on the beach, I really should focus on my career, I really should have cropped…

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Contemporary

Art by Wicks, PARIS, FRANCE

Leah Garrett / July 13, 2015
One of the few Parisian contemporary galleries open in early August is called Art by Wicks, found in the old Marais quarter. By chance, I stumble upon this exhibition while trying to find the Marian Goodman Gallery in a maze of tiny streets. Being lost has paid off. I find L’Autre Amerique: Art contemporain du Bresil, a show put together…

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Contemporary

Conversation

Leah Garrett / July 10, 2015
KT You talk about the site? What triggers the discussion? NL It depends. Sometimes we get the call Take, for example, we are supposed to have an exhibition in Luxembourg this summer. We came back from Luxembourg with a small idea. And then we keep talking. We talk about it when we are on the road. We talk about it…

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Contemporary

Ralph Rugoff championed the works of seminal Pathetic Artists

Leah Garrett / July 7, 2015
Curators such as Ralph Rugoff championed the works of seminal Pathetic Artists like Mike Kelley and Cady Noland as “haplessly falling short of the idealized norm.” Rugoff identified the Pathetic movement with the abject, relating it to Julia Kristeva’s discussion of the scatological impulse in “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.” Kristeva, responding to the writings of Freud and…

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Contemporary

The past is always inseparable from the present

Leah Garrett / July 6, 2015
The past is always inseparable from the present. Its dialogue is a circuitous exchange. The present moment is one in which continued forms of colonialism are reared in every national institution–education, labour, health, trade and agriculture. In the time we spent together, Allen never missed an opportunity to connect the production of these cloths to a global awareness of transnational…

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