Chalk Outline Mystery

 Chalk outline detailing position of head with knife in hand. LAPD/Fototeka, 1950 via Huffington Post

Growing up in San Francisco in the 1970s I went on many school field trips. One of them made quite an impression. While walking around the outside of the Academy of Sciences, a museum located in Golden Gate Park, we saw the white outline of a body on a tree-shrouded path. For some reason at the time I believed this was the outline of a jumper. Regardless, I never forgot it and, since the arrival of the internet, have periodically Googled it to see if I can find who had jumped off the roof of the museum.

Last week I remembered having seen the chalk outline and Google it once again. However this time I learned about artist Richard Hambleton's Image Mass Murder.

Postcard of Hambleton’s Image Mass Murder 1976-1979 via Gallery 98                       //     via Woodbury House Art

In 1976 Richard Hambleton moved to San Francisco to attend the SF Art Institute. He made Image Mass Murder soon thereafter. It was a series of site specific artworks, created from 1976 to 1979 under the pseudonym Mr Reee, in which he asked friends to lie down and he'd trace their outlines in chalk and splatter red paint on them to emulate homicide victims. Hambleton's series "resulted in 600 crime scenes on the streets of 15 major cities across the United States and Canada." 1

 Outline on a Vancouver sidewalk by the street artist R. Dick Trace-it, 1977, via Woodbury House Art

"It was on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner in December, 1976, that Hambleton was called a “psychic terrorist” and a “sick jokester” for his fake murder scenes."2 The police did not know at the time they were dealing with an artist. Hambleton also used the pseudonym R. Dick Trace-It for the "detective" "solving" the crimes using "Wanted" posters for fake felons.

I ask myself, is it possible the outline I saw in Golden Gate Park that day was a Richard Hambleton artwork? I am reminded that while chalk outlines are no longer used by police today, but they were common in the past. But who would jump off of a two story museum? The mystery persists and my search continues for someone who may have documented the locations of Hambleton's Mr Ree works in San Francisco in the late '70s.

 Weegee, Outline of a Murder Victim, 1942 via Met Museum

1. Spellman Gallery
2. Vancouver Sun Obituary 2017

Dali Does Alice

When I was a girl I was a stage actor. I played Alice in a production of Alice in Wonderland. This led to decades of collecting Alice books and ephemera.

I have a number of editions by wonderful illustrators, including Ralph Steadman and Barry Moser, but had never heard of the ones by Salador Dalí. What a lovely surprise to stumble across these vibrant images from an edition published by Maecenas Press-Random House in 1969. The set includes 12  heliogravures  - one for each chapter of the book. It was printed in a limited edition of 2500 copies.

Goshka Macuga: Time as Fabric

It's hard not to be impressed by Goshka Macuga's tapestries on view at The New Museum (on view through June 26, 2016). The scale, detail, and sophisticated production are impressive. -- literally and figuratively. Macuga did not weave these hangings herself; they were produced by the Belgian weaving firm Flanders Tapestries.

My husband and I argued over the artist's lack of personal craftsmanship, however there is a long history of artists designing (but not making) tapestries: Raphael (16th century),  Edward Burne-Jones (1890s), Fernand Leger (1920s), Joan Miró (1930s), Henri Matisse (mid-century), Alexander Calder (1960s) plus many others. Today, Magnolia Editions in Oakland, Ca produces Jacquard tapestries for artists such as Chuck Close and Alex Katz.

Tapestries have been woven for thousands years all over the world. In Europe during the Middle Ages, weaving became a highly respected artistic medium. Tapestries flourished due to the Church's patronage. And for the wealthy, a tapestry was one of the most prestigious items one could own. However, during the Renaissance, oil painting started to displace tapestry as an elite form of artistic creation. The notion of the individual artist was gaining standing over the labor of craftsmanship, creating a hierarchical division between tapestry weaving and painting. (And religious persecution disrupted leading centers of high-quality production dominated by the workshops in Brussels, dispersing a pool of highly talented weavers.)

The decline of tapestry persisted until the end of the 19th century when it enjoyed a renewed attention due to the Arts and Crafts Movement helping to revive interest in traditional craft processes, utilitarian artistic production, and the link of artists with industry. With industrial, automated processes on the rise, tapestry became a means to challenge the hierarchical position of painting and elevate materials that were seen as humble or everyday. In 1915, Jean (Hans) Arp exhibited a series of tapestries, noting in the exhibition catalogue that:

“These works … keep a hostile distance from egotism. They are hatred of the immodesty of human baseness, hatred of images, of paintings." 1.

Arp was strongly anti-elitist and chose the medium of tapestry very deliberately. “Arp had an idealized view of the anonymous pre-Renaissance artist, for whom the division between applied and fine art was irrelevant.” 2. Yet despite his call for egalitarianism, the weavers weren't named; only Arp was.

 Hans Arp, Untitled (Diagonal Composition-Crucifixion), 1915. Private collection.

But weavers weren't consistently invisible actors in the production of art tapestries. 3. The author Jean Lipman explains in Calder's Universe that while Calder designed the cartoons for his tapestries and had wool dyed to his specification, the weavings themselves were true cooperative ventures.

"... both Calder's signature and the weaver's trademark are woven into the fabric ...The tapestry medium...is an example of the successful collaboration with skilled craftsmen that has characterized Calder's later years ...The weaver follows Calder's forms exactly but improvises to vary the weaves and textures in a free interpretation of the overall design. The tapestries are fresh works of art in their own right, blending the inventiveness of the artist with that of the weavers." 4.

So back to Goshka. Useing appropriation to warp and weave histories together, she arranges disparate elements to form a new narrative. To argue whether an artist should make every work themselves seems outdated and outmoded in this post-Duchampian era. Of course artists don't have to make their own work anymore! You think Tara Donovan, Jeff Koons, or Tom Sachs make their own artworks? Of course not. That being said, it wasn't easy to track down the name of the weaving studio that made Goshka's magnificent pieces, and that isn't right. The tapestry manufactories of the past are renowned now (Arras, Aubusson, Beauvais, Bruges, Felletin, Gobelins, Oudenaarde). Today's manufacturers also deserve credit, for these massive tapestries are a collaborative feat!


1. Eric Robertson, Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor, Yale University Press; 1st ed edition (2006), page 33
2. Bibiana Obler, Intimate Collaborations: Kandinsky and Münter, Arp and Taeuber, Yale University Press (2014), page 126.
3. A number of the Soho Tapestry Weavers were named (18th century).
4. Jean Lipman, Calder’s Universe, exhibition catalogue, New York: Viking Press in cooperation with the Whitney Museum of American Art (1976), page 157.

On Solitude

Do not underestimate the power of alone time:

No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King’s body guard… I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone… I have written this that you might see I have my share of the highest pleasures and that though I may choose to pass my days alone I shall be no Solitary… I am as happy as a Man can be… with the yearning Passion I have for the beautiful, connected and made one with the ambition of my intellect. ~ John Keats

| Eva Hesse with a rope sculpture, Hermann Landshoff c.1969 | Gerhard Richter, Eis (“Ice”), 1981. Photo: Sotheby’s. |
| Alex Coleville, Man on Verandah, 1953, glazed tempera. Private collection, Germany |

“I must be totally engrossed in my own work, it is only thing that is permanent, matures and is lasting.”  ~ Eva Hesse in Eva Hesse: Longing, Belonging and Displacement by Vanessa Corby, 2010.

Richter's Eis was based on a photograph taken on a solo retreat in Greenland in 1972.

Colville's haunting works are structured around the essentially solitary nature of human experience.

"I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity — to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone." ~ Edith Wharton in Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee, 2008.

The Cabinet Room - Studiolo - early studio.

Lucas Cranach the Elder paints Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg as Saint Jerome (with friends) in his study, 1526. Public domain. Via Wikimedia.

Oh, glorious room. The antler chandelier with cherub (lüsterweibchen). The Cardinal cochineal red robes. The (symbolic) menagerie of animals: lion, pheasants with chicks, deer, beaver, quails, a red squirrel, an African grey parrot, and hare. Pears (apples?) and acorns. Maybe it's my post-Thanksgiving stupor, but the painting's rich texture and warm color palette seem to speak to a love of our earth that resonates with yesterday's celebration of thanks through food.

Happy to be Thanksgiving!

Vacant

I read the other day about the death of an artist named Robert Olsen. To be honest, I'd never heard of him. He was a young (44) LA artist who painted scenes and objects of ordinary urban life -- bus stops, gas signs and pumps, dumpsters, bus shelters, and his latest, shadows of freeway overpasses. One reviewer described his work thus: "Unlike Hopper, he depicts the machinery of modern living without the men and women who are threaded through it."

no title, oil on canvas over panel, 13 3/8 x 21 1/2 inches, 2014

 no title, oil on panel, 9 x 16 inches, 2010

Station, gesso on canvas over panel, 11 x 26 inches, 2009

 no title, oil on panel, 9 x 16 inches, 2008

 no title, oil on panel, 9 x 16 inches, 2007

Like a visual Bukowski (sans the sex and anger), Olsen's images have a desolation, a bleakness, that resonates with the darker side of life. And his paintings are both painted at night and use night as a subject to emphasize the solitary, lonely energy of 3am on the streets. They are utterly compelling and seductive, using a relentless vision that simultaneously pits contemporary angst and anxiety against a comforting, almost peaceful, view of a familiar urban landscape.

Two obits from Art Forum here and here and one from the LA Times provide additional background about Robert Olsen's artistic practice and tributes to his spirit as an artist.

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The Conversation, oil on canvas, 50 x 70 inches, 1991

A rather sunnier version of Robert Olsen might be found in the work of artist John Register (1939-1996). Like Olsen, his vacant American landscapes are still and quiet, but filled in living California color with the haunting specter of unfulfilled dreams. Endless empty seats silently waiting and watching, as demure witnesses to our presence and, perhaps, our departure. Diners, laundry mats, lobbies, and literal waiting rooms present themselves with a bloated anticipation, like a breath taken and awaiting its release.

 Red Booths, silkscreen, 33 1/2 x 48 inches, 1986

 Waiting Room for the Beyond, silkscreen, 41 x 41 inches, 1988

 Venetian Light, silkscreen & lithograph, 50 x 42 inches, 1990

You are right if you are reminded of Hopper, but Register himself said, "Hopper paints someone else's isolation. In my pictures you're the isolated one." 1.

It seems not coincidental that both Olsen and Register painted in California....

“California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.” ~ Joan Didion

Wasteland Hotel, silkscreen, 42 1/2 x 56 1/2 inches, 1990

************

But if these two artists depict a certain despair, I would posit that  Doug Young's empty rooms are similarly haunting, but they are not hollowed out psychological dramas. Young's images navigate our dreams and aspirations for space travel, musical talent, American heroes, or the bright side of luck. His vacant scenes are actually unflinching snapshots of the complexity of hope. 

Mission Control, reverse painting on glass, automotive paint, 49 x 49 inches, 2011 

Air Force One, reverse painting on glass, automotive paint, 49 x 49 inches, 2014

Price is Right, reverse painting on glass, automotive paint, 49 x 49 inches, 2013  

Music Room, reverse painting on glass, automotive paint, 49 x 49 inches, 2012

“I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
~ Joan Didion

1. http://www.oocities.org/soho/cafe/5618/atartists1.html

everything, everything coincides

Thomas Lynch
Euclid

Wassily Kandinsky, Circles in a circle,
1923 Courtesy of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art 1.

What sort of morning was Euclid having
when he first considered parallel lines?
Or that business about how things equal
to the same thing are equal to each other?
Who’s to know what the day has in it?
This morning Burt took it into his mind
to make a long bow out of Osage orange
and went on eBay to find the cow horns
from which to fashion the tips of the thing.
You better have something to pass the time,
he says, stirring his coffee, smiling.
And Murray is carving a model truck
from a block of walnut he found downstairs.
Whittling away he thinks of the years
he drove between Detroit and Buffalo
delivering parts for General Motors.

Clint Fulkerson, Nebula, 2011

Might he have nursed theorems on lines and dots
or the properties of triangles or
the congruence of adjacent angles?
Or clearing customs at Niagara Falls,
arrived at some insight on wholes and parts
or an axiom involving radii
and the making of circles, how distance
from a center point can be both increased
endlessly and endlessly split—a mystery
whereby the local and the global share
the same vexations and geometry?
Possibly this is where God comes into it,
who breathed the common notion of coincidence
into the brain of that Alexandrian
over breakfast twenty-three centuries back,
who glimpsed for a moment that morning the sense
it all made: life, killing time, the elements,
the dots and lines and angles of connection—
an egg’s shell opened with a spoon, the sun’s
connivance with the moon’s decline, Sophia
the maidservant pouring juice; everything,
everything coincides, the arc of memory,
her fine parabolas, the bend of a bow,
the curve of the earth, the turn in the road.

Tom Sachs: SPACE PROGRAM: MARS

"Space Program: Mars" in the Park Armory Drill Hall.
All photos by Tamsen Ellen unless otherwise noted.

Humans have the propensity to gaze and to marvel, something most of us do when contemplating space. In answer to the question: Why do humans exist on earth? a seventh grader once responded:

I believe that there is, despite the fact that we humans have done so much damage to the world, a reason for our existence on this planet. I think we are here because the universe, with all it’s wonder and balance and logic, needs to be marveled at, and we are the only species (to our knowledge) that has the ability to do so. We are the one species that does not simply except what is around us, but also asks why it is around us, and how it works. We are here because without us here to study it, the amazing complexity of the world would be wasted. And finally, we are here because the universe needs an entity to ask why it is here.

Today, Sunday June 17th, is the last day you can visit Mars with Tom Sach's Space Program. I've been twice and I would urge you to see this remarkable installation at the Park Avenue Armory. There is so much involved in this exhibition, it is challenging to know exactly how to begin describing it. Is it an exhibition of sculpture? Performance art? A happening? I'll let you decide. In a nutshell...it explores human curiosity, creativity, and organizational systems by staging a fictional manned exploration to Mars.

Mission Control - 2007.

The bulk of the exhibition fills the 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, which the Armory's website describes as "an immersive space odyssey with an installation of dynamic and meticulously crafted sculptures." Upon entering the hall, the visitor sees a number of "stations" made from Sachs' signature technique of bricolage of simple materials. The stations represent various component parts needed for the mission, such as "exploratory vehicles, mission control, launch platforms, suiting stations, special effects, recreational amenities, and Mars landscape."

Rear view of Journeyman - 2006-10.

It is an impressive feat. Each station is clearly the product of an obsessive-compulsive urge to make, with no detail left wanting. In the images of the Red Beans & Rice station below (astronauts have to eat, don't they?) you can really see the intense level of detail Sachs has gone to in order to simulate a food cart for space. His work "is both humorous and serious, giving viewers insight into the challenges of space travel, but also leaving us to ponder our place in the universe," according to Rebecca Robertson, President and Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory.

Red Beans & Rice (RBR) - 2011. (Detail below)

The exhibition is full of humor. From the Celebration Fridge (2007) stocked with champagne to the Vader Fridge stocked with mini-buds and clearly labeled: DO NOT DRINK OLD STYLE MINI BUDS. (With a conveniently attached urinal). So you wouldn't be mistaken that this might be a show about reverence for the wonderful, but long-past, era of space exploration a la Mad Men. No, this exhibition is about today; it's rife with contemporary culture...from skateboarding to hip hop to the undercurrent NASA's current Mars mission that will be televised live August 5th in Times Square! (If you don't know about the Mars Science Laboratory mission, definitely look it up. NASA will be landing a rover name Curiosity in a deep crater on Mars in the hopes of finding signs of life.)

Vader Fridge, 2009 (detail below)

Much is a simulation of the technologically complicated. But it's all made from ordinary stuff like plywood, foam core, tape, glue, nuts and bolts -- even the pièce de résistance the LEM, the Landing Excursion Module, which is a 1:1 replica of NASA's original Apollo Lunar Module that carried astronauts to the surface of the Moon. In this way alone, this exhibition is a marvel.

 LEM - 2007-12.

In the brochure (Official Document) handed out to visitors, Sachs explains SPACE PROGRAM: MARS is a follow-up to an unmanned "landing on the moon" that Sachs and his team completed in 2007, at which time they "collected 13 lbs of Moonrock and associated regolith. Nobody died. In the 50 months since, they have processed their samples, created compelling displays, and reported their findings. Now, they have taken their SPACE PROGRAM to the next level with the first ever manned mission to Mars. They have retrofitted and expanded on their first mission, building intricate sculptural systems and practicing the necessary rituals to explore and colonize the Mars landscape."

Front view of Journeyman - 2006-10.
Photo by Dave Pinter, via Flickr.

It is mention of this prior excursion/project that comprises a second component of the current exhibition at the Armory: the Museum of the Moon. Housed in the Veterans Room, objects from this earlier project include spacesuits, drawings, and moon rock samples. It is from the vantage point of this exhibition within an exhibition that makes apparent this it is the determination of object-making, or even just the act of creating, that is on display here. The brochure describes Tom Sachs as one who "strives to emphasize the presence of the human hand, reminding the viewer of the hard work involved while challenging aspects of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation." True dat.

Sample Return Box         and                              Death of Marat

You'll notice that the NASA logo abounds. This installation is obviously informed by the working systems of this organization and their amazing scientists. The NY Times' Randy Kennedy points out that the work "mines the United States space program for an entire prefabricated aesthetic — script, choreography, costumes, sets — and also for a complex load of cultural baggage about what fuels the compulsion to explore outer space.” So Sachs is also commenting on the commodification of creative endeavors....the colonization mentality of the first to there gets the booty, to plant the flag, to name their baby. The Apollo program might have been one of the crowning technological achievements of the 20th century but is was also "a work of performance art, one that spoke volumes about America’s aspirations and fears."

This brings us to a third component of the exhibition, the shop. Here you can find pens and pencils, backpacks, Tom Sachs' playing cards, Nike sneakers, and a variety of other SPACE PROGRAM: MARS branded items. It follows the Takashi Murakami model, an artist who famously incorporates stores within his exhibitions to sell his Louis Vuitton designed bags and cheap souvenirs...blurring the line (or making apparent) the relationship of art and commerce. Is it an ironic twist that Sachs has made numerous sculptures in his career that conflate the branded face of luxury with perverse weaponry, in works such as Chanel Chainsaw (1996)?

The fourth element of the exhibition, and likely the most effective, was the performative component. Throughout the run of the exhibition a variety of demonstrations were conducted using the stations to play out various rituals and procedures for survival, colonization, and scientific exploration, such as instrument checks, take-off and landing, rover deployment, red beans and rice preparation, suiting protocol, "their first walk on the surface of Mars, collecting scientific samples, and photographing the surrounding landscape."

Yesterday was an endurance demonstration in which Tom Sachs and his team conducted the Mars expedition from start to finish. I stayed for the suiting up and take-off and felt that the work really came to life in this context. The NY Times' Ken Johnson had criticized the exhibition saying, "The show’s entertainment is diminished, however, because the exhibits are mostly static. Few objects do more than sit there to be looked at, and observing the variously clunky, smart and dumb ways of representing high-tech equipment wears thin after a while." That has some validity, but the performative component cannot be dismissed, and while the system checks had the monotony of a C-SPAN hearing, the experience of sitting and watching "men at work" in a tongue and cheek manner was simultaneously soothing and entertaining.

Here are two videos. One of "lift-off" from yesterday's endurance performance and the other is from a prior performance. The second one has higher production values than mine! But the first is so.....well..."Thunderbirds are go"!!




Anne Pasternak, Creative Time’s president and a curator of the show points out, “It’s not just about making objects. It’s about involvement in an ongoing performance every minute of the day. And he’s using that to ask a lot of very serious questions about human ideologies and the decisions we make about this planet and the future of our species.” He's also examining how and why we work. What makes us curious. And how we manufacture systems of inquiry and then brand them with an American penchant for originality, shock, and newness.

time - body - space

time-space-body and action - gallery l’attico in rome  - klaus rinke  - 1972

“In general, if one were to summarize my vision of art it would be this: Art is living together with each other at the same time, earthbound to the same globe. Some people come earlier into this life, some people later but all in a time structure measured by instruments. ” — klaus rinke 

"I created “Primary Demonstrations” to show the public what it means to be together at the same time, - man and woman getting up, sitting, standing, being there, getting tired, going slowly down, lying – daily rhythms, life rhythms, gravitation, earth bounded-ness.” — klaus rinke 

"… Sometimes, the progress of the present into the future leaving the past behind is disturbed or even broken off by chance events. At that point, past and future descend into the present and merge with each other – the state of timelessness begins. As yet, we have no sense organ able to peer into this timeless space. But if we work on it, such an organ might develop in a mutation.” — klaus rinke 

"The best form always already exists and no one should be afraid of making use of it, even if its elements derive from someone else’s work. We have enough original genius. Let’s repeat ourselves ad infinitum.” — adolf loos

Bushwick Open Studios 2012

This weekend is Bushwick Open Studios and yesterday I walked around and saw a number of works. The first stop was the Loom building. Juan Miguel Palacios was showing his layered canvases. These dramatic works, of both figural and interior spaces, were impressive. Using a series of transparent panels his paintings become three-dimensional objects that provide a magical, optical effect. The two-dimensional images below do not do them justice.

Emotion 1 - 2010

 Sin Titulo

Abandono

The next stop was a studio building at 56 Bogart Street where another artist, Seung Mo Park, rendered an image in layers, however using mesh rather than paint. Park's studio had only one of his mesh portraits and the rest of the room was filled with chain sculptures. I found the one of a girl folded over in child's pose to be particularly poetic.

Another artist at 55 Bogart was Casey Opstad, whose pixelated seascapes play with today's main medium of viewing....the computer screen. The romance and meditative quality of the seascape, accomplished so well in the serene works of an artist like Hiroshi Sugumoto, is turned on its head and our attention is drawn to the pervasiveness of the digital camera. Casey's canvases confronted me with how often our sole means for seeing is through these digital devices.

Of course the highlight of 55 Bogart was Oliver Warden's performative sculpture, Untitled Box (2010), which should be a must-see for everyone. I won't tell you much about it as I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise!!

The last stop of the day was the Luhring Augustine gallery on Knickerbocker. The featured artist there was Charles Atlas whose video projections were playing throughout the gallery in a show called "The Illusion of Democracy." I loved these works. In one piece he animated the integers 1 through 6, and as white figures against a black background they were made to spiral, pirouette, approach and recede, and sparkle like stars in the galaxy on three walls, so that your entire visual canvas, straight and peripheral, was filled. Another piece by Atlas presented single digits in a horizontal framework, like that of a movie projection, and played with moving vertical lines so as to have you think of an old t.v. set trying to tune itself. 

 Painting by Numbers - Installation view - Luhring Augustine Bushwick, 2012

143652 - Installation view - Luhring Augustine Bushwick, 2012

These animations by Charles Atlas drew me in, like a performance, I wanted to see what they would do next. It is probably true that, as the NY Times said, there is nothing entirely new here, but for me they were a visual treat that transported me to deep space and deep within.  At times I felt immensely small at others infinitely big. I wouldn't miss it. Closes July 15, 2012.