CHRISTINE PALMA
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” –Theodor Adorno
Archive for Art
February 14, 2010 at 12:01 am ·
Unfortunately due to low energy and lack of time, I could only attend the LA Art Show for a few hours to grab this interview and have a quick look around on one of the days that this was here.
INTERVIEW:
My radio interview with Kim Martingdale (click here for his bio) and others is now up:
click here to listen
REVIEW:
My first stop was the live “graffiti” art in the entranceway. Three artists were simultaneously working on three large murals brought to the LA Art Show by the LA Art Machine Gallery curated by Bryson Strauss. World reknown artists El Mac and Retna collaborated on a monochromatic portrait of a Latina done in aerosol with text. Mear One was working on a deconstructed cityscape with LA’s Watts Towers in the background and a figure of a boy in the foreground with butterflies flying from his chest. Coffee was painting a cubist monochromatic piece.
Next I visited what was probably my favorite exhibit at the LA Art Show, a show called “Signs” (click here to read press release). Sundaram Tagore Gallery curated a grouping of Islamic artists. The paintings were heavily text-based because depictions of the figure are prohibited in that culture. What you have then is text used as a textural element in most of the pieces, text abstracted to symbols. Text sources could be anything from poetry to holy books. The alphabet and its forms was also emphasized.
I then stopped off at the Uruguay exhibit. This year’s LA Art show debuted their guest country program featuring Uruguay. Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America, but it boasts a healthy democratic government, high economic development with a high GDP per capita and the 47th highest quality of life in the world. It sits nestled between Brazil and Argentina and its art scene is world class. They did not have anyone English speaking at the booth so I was not able to interview them, but the artwork shown consisted of contemporary painting and installation work, with a video exhibit as well.
Sister Cities had an collection of artists work from sister cities of Los Angeles. Pete Sterns of London had a very calming color field piece which he rendered as both a richly pigmented painting and as a computer animation. Nori, an artist from Japan, had two paintings representative of “every city.” His work is heavily influenced by jazz.
The Luce Foundation, a photography incubator, curated the Group LA exhibit. The main video element was a series of slideshows from different artist of their neighborhoods.
Finally, I found myself at the cluster of Korean art galleries. My favorite Korean artist is Yong Deok Lee who is known for his concave sculptures. The images are carved into a flat plane.
(YouTube turned up a few examples which gives an idea of the visual illusion created of 3-dimensionality when the viewer walks around his pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SaG271TqqE)
I was happy to see a new piece, an aerial view of a swimmer underwater.
PHOTOS:
I didn’t have much time to appreciate the artwork this year, but this is a small sampling:
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May 6, 2009 at 11:26 am ·
David Wilson is the founding director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which opened in 1988. Wilson has also produced six independent films, most recently under the auspices of MJT in conjunction with Kabinet, an arts and science-based cultural institution located in St. Petersburg, Russia.
We were treated to a lecture and film about philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov and Constantine Tsiolkovski, the father of theoretical astronautics. David Wilson also spoke about the early days of the Russian space program and he showed a silent film influenced by the writings of Tsiolkovski. As an aside, currently on exhibit at the Museum of Jurassic Technology are five commissioned dog portraits of the first dogs launched into space by the Soviets.
From Wikipedia:
Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov (Russian: Никола́й Фёдорович Фёдоров; surname also Anglicized as “Fedorov”) (June 9, 1827–December 28, 1903) was aRussian Orthodox Christian philosopher, who was part of the Russian cosmism movement and a precursor of transhumanism. Fyodorov advocated radical life extension, physical immortality and even resurrection of the dead, using scientific methods.
…
Fyodorov was a futurist, who theorized about the eventual perfection of the human race and society (i.e., utopia), including radical ideas like immortality, revival of the dead, space and ocean colonization. His writings heavily influenced mystic Peter Uspensky and early rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
Mankind’s Common Cause
Fedorov argued that the evolutionary process was directed towards increased intelligence and its role in the development of life. Man is the pinnacle of evolution, as well as its creator and director. He must direct it where his reason and morality dictate. Fedorov noted that mortality is the most striking indicator of yet imperfect, contradictory nature of Man and the deep reason for most evil and nihilism in man and mankind. Fedorov argued that the struggle against death can become the deepest and the most natural cause uniting all people of Earth, regardless of their nationality, race, citizenship or wealth (he called this the Common Cause).
Fedorov thought that death and afterdeath existence should become the subject of comprehensive scientific inquiry. Achieving immortality and revival is the highest goal of science. And this knowledge must leave the laboratories and become the common property of all: “Everyone must be learning and everything be the subject of knowledge and action”.
Transformation of past physical forms
The revival of people who lived in the past is not a recreation of their past physical form — it was imperfect, parasitic, centered on mortal existence. The idea is to transform it into self-creating, mind-controlled form, capable of infinite renewal, which is immortal. Those who haven’t died will go through the same transformation. The man will have to become a creator and organizer of his organism (“our body will be our business”). In the past the development of civilization happened by increasing human power using external tools and machines — the human body remained imperfect.
Fedorov points out that we need to breach the gap between the power of technology and weakness of the human physical form. The transition is overdue from purely technical development, a “prosthetic” civilization, to organic progress, when not just external tools, artificial implements, but the organisms themselves are improved, so that, for example, a man can fly, see far and deep, travel through space, live in any environment. Man must become capable of “organodevelopment” that so far only nature was capable of. Fedorov talks about supremacy of mind, “giving, developing organs for itself” and anticipates V. Vernadsky’s idea of autotrophic man. He argues that a man must become anautotrophic, self-feeding creature, acquire a new mode of energy exchange with the environment that will not end.
Fedorov repeatedly said that only broad scientific studies of aging, death, after death condition, only the science that strives to achieve a transformed immortal life, can really uncover the means to overcome death.
Wikipedia entry on Constantine Tsiolkovski:
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (Russian: Константи́н Эдуа́рдович Циолко́вский;Polish: Konstanty Ciołkowski) (September 17 [O.S. September 5] 1857–September 19, 1935) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. He is considered by many as a father of theoretical astronautics.[1] His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers as Sergey Korolyov and Valentin Glushko and contributed for early successes of Soviet space program.
Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Moscow. A misanthrope by nature, he appeared strange and bizarre to his fellow-townsmen.
…
He was born in Izhevskoye (now in Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast), in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family. His father, Edward Tsiolkovsky (in Polish: Ciołkowski), was Polish; his mother, Maria Yumasheva, was an educated Russian woman. His father was a Polish patriot deported to Russia as a result of his revolutionary political activities. At the age of 9, Konstantin caught a serious illness and became hard of hearing[1]. He was not accepted at elementary schools because of his hearing problem, so he was self-taught[1].
Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of human spaceflight and the first man to conceive the space elevator, becoming inspired in 1895 by the newly-constructed Eiffel Tower in Paris.
He was also an adherent of philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, and believed that colonizing space would lead to the perfection of the human race, with immortality and a carefree existence.
Nearly deaf, he worked as a high school mathematics teacher until retiring in 1920. Only from the mid 1920s onwards was the importance of his work acknowledged by others, and Tsiolkovsky was honoured for it. He died on 19 September 1935 in Kaluga and was buried in state.
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February 23, 2009 at 3:40 pm ·
Someone forwarded this to me: Allen Salkin has a fascinating story in today’s NY Times (link) about high end pawnshops like Art Capital Group. Annie Leibowitz has borrowed about $15 milllion from them and for collateral, among other things, she has put up the rights to all of her photographs.
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February 10, 2009 at 5:59 pm ·
This photorealistic painting of a pile of The Wall Street Journal newspapers on a bookcase by Steve Mills and the concave intaglio-like sculpture by Yong Deok Lee were my overall favorites from the LA Art Show. Please scroll down for comments and other photos.
Steve Mills
(detail)
Steve Mills
Wall Street Journal 2
Oil on Aluminum Panel
42″ x 59″
The creamy paint treatment on aluminum panel intrigued me. Why use aluminum panel?
Ross Merrill, chief curator of conservation at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, writes in American Artist:
The most stable painting panel is an aluminum panel, such as Dibond (made by Alcon), that consists of a polyethylene and aluminum-skin core. Dibond does not respond to moisture or temperature changes, is exceptionally rigid, and is lighter than plywood.
From Wikipedia on Photorealism:
As a full-fledged art movement, Photorealism evolved from Pop Art[1][2] and as a counter to Abstract Expressionism[3][4] as well as Minimalist art movements[5][6][7] [8] in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States.[9] It is also sometimes labeled as Super-Realism, New Realism, Sharp Focus Realism, or Hyper-Realism.[10] The Photorealist genre is predominately made up of painters.
Photorealist painting cannot exist without the photograph. In Photorealism, change and movement must be frozen in time which must then be accurately represented by the artist.[14] Photorealists gather their imagery and information with the camera and photograph. Once the photograph is developed (usually onto a photographic slide) the artist will systematically transfer the image from the photographic slide onto canvases. This is done by either projecting the slide or grid techniques.[15] The resulting images are often direct copies of the original photograph but are usually larger than the original photograph or slide. This results in the photorealist style being tight and precise, often with an emphasis on imagery that requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate, such as reflections in specular surfaces and the geometric rigor of man-made environs.[16]
20th century photorealism can be contrasted with the similarly literal style found in trompe l’oeil paintings of the 19th century. However, trompe l’oeil paintings tended to be carefully designed, very shallow-space still-lifes, employing illusionistic devices such as the use of shadows to cause small objects to appear to exist above the surface of the painting. (Trompe l’oeil literally means “fool the eye.”) The photorealism movement moved beyond this illusionism to tackle deeper spatial representations (e.g. urban landscapes) and took on much more varied and dynamic subject matter.
Yong Deok Lee
Yong Deok Lee
Untitled
Sculpture
This triptych was untitled. Yong Deok Lee is a Korean artist known for his concave sculptures. The images are carved into a flat plane.
YouTube turned up a few examples which gives an idea of the visual illusion created of 3-dimensionality when the viewer walks around his pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SaG271TqqE
These remind me of ancient Roman intaglio jewelry:
http://www.ancienttouch.com/roman-intaglios-cameos.htm
Other interesting pieces:
Jordan Eagles
New Blood
I asked and they said it’s made from real cow blood.
Damien Hirst
Cathedral: Orvieto
Diamond Dust and Silk screen with Glazes
42 1/4″ x 42 1/4″
$38,000
Real butterflies?
William B. Hoyt
Hours with Walter Evans, 2005
Oil on Canvas
32″ x 48″
$45,000
William B. Hoyt
Island Kitchen, 2008
Oil on Canvas
30″ x 32″
$35,000
William B. Hoyt
Aranciata, 2008
Oil on Canvas
24″ x 29″
$25,000
Chris Shelby, CGU
Reflections, 2008
Pastel on Paper
50″ x 30″
This was from the student gallery.
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January 12, 2009 at 2:19 pm ·
These have been an emotionally rough and confusing few years for me and it’s been easy to give up and become a hermit. I’ve had some health issues. So, I challenged myself to try to make the effort to see some art, especially when I have press access to events and museums, and even when it means being smooshed inside a building with crowds on all sides for a blockbuster show.
These were my favorite prints from Photo LA held at the Barker Hanger at the Santa Monica Airport:
Soo Kim
Midnight Reyjavik, 2008?
Hand-cut C-print
25 x 25 ” (63.5 x 63.5 cm)
What is the story behind Soo Kim’s Midnight Reyjavik photo series? The title of the photograph above implies that it was taken at midnight on the longest brightest day when midnight is almost indistinguishable from noon. In fact, the shadows the structures cast are short. Soo Kim’s exacto knife cuts mainly in the highlight areas where you might expect white giving the image a blown out feel. She also turns architecture into lacey membranes inviting the audience to peer into the hive that is this city.
Some interesting facts from Wikipedia for Reykjavik, Iceland:
•Its location, only slightly south of the Arctic Circle, receives only four hours of daylight on the shortest day in the depth of winter; during the summer the nights are almost as bright as the days.
•Steam from hot springs in the region is supposed to have inspired Reykjavík’s name, as Reykjavík loosely translates to “Smokey Bay”.
•Most houses in Reykjavík use the geothermal heating system. It is the largest system of this kind in the world.
•The city has fostered some world famous talents in recent years, such as singers like Björk and Oddur Sigurjónsson and bands Múm and Sigur Rós.
Rob MacInnis
Fresh Faces 2
The worse thing happened last week: My 15-year old dog Tommy died suddenly on January 2nd. He taught me to be sensitive to the animal spirit. We had been through so much together. I was still raw from this when I attended Photo LA. I was immediately drawn into Rob MacInnis’ work.
When you first encounter Rob MacInnis’ Farm Families series in the mural size, you are struck with a sense of the unhomely or uncanny. (Especially Fresh Faces I) Is it a trick, my friend asked, Are these animals alive or dead, How do they stand so still. In this particular “family portrait” (above) we have rare animals, including pygmy goats and miniature horses. I was also struck by the popularity of this print; I counted nine red dots next to the photo which means nine buyers.
If this print calls out to you, check out Rob MacInnis’ fascinating website – http://www.robmacinnis.com where you can see his body of animal portraiture work, as well as, watch a very good documentary on his work process. I would love to have this print.
The press release notes:
MacInnis’ work focuses on the idea of the creation of identity within the photographic image. By foregrounding our innate compassion of animals, MacInnis explores the correlation between the reifying process of animal consumption and the fashion world’s depiction of the body.
MacInnis’ uses animals as portrait subjects, drawing parallels between the idealization of the human form in contemporary fashion photography and the subjugation of animals by humans.
The artist gives the animals an arena for self-expression as well as humiliation. His photographs reverse the traditional roles of animals in western society, setting them to a level on par with humans. The artist’s objective is to portray an alternative world where animals are not our possessions, but individuals whom we subject to the same idealization as we would a contemporary fashion model.
Rob MacInnis’ portraits demand immediate emotional reaction, drawing on the raw connection between viewer and subject and exposing the instinctive, compassionate union of species.
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September 11, 2008 at 2:09 am ·
Remember that you are mortal.
Director David Lynch’s ‘Interesting Questions’ online art gallery (http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/030107_lynch_art.html).
His interesting website invites visitors to walk through a virtual gallery where they can stop in front of art work hanging on the “walls” for a closer look.
Choose Floor ‘A’ in the elevator to find your way to the gallery. It may take a moment to load.
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December 18, 2007 at 6:00 am ·
In the entry for December 18, WIkipedia notes:
In one of my five years of studying Latin, I had to translate parts of Livy’s (59 BC to AD 17) The War with Hannibal.
Synopsis
In The War with Hannibal, Livy (59 BC AD 17) chronicles the events of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, until the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. He vividly recreates the immense armies of Hannibal, complete with elephants, crossing the Alps; the panic as they approached the gates of Rome; and the decimation of the Roman army at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Yet it is also the clash of personalities that fascinates Livy, from great debates in the Senate to the historic meeting between Scipio and Hannibal before the decisive battle.
It was during the Second Punic War that Hannibal, a Carthaginian commander and military genius, defeated the Romans by winning several early key battles. Despite heavy losses Hannibal led an army of roughly 80,000 men (disputed), complete with a herd of 37 war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps (!) into Northern Italy. The feat was accomplished in under a month.
Excerpt:
Livy 21.32.6-37.6; translated by Iana Scott-Kilvert
Getting on the move at dawn, the army struggled slowly forward over snow-covered ground, the hopelessness of utter exhaustion in every face.
Seeing their despair, Hannibal rode ahead and at a point of vantage which afforded a prospect of a vast extent of country, he gave the order to halt, pointing to Italy far below, and the Po Valley beyond the foothills of the Alps. ‘My men,’ he said, ‘you are at this moment passing the protective barrier of Italy – nay more, you are walking over the very walls of Rome. Henceforward all will be easy going – no more hills to climb. After a fight or two you will have the capital of Italy, the citadel of Rome, in the hollow of your hands.’
…
The track was almost everywhere precipitous, narrow, and slippery; it was impossible for a man to keep his feet; the least stumble meant a fall, and a fall a slide, so that there was indescribable confusion, men and beasts stumbling and slipping on top of each other.
…
But even so he was no luckier; progress was impossible, for though there was good foothold in the quite shallow layer of soft fresh snow which had covered the old snow underneath, nevertheless as soon as it had been trampled and dispersed by the feet of all those men and animals, there was left to tread upon only the bare ice and liquid slush of melting snow underneath. The result was a horrible struggle, the ice affording no foothold in any case, and least of all on a steep slope; when a man tried by hands or knees to get on his feet again, even those useless supports slipped from under him and let him down; there were no stumps or roots anywhere to afford a purchase to either foot or hand; in short, there was nothing for it but to roll and slither on the smooth ice and melting snow.
In art history and currently on exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, we find:
J. M. W. Turner
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps
Oil on Canvas, exhibited 1812
This picture exemplifies Turner’s achievement in the , combining personal experience with complex historical and literary associations. The picture originated in observations of a storm in Yorkshire, though it represents Hannibal’s invasion of Italy in 218BC.
Turner does not show the General himself, but focuses instead on the distress of Hannibal’s army. He thus aims at a universal, pessimistic vision of mankind, a theme Turner elaborated in poetry written to accompany this work. Nonetheless, the picture invites a contemporary parallel, between Hannibal and Napoleon, who had crossed the Alps to invade Italy in 1797.
(From the display caption August 2004)
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December 17, 2007 at 8:59 pm ·
Hopefully I’ll be able to see this exhibit before it closes and write a review. Gordon Matta-Clark is one of my top five favorite artists. I’m a big fan of his films documenting his cut buildings, as well as, the cut building performances themselves. He first captured my heart fifteen years ago at Sci-Arc and during a city-wide retrospective with lectures and screenings at MOCA and UCLA.
The NY Times has background on Matta-Clark:
Few artists could match his ability to extract raw beauty from the dark, decrepit corners of a crumbling city. Fewer still haunt the architectural imagination with such force.
Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark/Artist’s Rights Society
An image from Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Splitting” (1974). H
ouses that the artist carved with a power saw commented on the American city’s decay.
A trained architect and the son of the Surrealist artist Roberto Matta, Matta-Clark occupied the uneasy territory between the two professions when architecture was searching for a way out of its late Modernist doldrums. His best-known works of the ’70s, including abandoned warehouses and empty suburban houses that he carved up with a power saw, offered potent commentary on both the decay of the American city and the growing sense that the American dream was evaporating. The fleeting and temporal nature of that work — many projects were demolished weeks after completion — only added to his cult status after an early death in 1978, from cancer, at 35.
The show brings home just how cleverly he challenged the high priests of architecture who, in Matta-Clark’s mind, inhabited a world of lofty abstractions divorced from the physical reality of everyday life. That critique is newly resonant, when even the most radical architectural ideas are quickly gobbled up by the cultural mainstream, and takes on the slickness of advertising slogans.
This is from the MOCA press release:
Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure is a full-scale retrospective of one of the key figures to emerge in the generation of artists that followed minimalism. During the brief but highly productive ten years that he worked as an artist, and even more so since his death at the age of 35, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–78) has exerted a powerful fascination on artists and architects who know his work. The son of surrealist painter Roberto Echaurren Matta, Matta-Clark produced a body of work that incorporated spatial, social, and psychological experiences. Best known for the variety of his often spectacular, planned architectural interventions, Matta-Clark’s works transformed everyday experiences into extraordinary visual encounters. Among the major works featured in the exhibition are sculptures made from his acclaimed architectural building cuts, as well as drawings, films, photographs, and notebooks. A wealth of documentary material related to his interactions with architecture and space, community events, and collective activity is also shown.
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Installation views of Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure” at MOCA Grand Avenue, 2007, photo by Brian Forrest:
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August 28, 2007 at 11:56 pm ·
In homage to this morning’s Full Moon Lunar Eclipse (2 to 4 AM), a revisit of Nam-june Paik’s video installation, “Moon is the Oldest TV,” feels appropriate.
Moon is The Oldest Television – 1965-67 (1996)
Nam-june Paik
TV Moniter,projector and video
I.
The Moon vis-à-vis the Beholder
In 1963 America put the first man on the moon, an event broadcast live on television sets around the world. That year, that day, that hour and even those minutes are punched into the timeclock of global consciousness. Two years later, Paik reflects on this event with “Moon is the Oldest TV.” The installation is composed of a single row of Philco television sets on individual pedestals. On their screens play a progression of reprocessed black-and-white video footage from full moon to new moon.
The moon as television becomes a metaphor for a philisophical view of parallax. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek (writes) in his work The Parallax View,
“…the observed distance is not simply subjective, due to the fact that the same object which exists “out there” is seen from two different stances, or points of view.
It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently mediated so that an “epistemological” shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an ontological shift in the object itself.
Or -to put it in Lacanese- the subject’s gaze is always-already inscribed into the perceived object itself, in the guise of its “blind spot,” that which is “in the object more than object itself”, the point from which the object itself returns the gaze. Sure the picture is in my eye, but I am also in the picture.
Denial is also an extention of parallax and the moon landing as a staged event is a rock that revisionist historians (negationism) cling to. (Click here for video from Moon Hoax Documentary – Fox News.)
As I contemplate Paik’s installation and the mythos of moon watching, I am immediately drawn to the Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations which claim the Apollo Moon landings were faked by NASA.
From Wikipedia:
A year after the first moon landing, Knight Newspapers conducted a poll of 1721 U.S. citizens and found that more than 30 percent of all of the poll’s respondents were “suspicious of NASA’s trips to the Moon” with the number rising to over half in some demographic areas. The Newsweek article that published the poll results noted that among the respondents were “an elderly Philadelphia woman who thought the moon landing had been staged in an Arizona desert” and a “housewife” whose suspicions were based on her belief that her television could not “receive signals from the moon.” Another respondent said, “It’s all a deliberate effort to mask problems at home . . . the people are unhappy – and this takes their minds off their problems.” …
Fox television’s 2001 TV special “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Really Land on the Moon?” … said roughly 20 percent of the public had doubts about the authenticity of the Apollo program…
A Dittmar Associates poll in 2006 showed that among 18-26 year old college-educated students “27 percent expressed some doubt that NASA went to the Moon, with 10 percent indicating that it was ‘highly unlikely’ that a Moon landing had ever taken place.”
James Oberg, an American journalist who writes about space (and has worked for NASA’s space shuttle program), estimates that “perhaps 10 percent of the population, and up to twice as large in specific demographic groups” believe in the hoax or have some doubts about the Apollo program “It’s not just a few crackpots and their new books and Internet conspiracy sites,” Oberg said in 1999. “There are entire subcultures within the U.S., and substantial cultures around the world, that strongly believe the landing was faked. …
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong in NASA’s training mockup of the Moon and lander module. Hoax proponents say the entire mission was filmed on sets like this training mockup.
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Our American culture’s shifting regard for both the physical truth and the unifying vision of the Apollo Moon Landing just in the last 45-years, speaks to a jadedness deep in our belief system. We fear being conned. We keep one hand on our wallets. We are pessimistic about our past. We distrust the future.
This nation grown wary of shared feel-good moments is like the frog-in-the-well surrounded by a dark pit of complexity. The only way out, perhaps, is through art. In the literary and visual arts we are willing to suspend our disbelief in order to reach a simpler truth.
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August 14, 2007 at 1:29 pm ·
Maurizio Cattelan’s La Nona Oralso (1999)
Venice Biennalle Installation
wax, clothing, polyester resin with metallic powder, volcanic rock, carpet, glass
This critique is only for this particular art installation and not Maurizio Cattelan’s body of work which I like. I don’t normally write public negative reviews and I will reexamine what I have written at a later date to see if I was fair in my initial assessment or to see if my opinion has matured or mellowed. This is that re-examination.
On the surface level, this piece is humorous. It speaks of science versus religion. Science 1 : Religion 0. The meteor serves as a deus ex machina that asks Catholics to probe their relationship to the divine through the vehicle of irony. For the rest of us, non-Catholics, it can be read as a joke at their expense, or more generously, it is just a reminder of how logic or physics flies against religion, literally in this case.
There is a quip that says, It’s only funny until someone gets hurt… then it’s hilarious! I was particularly offended by the fallout this art installation had on Anda Rottenberg, the Jewish gallery director who had to quit her job and probably go into temporary hiding as a consequence of all of the hate mail, angry phone calls, anti-semitism, the political turmoil and negative press that exhibiting this piece attracted. Modernity says that anything and everything is acceptable under the umbrella of free speech and artistic freedom, however, I question whether it is in good judgment to bash the icons of any of the world’s major religions, whether it be Muhammad or in this case the Pope. Strongly polarized feelings towards the Catholic church make it an easy target. It is with bated breath that the audience waits for the fallout. The art piece has come alive and anything can happen.
The use of the political effigy traditionally serves the purpose of a mob. And indeed, this piece successfully conjured up an ugly mob. Ugly mobs are only satisfied by a scapegoat; mobs want blood. In this case, it was Anda Rottenberg. The misery of one person pushed the joke a step further, to the point where it’s now hilarious. It was her bad luck for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who cares what happens to one person.
Art still has tremendous power to move people. If you bring a negative element into the world, sometimes it will find its expression through an angry or retributive reaction. Was it worth it? When a work is auctioned off for $3 Million, the market answers with a resounding Yes! This is one level on which La Nona Oralso hits its mark.
-April 20, 2011
My original post:
Maurizio Cattelan’s “La Nona Oralso” (1999, translated as “The Ninth-Hour”), was auctioned off at Christie’s in May of 2001 for $886,000.
In 2006, it sold for $3 Million.
Also known as “Pope Struck by a Meteorite,” Cattelan defends his installation at the 2000 Venice Biennale with a glib statement,
“In the end it is only a piece of wax.”
Read the rest of this entry »
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