Krauss on Fried on Stella

One day while the show, "Three American Painters" was hanging at the Fogg Museum at Harvard, Michel Fried and I were standing in one of the galleries. To our right was a copper painting by Frank Stella, its surface burnished by the light which flooded the room. A Harvard student who had entered the gallery approached us. With his left arm raised and his finger pointing to the Stella, he confronted Michael Fried. "What's so good about that?" he demanded. Fried looked back at him. "Look," he said slowly, "there are days when Stella goes to the Metropolitan Museum. And he sits for hours looking at the Velázquez, utterly knocked out by them and then he goes back to his studio. What he would like more than anything else is to paint like Velázquez. But what he knows is that that is an option that is not open to him. So he paints stripes." Fried's voice had risen. "He wants to be like Velázquez so he paints stripes."

- Rosalind Krauss, "A View of Modernism," Artforum Vol. 11, No. 1 (April 1972), p. 48-51.

The Getty Center's California Video

Serious stuff out of The Getty.  They've posted a nice assortment of excerpts of videos from their California Video exhibition online: over fifty videos covering over forty years worth of material.

The ability to sort by date, artist, or theme (e.g. 'California Stories', 'Signal Distortion', etc.) is fun, but it's a little bit of a shame that they chose to use their own proprietary media player instead of just using YouTube.  If the quality of their digitizations was markedly better I'd understand the choice, but they're only a tad bit bigger than the default YouTube size, and you can't adjust their size even in the cases where the quality of the resolution begs for it.

I recognize the oddity in entrusting a public corporation with hosting the media files, but the broader reach such a move would afford seems worth it.  How great would it be to have Burden, Baldessari, Ant Farm, and the host of others popping up as suggested videos for YouTube users?  (Also, I could then be a little bit lazier about updating the Video Art series on here, and just embed Getty videos for the next few weeks.)

All of that said, I'm excited.  It's great to find more of this stuff slowly making its way online.  Now if only the Centre Pompidou (neat opening page), where I saw remarkable access to full-length videos via computer terminals during a visit this summer, and other institutions would make a move.

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

Robert Irwin, on deciding to take painting seriously:

"There was a certain point when I realized that if I was going to play, I was going to have to make the commitment necessary to do it. There was no simple shortcut. It was a question of, 'Do you want to do it, or don't you?' And I don't remember what it was that instigated it, but at one point I decided I really wanted to do it."

Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1982), p.52

Video Art 9 - Vito Acconci, Centers (1971) [Excerpt]

Is over six thousand YouTube views (in about eighteen months) for a classic of early seventies video art a lot or a little? The full video runs for about twenty minutes. Acconci's position does not change.

The guy who uploaded all these classic Acconci clips deserves a prize.

Works Cited: Rosalind Krauss, "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism," October 1 (Spring 1976), p. 50-64.

Video Art 8 - Andy Warhol, Kiss (1964) [Excerpt]

Listen with the music off at least once, though the addition of the Mertens (however questionable) makes this a nice video to send to your Lover. Also, fast forward past 4:30 for the more serious fare. The full version is 54 minutes long.

Land Art Database 0

A new project here at Sixteen Miles of String: The Land Art Database (or The LAD). I'm going to start cataloging the locations of various pieces of land art in Google Maps. I'll be trying to write a quick note about one a week, but for now I've stuck down markers for two pieces you can see from Google's satellite images: Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Michael Heizer's City.

I set it on 'Terrain' mode because I think it looks the most pleasant embedded on the site, but click the 'Satellite' button if you want to see the actual pieces from above. (It is interesting that the terrain maps don't include either Spiral Jetty or City.)

For now I'm going to focus on post-war pieces made by people that would consider themselves artists. (In other words, I won't be putting Stonehenge on here.) Since so much of this work is located in rather remote areas, I think much of it is going to be wonderfully difficult to find. Many of the places / pieces I've dug around for aren't (or are just barely) visible since their locales haven't been extensively photographed, sort of reconfirming the truth that you you ultimately just have to see a lot of this in person.

Send over an e-mail if you have any other locations; I'd appreciate it!

A Post-Weiss, Post-Riggio, Post-Govan Dia

The resignation of Jeffrey Weiss from Dia was announced via e-mail this morning, another hard hit for a foundation that has seen many of them, and the Times published fairly extensive coverage. It's impossible not to admire his honesty in the press release and Times coverage, in which he basically says that he doesn't think he was an ideal fit for the position of rebuilding Dia's finances and reestablishing a position in New York City.

From the Times: “It took me too far away from curatorial and scholarly work. ... I had an idea that being director of Dia would be different because it is such a small place.” The tricky issue with Dia seems to be this very notion of its scope: it's always been a fairly lean operation that's tackled and achieved idiosyncratic and oftentimes wonderful things. It moved into Chelsea before everyone else, it built and maintains Dia:Beacon relatively cheaply, and has provided vital (if varying and selective) support for contemporary art activities for over three decades. These incredible successes, coupled with the rise of the contemporary art market over the past decade, have set almost unbelievably high expectations for the institution.

What I've always loved about Dia (and - full disclosure - I used to intern for them in a very minor capacity) is their willingness to fund and support the bizarre and unusual. Keeping Walter De Maria's New York Earth Room, The Broken Kilometer, and Lightning Field, not to mention Michael Heizer's City isn't cheap (in terms of both maintenance and opportunity costs for that real estate). The pressures coming from many corners of the art world seem to demand that Dia starting thinking big or go home, an attitude that their board hasn't exactly repudiated, always openly stating their desire to have a permanent foothold in New York City.

After banking almost $40 million on their recent sale of their famed Chelsea building, Dia has the means to start a legitimate fund raising campaign for the space in New York. Indeed, the New Museum pulled off just such a triumph, so we know it's possible (the immediate economic environment perhaps notwithstanding). It's going to need to raise big money if it wants to grasp those enormous ambitions, though, and with Riggio out of the picture (and no major donors immediately in view) that's going to be tricky. Ultimately, it seems they need to develop a coherent rationale for why they need the space. Are they trying to serve as an almost-permanent temple for the group of minimalists and conceptualists that rose to fame in the 1960's and 1970's that their founders collected (and are being remembered as the newest - and perhaps last - Greatest Generation in art history) that their founders collected, or do they want to actively engage upcoming and mid-career artists as they've done recently with the video work of Sadie Bennings and the wonderful Francis Alÿs exhibit at the Hispanic Society of America? For now, I'm hoping for the second option. (It also seems like it would be easier to raise money for these more public activities, though that's conjecture.)

Tyler Green points out that three major New York art centers are now in need of directors: the Met, the Guggenheim, and Dia. The first two are guaranteed to emerge from their search intact (and, in the case of the Guggenheim, almost any shift would be an improvement of their current direction). But Dia is in a more precarious position. While the Times and many art professionals still focus their attention on its every move, it's a name that hardly has the cachet of many of its 'competitors' (particularly the New Museum, after its all-out media blitz). If Dia's board decides to pursue the goals that so many are hoping they will they're going to have to act quickly. Surely there must be some abandoned warehouses sitting across the East River waiting to be snatched up.