53 Art Museum, a new avant-garde contemporary art institution located in Guangzhou China will present an exhibition of three cutting-edge artists, Feng Feng, Qin Jin and Liu Qingyuan. Curated and sponsored by the prominent Asian Art Magazines Art Gallery Magazine / Gallery Sights. On view at the 2011 LA Art Show - Jan 19-23.
Adolf Ziegler 'The Four Elements: Fire, Water and Earth, Air' before 1937
The above painting is one of the works on display at the Guggenheim NY that explores artworks from France, Italy, and Germany between World War I and II. Today is the last day of the exhibit. Adolf Ziegler's The Four Elements was hung in Adolf Hitler's apartment in Munich. To Hitler the painting exemplified his ideal of what art should be: "realist, idealizing, and classical." Hitler despised modernism. The artist Ziegler was hired by Hitler to head the The Reich's "Chamber of Visual Arts." Its chief responsibility was to absquatulate all modernist artworks from German museums. Ziegler, who who was already a member of the Nazi party, met Hitler in the early 1920s. Ziegler became Hitler's "artistic advisor" in 1925. Hitler commissioned Ziegler to paint a portrait of his niece, Geli Raubal, who committed suicide with a single gunshot wound to her lung, after an apparent fight with her uncle, in the same Munich apartment; she was 25. Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936 is a fascinating look at an artistic movement in Europe that reverted, with almost wishful thinking, to more idealized forms after one the most brutal, violent wars in human history. Click here for more info.
MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt/Main is showing how fashion changes our view of the world. In the 1990s, the fashion scene fundamentally reinvented specifically the medium of photography. That decade gave rise to a new generation for whom personal identity, individualism and a self-defined style were of crucial importance. Back then, the joie de vivre of the generation of 20-30 year-old creative minds thrived on music, subculture, intimacy and fashion. A new notion of corporeality was being celebrated in the major capitals of the world, such as London, New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Paris. The protagonists of this era sought to distinguish themselves from the established art and fashion scenes, and develop an alternative, lived counter-culture. They felt that the overly artificial images of prêt-à-porter, haute couture and glossy fashion magazines needed to be overcome and replaced with “real life” pictures instead Youth-Culture. They thus collectively dismissed the notion of the beautiful, and tried to elide gender differences and other social conventions. Catch the last few days of this show - more info here.
The second in a series of Tower exhibitions focusing on contemporary art and its roots offers a rare look at the black-on-black paintings that Rothko made in 1964 in connection with his work on a chapel for the Menil Collection in Houston. A recording of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel (1971), the haunting music originally composed for that space, accompanies the exhibition in the spacious East Building Tower Gallery. In the Tower: Mark Rothko closes on January 9th at the National Gallery of Art in Washinton. www.nga.org
Currently in New York for the Rock n' Roll Circus at Lincoln Center. Monday was the first night of this spectacular two day event that includes music, food, ponies and tattoos. It is quite a circus. Tonight, the weirdness ensues, with these Pas Un Autre highlights to look forward to: lo-fi wunderkind Ariel Pink headlines and the amazing Minka Sicklinger is tattooing a specific set of uniquely designed flash for $30. Just like the good old days. www.rocknrollcircusparty.com
Adarsha Benjamin 'Electric Tickle Machine in Cony Island' © 2010
Today is the first day of the Rock n' Roll Circus at Lincoln Center. Exhibiting in the VIP lounge are new polaroid photographs by Adarsha Benjamin, who is also organizing the event which includes two full days of music. See previous post for more info.
"Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures focuses on the artist's cinematic portraits and non-narrative, silent, and black-and-white films from the mid-1960s. Warhol's Screen Tests reveal his lifelong fascination with the cult of celebrity, comprising a visual almanac of the 1960s downtown avant-garde scene. Included in the exhibition are such Warhol "Superstars" as Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and Baby Jane Holzer; poet Allen Ginsberg; musician Lou Reed; actor Dennis Hopper; author Susan Sontag; and collector Ethel Scull, among others. Other early films included in the exhibition are Eat (1963) and Kiss (1963–64). Twelve Screen Tests in this exhibition are projected on the gallery walls at large scale and within frames, some measuring seven feet high and nearly nine feet wide, while Kiss is shown at the rear of the gallery in a 50-seat movie theater created for the exhibition. Warhol's film Empire (1964) will be shown in this theater every other Friday starting January 7, for the duration of the exhibition. Sleep (1963), in its entirety, will be shown in this theater on Wednesday, February 2, and Wednesday, March 2." www.moma.org
I'm sitting at JFK airport waiting for a puddle jumper to Burlington, Vermont. Its new year's day. The great year of the Rabbit has begun. In the Vietnamese zodiac, the cat takes the place of the rabbit. I find it incredibly fascinating the transmutation of animal spirits to interpret our human personalities and the age in which we live. Its as if we live vicariously through their mystery, whilst captivated by their obliviousness to their own power and magic. As we enter the year of the Rabbit I think of one the greatest personalities of the 20th century: Pablo Picasso; and his painting entitled Cat Devouring a Bird and a photograph of him holding his pet owl. Pablo Picasso was born in the year of the Snake. That says a lot. Or does it? I believe that the mystical powers of animals to represent cycles, years, epochs and their cosmic associations is more real than we imagine. If in the Chinese Zodiac the Rabbit is interpreted as agile, versatile, abundant, artistic, and compassionate than why can't we hope that in fact our lives in the the new year will be the same. The motto for the year of the Rabbit is "I Retreat." Hard to do in an airport with thousands of frantic, confused, wanderlust travelers. In the Chinese Zodiac each animal has a ruling hour of the day. The rabbit's ruling hours are between 5 and 7 a.m. Sunrise. Its currently half past 6 in the morning Eastern time. Today we are all Rabbits in one strange momentary paroxysm, in the inexorable gravity, the great miasma, always being pulled closer and farther away.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre