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Frank Gehry, Tech Entrepreneur: The Starchitect's R&D Firm Debuts Cloud-Based Design Software GTeam

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Frank Gehry, Tech Entrepreneur: The Starchitect's R&D Firm Debuts Cloud-Based Design Software GTeam
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When Frank Gehry planted his shapely Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, he changed the field of architecture forever. The architect’s portfolio and his clout have grown considerably since then, but it appears that perhaps the most recognized name in the field is seeking to revolutionize architecture in a new way: Gehry Technologies (GT), a company founded in 2002 by Gehry Partners’s research and development team, has announced a free preview period for their latest off-the-shelf product GTeam. The new cloud-based software described by Gehry as “Google Docs for 3D models” automatically translates files from AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino, Google SketchUp, and other professional modeling software into a common format, which can then be easily accessed and shared online.

“We were hearing from our customers that collaboration is difficult,” said GT director of research Andrew Witt in Cadalyst. “It’s hard for people to get data in the same place at the same time.” Presentations among designers and construction professionals are surprisingly archaic, often requiring time-consuming printouts on different colored paper to keep track of any modifications to the design. In response, Gehry Technologies turned to the cloud — GTeam creates a web-enabled shared space for architects, engineers, and construction specialists to upload and manage documents ranging from PDF files to computer-generated 3D models. Not only does GTeam enable multiple users to access project files from any Web browser, but it also offers different levels of security for folder sharing, clash detection for real-time editing, and an internal social media platform for easy correspondence, all contributing to a significantly streamlined design process.

“My team and I rely on a technology-driven approach that is deeply rooted in collaboration,” said Gehry in a press release. The architect experimented with the technology now made available by GTeam to realize some of his most iconic recent designs, including 8 Spruce Street in New York City. In the past six months, firms like Safdie Architects, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU, UNStudio, and hundreds of other firms have been toying with the new software, made available in a private offering. “I am proud,” Gehry added, “to have contributed to the creation of technology that will facilitate better communication and collaboration in building.”


Rem Koolhaas Makes Stirling Prize Shortlist Debut — Twice! — Drowning Out Zaha Hadid's Olympic Pool

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Rem Koolhaas Makes Stirling Prize Shortlist Debut — Twice! — Drowning Out Zaha Hadid's Olympic Pool
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Zaha Hadid is out, and restraint is in. That is, at least, according to the Royal Institute of British Architects, helmed by institute president Nicholas Grimshaw, which announced the shortlist for its Stirling Prize nominees today.

The prestigious, £20,000- ($31,240) distinction has, for the past two years, gone to Hadid — an architect whose work is the opposite of restrained — but this year's nominated projects feature decidedly simpler lines. The swooping shapes that dominated previous nominees — like the Hopkins Architects' parabolic Olympic Velodrome that narrowly missed the prize in 2011 — are noticeably absent in the 2012 line-up. Most telling is that Hadid's work isn't on the list at all.

Even Rem Koolhaas, an architectural heavyweight known for his renegade irreverence and penchant for disharmonious lines, makes his Stirling shortlist debut with not one, but two buildings — the Rothschild Bank Headquarters in London and the serene Maggie's Centre for Cancer at Glasgow's Gartnavel General Hospital — both of which the Guardian's Rowan Moore describes as "assemblies of intelligently arranged boxes."

The same could be said of David Chipperfield's Hepworth, the other heavyweight contender — heavyweight referring to the staid, concrete right angles that make up the Yorkshire art museum. And following last year's nomination of the Olympic Velodrome is the plain-Jane Olympic Stadium by Populous, which critics had initially harangued as being "pretty underwhelming," and bearing a close resemblance to a "bowl of blancmange" (the European version of calling something vanilla — we think). The rest of the list includes Dublin-based O'Donnell + Tuomey's Lyric Theatre in Belfast — an auditorium of rich, polished wood and angular lines — and the modernist minimalism of Stanton Williams' Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge. 

Does this year's shortlist usher in a new era that favors boxiness and function over innovation and spectacle? The nominations are a tasteful response to hard economic times. Something similar happened in the '70s, a decade mired by high unemployment and rising gas prices, coupled with designs of the most basic, boxy silhouetttes (although with much less grace). And the push for austerity leaves the extravagant Hadid holding the short end of the stick; her Olympic Aquatics Center earned her neither a Stirling Prize nomination nor a ticket to the Games this year, although, rumor has it, they're saving her nomination for next year, when the ugly temporary seating has been removed. The winner of this year's prize will be announced on October 13.

To see the Royal Insitute of British Architects' shortlist for the 2012 Stirling Prize, click the slide show

 

Carine Roitfeld Releases First Image From CR Fashion Book, And It’s Animated

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Carine Roitfeld Releases First Image From CR Fashion Book, And It’s Animated
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The official sneak peek from the hotly anticipated CR Fashion Book has been released — and it moves.

Carine Roitfeld’s first magazine since she left the top post at French Vogue — set to be released September 13, in the middle of New York Fashion Week — has a Web site, and on its homepage is a mysterious animated gif. WWD reports that, unlike the videos and photos from the mock issue that came out last month, this image will appear in the magazine.

In the picture, model Juliet Ingleby is walking through a graveyard in red heels and a flowing, full-body purple veil, underneath which she is wearing basically nothing. As a gif, the veil ripples and billows in the wind.

It’s not exactly proper cemetery wear. Nor is it the style most associated with Roitfeld: dark, dark, dark. Thus, there are the three ladies in black behind Ingleby, each in long leather boots, onyx-colored makeup, and raven sheaths covering parts of their faces.

There are no further clues or hints about the magazine, apart from this message printed on the bottom-right corner: “CR is coming.”

WWD also got word of the inevitable blowout party that will accompany the magazine’s launch. This was hardly a surprise, as Roitfeld loves a fancy, star-studded bash, whether it includes a karaoke contest or a multi-designer runway show. And if a certain model named Kate Upton does end up on CR’s debut cover, as the rumors suggest, maybe she’ll show up. (A rep for the magazine said she can’t reveal any details about the upcoming event.)

Perhaps there’s no other time to launch a project with such pedigree, but New York Fashion Week is a crowded time of year. With up to five must-attend parties a night and enough pages of September issues to circle the globe, it tough to envision a spot for another heavy hitter.

Oh, who are we kidding. Carine Roitfeld seems to have run this town during fashion weeks past, and with a new splashy magazine propping her up, surely any party she throws will be a major draw. 

Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news.

Russian Performance Artist Sews Mouth Shut in Support of Jailed Punk Rockers Pussy Riot

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Russian Performance Artist Sews Mouth Shut in Support of Jailed Punk Rockers Pussy Riot
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MOSCOW — On July 12 an unknown woman in a dress similar to the dresses worn by members of the imprisoned Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot chained herself to a cross next to St. Petersburg's Church of Saviour on Blood. Then Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis wore a "Pussy Riot" T-shirt. Later he and Franz Ferdinand vocalist Alex Kapranos sent letters of support to the three imprisoned anti-Vladimir Putin punk rockers. But the most recent show of solidarity with the jailed trio may be the most extreme.

Yesterday around 3pm the young artist Petr Pavlensky arrived at St.Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral with his mouth sewn shut with strands of coarse thread. Many people were impressed, not by this action — he has a history of often much bloodier protest operations involving thread and body parts — but by the poster he held with the message: “The performance of Pussy Riot was a replay of Jesus Christ’s famous action (Methodius 21:12-13).” The passage the poster referred to is a famous scene in which Jesus expels tradesmen and merchants from the church.

Pavlensky's protest not only targeted censorship and the unfortunate condition of artists in Russia, but also likened Pussy Riot's hardships to a Biblical narrative. He stood for an hour and a half at the Kazan cathedral before policemen arrived and circled the artist, who did not respond to their threats. The officers appeared to be afraid to touch him, though he was eventually taken away in an ambulance for psychiatric examination and was determined to be sane. Pavlensky removed the stitches after the action. Meanwhile Pussy Riot's jail sentence has been extended until January, 2013.

Watch video of Petr Pavlensky's protest outside St. Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral:

 

This article appears on ARTINFO Russia.

Slideshow: Images from artMRKT Hamptons

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Slideshow: America through a Chinese Lens at the Museum of Chinese in America

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The Unflinching, Bold (and Gay) Rapper Le1f Asks “Wut”

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The Unflinching, Bold (and Gay) Rapper Le1f Asks “Wut”
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Just because Frank Ocean felt it was time to tell fans that he'd fallen in love with a man over the July 4th holiday -- a move that for the most part was met with open arms -- doesn’t mean that homophobia has disappeared from hip-hop. Case in point: the disgusting (and sadly predictable) blog and twitter reaction to rapper Leif’s music video for the rather awesome “Wut.” (World Star Hip Hop: "This Is What Happens When Rappers Start Admitting Their Gay?" [sic].) But for the most part, the New York-based rapper -- who’s never been shy about his sexuality or sticking up for himself -- was undaunted by the taunts and attacks. This is still what hip-hop world is like right now, but Le1f isn't about to let that stop him from doing what he does and being who he is.

“Wut” is a near-perfect example of what Le1f (real name: Khalif Diouf) does so well: Taking a slightly sinister and at times abrasive beat, rapping over it in his distinctive guttural voice (one that can flip from a leisurely stroll to a full sprint instantaneously), and turn out something fun and danceable. It’s like first-wave grime, but accessible. The video for the song captures this feel well, with Leif booty poppin,' posing like he’s “in a manga,” and sitting on a shirtless, Pikachu mask-wearing man’s lap. Like Le1f, it states in all caps exactly what it’s about.

This is the common thread that runs throughout Le1f’s first mixtape, “Dark York.” He hurtles through the record's 21 tracks with wit and bravado. Released this spring, the mixtape proved a hit with the  indie-leaning section of the blogosphere. “This is a tape that feels like a census of right-now sounds,” Pitchfork’s Hari Ashurst wrote. Fact Magazine’s Alex Macpherson: “Le1f’s made his statement, a formidable one – and a potential blueprint for the future.” It was an audacious debut from an audacious artist. But good internet press doesn’t mean much, and hip-hop in particular is judged for its mainstream potential. For the time being, Le1f sexuality robs him of that. But he could be one of the people to to break through these barriers.

Through the last few months, Le1f has proven himself to be a rapper with a distinctive voice, one whose talent should override any possible description of who he is as a person. While he’ll never hide his sexuality, he wants to be known as a rapper first, and has the skill to do so. “I am gay, and I’m proud to be called a gay rapper, but it’s not gay rap,” he told Fader. "That’s not a genre. My goal is always to make songs that a gay dude or a straight dude can listen to and just think, This dude has swag. I get guys the way straight rappers get girls. I’m not preachy. The best thing a song can be called is good.”

 


New Museum's Nervy New Show Tracks Humanity's Unconsummated Relationship With the Machine

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New Museum's Nervy New Show Tracks Humanity's Unconsummated Relationship With the Machine
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The title of the New Museum’s recently opened three-floor “Ghosts in the Machine” exhibition comes from the phrase coined by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle to describe Rene Descartes’s idea of the split between mind and body. For Descartes, the machine is the functional physical body while the mind is the animating spiritual ghost, able to outlive its ephemeral host. The theorized split points toward certain deep human desires; first, for our bodies to be machines that respond to our desires automatically rather than getting in the way, and second, for immortality, and the hope that our individual consciousness does not end with our short lifespan.

These twin impulses also drive the exhibition, which is posed as an examination of “the prehistory of our digital era” by its co-curator Massimiliano Gioni in the catalogue. The show stretches roughly over the course of the 20th century, weighted toward 1940 through 1970 (it excludes any specifically Internet-related pieces). The earlier work on display often presents technology as a positive, utopian force: outsider artist Emery Blagdon’s intricate metal mobiles made of foil, tape, and wire (1950-80) were meant to heal and empower the body, as was philosopher Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone Energy Accumulator (1940), though both take on an undertone of irony in light of their practical failures to really work.  

Other artists delve into the downfalls of the ghost/machine dichotomy. Henrik Olesen’s piercing collage series “Some Illustrations to the Life of Alan Turing” (2009) shows the philosopher as a tragic figure unable to escape the mortifications of the body even as his mind pioneered the future of computer technology. Caught in a homosexual act, Turing was forced to undergo hormone therapy as an alternative to prison, and eventually committed suicide at age 41 in 1954. Phillipe Parreno’s “The Writer” (2007) is a video of an 18th-century automaton scratching laboriously with a pen on paper — no ghost, just a machine communicating language it doesn’t understand, endlessly.

“Ghosts in the Machine”'s mixing of breathless enthusiasm with incisive critique feels instructive given our own era’s overwhelming obsession with technology in the form of the Internet and social media. The exhibition treads into a period when art was seemingly made less for humans than for technology itself: see Op-art painter Victor Vasarely’s quote in the catalogue predicting that his paintings would some day be made by and for “cybernetic machines… more impartial than the best human beings could ever be.”   

The label of “New Aesthetic” has emerged recently to refer to art or phenomena that reflect on how contemporary machines, such as satellites and computer networks, perceive the world around them. If the "Nouvelle Tendance" art of the '60s and '70s (note the similarity in terms), on display in the show with pieces including Getulio Alviani's hypnotic metal disk ("Disco," 1965) and Grazia Varisco's blue and black kinetic sculpture "Schema Luminoso Variabile" (1962-63), represented work created in approximation of machine needs, then the contemporary New Aesthetic represents our desire once again to become the machines. No artist at the New Museum succeeds in integrating the paradoxical desire to both be technology and to control technology, and, one suspects, we won’t figure it out this time around, either.

Ghosts in the Machine” runs at the New Museum through September 30, 2012. Click on the slide show for photos from the show. 

by Kyle Chayka,Museums,Museums

Slideshow: Vintage Sports Collectables at Heritage Auctions and Vintage Posters at Swann

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Slideshow: Highlights from the Vogel Collection

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Slide Show: Seher Shah

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See Pictures From Last Weekend's Second-Annual ArtMRKT Hamptons Fair

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See Pictures From Last Weekend's Second-Annual ArtMRKT Hamptons Fair
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BRIDGEHAMPTON, New York — This weekend the second annual artMRKT Hamptons art fair took over the grounds of the Bridgehampton Historical Society, with 40 participating galleries from throughout the U.S. showing works by modern and contemporary artists. From Thursday night's Parrish Art Museum benefit preview to the tanned crowds perusing the spacious booths — and their conspicuous displays of Popsicle art — the fair's sophomore outing was a resounding success.

The second of this summer's three Hamptons art fairs on consecutive weekends, artMRKT followed ArtHamptons earlier this month, and will be complemented by the inaugural Art Southampton fair this weekend. ARTINFO was on the scene in Bridgehampton with summering collectors to peruse the fair's eclectic offerings.

To see highlights from the second artMRKT Hamptons fair, click the slide show.

Remembering Herbert Vogel, The Postman Who Amassed One of America's Greatest Art Collections

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Remembering Herbert Vogel, The Postman Who Amassed One of America's Greatest Art Collections
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New York art collector Herbert Vogel, a long retired postal worker, died on July 22 at the age of 89, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy of cutting-edge Minimal and Conceptual art, as well as his partner in collecting, Dorothy Vogel, who survives him.

The story of the Vogels is better reading than some fiction. They accomplished the stunning feat of amassing some 4,000 art works by artists ranging from John Chamberlain, Christo, and Chuck Close to Lynda Benglis, Sol Lewitt, and Richard Tuttle, all of it financed by the meager salaries and pensions of the two diminutive art lovers. The Vogels rank at the very top of world-class collectors, alongside the immensely wealthy Count Giuseppe Panza de Biumo of Varese, Italy, whose trove of masterworks from the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the late Joseph Hirshhorn, the uranium magnate whose eponymous museum on the grassy mall of Washington, D.C. contains some 6,000 artworks.

Herbert Vogel, a Harlem-born high school dropout and World War II veteran who was better known as Herb to his legion of artist friends, never made much more than $20,000 a year for sorting mail on the night shift for the U.S. Postal Service. Yet that tiny income, along with Dorothy’s wages as a Brooklyn reference librarian, enabled the civil servant duo to live modestly in Manhattan while amassing a staggering trove of mostly small-scaled works on paper that ultimately engulfed their one-bedroom, turtle- and cat-friendly, rent-controlled apartment on the Upper East Side.

The couple’s spartan philosophy about collecting was fairly simple, ruled by their ability to transport the work of art from an artist's studio via subway or taxi to their apartment uptown. Unlike the current modus operandi of the ultra-rich art collector who relies on art consultants, auction houses, and global blue chip galleries to fashion their collection, the Vogels were decidedly old school, explorers of studios who charmed their way into the lives of then mostly under-known artists who would later become world-class stars, thanks in part to the couple’s visionary early support and unabashed enthusiasm.

For example, according to a yellowed Wall Street Journal front page story by Meg Cox about the couple in 1986, Herb Vogel acquired the only work sold from Sol Lewitt’s first solo in the city at the long shuttered Daniels Gallery in 1965, described as a “tall, gold T-shaped structure.” LeWitt’s friend Robert Mangold helped deliver the piece to the couple’s apartment. LeWitt, who became life-long friends with the Vogels, reportedly urged them to join him in acquiring the work of his friends. It was advice well taken. “Some people didn’t want to sell to him because he didn’t want to pay what they asked,” said LeWitt of Vogel, as quoted in the article, “I let Herb pay whatever he wanted, and he didn’t really abuse that.”

In 1992, after years of consideration and surprisingly business-like bargaining, the couple gave approximately 1,000 works in a partial gift/purchase arrangement to the National Gallery of Art in the city where they honeymooned in 1962 and first visited those stellar galleries. It was the first time the couple sold a work of art in some 30 years of collecting. Subsequently, the Vogels promised 275 more works to the NGA, so it’s not surprising that their names are now carved in marble as benefactors in the 6th Street lobby entranceway to the museum. Part of their motivation was based on the museum’s iron-clad policy forbidding any deaccesioning of art works and mandating free admission, not to mention their own romantic past in that city. If it’s possible to be proletarian art collectors, the Vogels may have invented the category.  

As crisply drawn in charcoal and carbon, “The Collectors,” the 1977 work by Will Barnet — another artist the couple pursued — convincingly portrays the head-and-shoulders profiles of Herb and Dorothy, looking hard at something beyond the picture plane. Herb is hunched over like a football tackle ready to play, while the bespectacled Dorothy, one hand gracefully pointed at her throat in trance-like concentration, captures the duo’s gift of looking and knowing. 

In their heyday, the couple would reportedly see some 25 shows a week. In 2008, just before Megumi Sasaki’s award-winning documentary “Herb & Dorothy” was completed, the Vogels, aided by the NGA, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, distributed 2,500 works from their remaining collection, with 50 works going to selected art institutions in each of the 50 states. The project became known as “Vogel 50 X 50.” Currently a number of works from the Vogel repository are on view at the NGA, including two wall drawings by LeWitt, sculptures by Benglis and Tuttle, a painting by Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and a Howardena Pindell collage.

Though the Vogels, one-time amateur painters who rented a Union Square studio before giving up that practice for the serious labor of collecting, eschewed high-end art commerce, they were close and astute observers of the scene. Their unmistakable and slightly rumpled presence back in the 1980s and ‘90s was always a treat at pre-contemporary art auction cocktail viewings, where Herb and Dorothy closely scrutinized the offerings. Of course, they would never consider buying anything at auction, unless it was a charity auction, and shunned the secondary market in general.

With his gruff, somewhat irascible New York City accent and jabbing mode of delivery, Herb Vogel represented the brasher counterbalance to Dorothy’s more diplomatic and well-spoken demeanor. During several astonishing visits to the couple’s apartment in the 1980s, in anticipation of a possible magazine profile, as well as several dinners at a nearby Chinese restaurant at which the couple habitually dined (when they weren’t eating boiled chicken or TV dinners at home), it became clear these were visionary collectors, the real deal, way beyond any light-weight bohemian caricature.

“Art is Herby’s only interest, except for animals,” Dorothy Vogel told NGA curator Ruth Fine in the essay “Building a Collection: Every Spare Moment of the Day,” on the occasion of the 1994 NGA exhibition “From Minimal to Conceptual Art: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection.” Dorothy added, “I paid the bills and Herby was the mad collector who bought the art.”

by Judd Tully,Obituaries,Obituaries

British Artist Katie Paterson on Her Plan to Melt Down a Meteorite for the London Olympics

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British Artist Katie Paterson on Her Plan to Melt Down a Meteorite for the London Olympics
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Katie Paterson is looking for a large meteorite. That’s one of the first things she tells me when I meet her for breakfast at the Barbican’s café in London. “You can just buy them on the Internet,” she explains, all smiles, as she shows me grainy pictures of variously shaped space rocks on her laptop. Paterson’s wide-eyed enthusiasm is contagious, and that might account for some of the phenomenal success she has encountered since graduating from London’s Slade School of Fine Art in 2007. The Scottish-born, Berlin-based artist, whose work has appeared at the Tate, Performa 09, and Modern Art Oxford, has been invited to produce a piece for “Road Show,” a large street festival on London’s Exhibition Road that is scheduled to coincide with the Olympic Games this summer. Paterson’s idea is as poetic as it is simple: She hopes to cast a meteorite, melt it, and recast it “in a new version of itself.”

Things get hairy at the realization stage. Some facts: Most of the millions of meteorites on earth are made of stone, some are composite (casually described by the artist as “iron stony meteorites”), and others are almost entirely composed of (meltable) iron and a little nickel. The vast majority of meteorites are quite small, but for Paterson’s project, size matters—which, when one remembers that iron is among the heaviest materials on the planet, complicates things. “I’d like it to be as large as I can find,” says the artist. “The specimen I’m looking at is over 150 kilograms, and over 50 centimeters in width—fairly large in terms of meteorite sizes.” Although some trace elements will dissolve during the melting process, causing the total mass to reduce by approximately 5 percent, the final piece will in all probability look very much like the original.

As it goes through this slightly absurd cycle, Paterson’s meteorite will morph from raw substance from the depths of space to man-made object. The artist domesticates the cosmos’s immensity; she gives the unfathomable a human scale, putting it within our reach. “The cast meteorite will likely be placed on Exhibition Road in a discrete place, where people can sit around it and be able to touch it,” she says. “Most meteorites have been traveling around space for over four and a half billion years. They are older than the earth, and the oldest objects on earth. I like the idea of this vast cosmic history being embedded inside them. Melting a meteorite and reforming it is a little bit like compressing and merging together these layers of time, history, and space. Eventually I would like to send the meteorite back into space, though that might not be for many years.”

Paterson shares this dream with Cornelia Parker, who has wanted to shoot a meteorite (un-messed-with, in her case) back into the firmament since the mid 1990s. Finding herself in Texas for a project, the British artist even initiated talks with NASA that eventually fell through when the scientists discovered she wasn’t a permanent U.S. resident. Over the years, Parker produced several fireworks containing ground-up meteorites, burned the positions of landmarks onto maps using a red-hot meteorite heated up on her kitchen stove, and once threw a lunar meteorite, at night, into a lake in Boston—a gesture only signaled afterward by an aluminum sign stating the work’s title: "At the Bottom of This Lake Lies a Piece of the Moon," 2000. “An alien object from space, the meteorite embodies the fear of the unknown, fear of the future,” Parker has said.

Yet Parker’s and Paterson’s lines of investigation are distinctly different. While the former draws on the symbolic and apocalyptic potential of meteorites, the latter approaches them with amateur-scientist gusto. Paterson has been collaborating with astro-physicists, meteorologists, and nanotechnologists for the past few years. “I do a great deal of research, but I’m skimming the surface of huge bodies of thought that have been going on for thousands of years,” she says modestly. “I don’t have a claim to be any kind of authority on any of this.”

For all their preparation, Paterson’s projects retain a haiku-like, expressive efficiency. Most could be described simply as such: Making a phone call to a glacier, ("Vatnajökull [the sound of]," 2007); Burying a reduced grain of sand in the Sahara ("Inside this desert lies the tiniest grain of sand," 2010); Collecting darkness ("History of Darkness," 2010–ongoing). And whether or not they end up as objects, their effortless evocative power is what makes Paterson’s projects so convincing. “I’m thinking of new works, which might involve text, as idea images,” she says. “They won’t necessarily be something that you come across or see; rather they’re a way of communicating these ideas and allowing them to take form in people’s imagination.”

This article first appeared in the June issue of Modern Painters magazine.

 

Slideshow: Highlights from Capsule in New York City

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Paging Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler: Peter Jackson Plans a Third "Hobbit" Movie

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Paging Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler: Peter Jackson Plans a Third "Hobbit" Movie
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Peter Jackson is negotiating with Warner Bros. to extend his two-part adaptation of J.R.R.Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” into three films. Added to “The Lord of the Rings” triptych, that would make a Middle-earth six-pack – though, since Jackson doesn’t have the rights to Tolkien’s posthumously published “The Silmarillion,” the seven-part Star Wars and eight-part Harry Potter franchises seem unlikely to be outflanked in terms of chapters.

A “Hobbit” triptych (as opposed to a “trilogy,” which implies separate stories) is a distinct possibility. The Los Angeles Times reports that Jackson “has concluded that there is enough material from the book, as well as the extensive appendices to ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ to make a third film, according to three people who were not authorized to speak publicly. New Line Cinema, the Warner Bros. unit overseeing production of the movies, is eager to see it happen, and talks are underway with actors and others who would need to sign off on the plan.”

Because new deals must be made with “numerous rights-holders and actors,” the Times adds, the third film is not guaranteed to happen. “Lead actors in particular hold leverage as they know New Line would need them for the picture.” Some of the actors and rights-holders only signed up for two films. Talks with Martin Freeman (who plays Bilbo Baggins) and Ian McKellen (Gandalf) and other actors have been taking place.

There are no details yet of how Jackson and his co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens would stretch “The Hobbit” into three. The Times speculates that the Battle of the Five Armies, which climaxes the book, would be held over to the third part. That would theoretically allow Bilbo’s pivotal encounter with Smaug in his treasure-crammed lair and the dragon’s last flight to climax part two.

What would Jackson and company import from the “LOTR” appendices, which stretch to 102 pages (though not all is in narrative form)? It had been rumored that Jackson had wanted to find a way of working “LOTR”’s Strider/Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) into “The Hobbit,” as he did Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom). In the partial tale of Aragorn and Arwen included in Appendix A, Tolkien tells of the slaying of Aragorn’s grandfather by hill-trolls, his father’s murder by orcs, and describes his meeting with Arwen and early courtship of her. So the filmmakers have license to integrate Mortensen and Liv Tyler, who played Arwen in “LOTR," and they could perhaps do it through a tale told by Gandalf.

The corresponding (and action-packed) tale of the romance of Lúthien the half-elven and the mortal man Beren – which costs the maid her immortality, as marriage to Aragon costs Arwen hers – could also be incorporated. It is not only told by Aragorn to the hobbits in “LOTR,” but mentioned in Appendix A: “Together they wrested a silmaril  [a talismanic Elven jewel] from the Iron Crown of Morgoth,” under whom Sauron served as a lieutenant. How good does that sound?

Slideshow: Jessamyn Fiore Chronicles SoHo's Freewheeling 112 Greene Street

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"Artists Could Get Away With a Lot More": Jessamyn Fiore Chronicles SoHo's Freewheeling 112 Greene Street

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"Artists Could Get Away With a Lot More": Jessamyn Fiore Chronicles SoHo's Freewheeling 112 Greene Street
English

Strolling through the immaculate grid of chain stores and frozen yogurt places that is SoHo, it’s difficult to imagine that —40 years ago — the neighborhood was a derelict, post-industrial artists’ playground, a wasteland of abandoned warehouses that — due to tax incentives and zoning laws — was inhabited only by artists. Curator and playwright Jessamyn Fiore’s new book, “112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970-1974),” vividly portrays this fecund moment, focusing on the artist-run alternative space that was a hot house of site-specific, avant-garde art practice. The book arrives on the heels of last year's "112 Greene Street" exhibition at David Zwirner, which highlighted the work of several key players including Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris, Richard Nonas, Alan Saret, the space’s founder Jeffrey Lew, as well as the late, great Gordon Matta-Clark.

While Matta-Clark is celebrated as a totemic figure of post-minimal art, 112 Greene Street, which served as his artistic laboratory, had slipped into the shadows of art history, as had many of Matta-Clark's friends and collaborators associated with the space. Fiore — the curator of the exhibition and the daughter of Jane Crawford, Matta-Clark's widow — collected interviews with many of the surviving members, compiling an oral history of the 122 Greene Street’s early years. The book, published by David Zwirner and Radius Books, officially launches today at David Zwirner’s pop-up bookstore at 533 West 19th Street.

Recently, Fiore spoke about the history of 112 Greene Street, it’s key players, and the spirit of experimentation and creative generosity that flourished in its early years. 

Was there a precedent for this kind of space?

There had been artist run spaces, but what made 112 Greene Street unique was that the work itself was site-specific and installation based. That really coincided with a moment of art history, from what was happening with post-minimalism to looking at process art to working with raw and industrial materials to that ethos — which I think 112 really captures — of interdisciplinary experimentation. It was the right space at the right time and that hadn’t happened before… [The artists] never referred to 112 as a gallery. They referred to it as a workshop. There was never an opening per se. It happened quite organically.

Did 112 serve as an incubator for Gordon Matta-Clark’s large-scale interventions in architecture?

Gordon was really inspired by the group of people he was working with…112 was almost his graduate school experience. His first solo show at 112 is where he presented his Bronx floors, which was his first cuttings piece, and also “Walls Paper,” which is one of my favorites. He took photographs of the walls of developments after they had been torn down and got them printed onto news sheet — very colorfully — and then pasted them on the wall as a kind of wallpaper. A wallpaper made of walls. And he also had a stack of them that people could take home, and put up their own "Walls Paper." It was a phenomenally beautiful, yet eloquent and simple way, to bring that experience into your own home... I think 112 was the first opportunity where Gordon really thought, “how do I address the problems with this architecture? With these urban development that are failing? How do I take what’s going on there and bring that into a gallery space. Is that even possible?”

An episode that sticks out was when Gordon Matta-Clark and Ned Smyth were doing building cuttings and got stopped by the cops in the South Bronx.

Ned was Gordon’s assistant when Gordon was doing his first cuttings in abandoned buildings in the South Bronx. A couple decades before, [these buildings] were touted as new housing developments that were going to bring up the area. But the project was a complete failure. So Gordon and Ned went [to the Bronx] and did these cuttings. Ned was really worried that junkies or other people in the neighborhood were going to stick them up. Once they have all the equipment on, it was really loud so they didn't notice anyone coming in. They looked up and they were surrounded by police. Ned was freaking out, thinking, “We don't have a permit. We’re not supposed to be here cutting up buildings.” And Gordon just said, “Oh. We're supposed to be here. It's demolition.” He just said it with such authority and — because it was such a weird thing to come across —the police just said, “Well, OK.”

Gordon managed to do that a few times in his career. There was a warrant put out for his arrest when he cut up a public pier in 1975…But then the city went bankrupt and they had to drop all standing warrants…There were so many bigger fish to fry in terms of the general problems the city was having. Artists could get away with a lot more. With Gordon and Jeffrey Lew as well…what's a nice way to put it? They weren't intimidated by following rules of law per se. It was a bit of a free- for-all. You have to remember the political circumstances of the time. The Vietnam War was going on. The men of that generation were being sent to die in Vietnam. There was a mandatory draft so they were all eligible for that. That was something hanging over their heads.

Jeffrey’s ex-wife Rachel tells a story that I think is pretty funny. Jeffrey got a psychiatrist to say that he was mentally unstable, that he was the last person you want in the foxhole with you. They lived on the top floor of 112 Greene Street at the time. Down on the street there’s a cop giving a ticket. Rachel sees Jeffrey opening the mail. He reads the [draft] letter. Drops the letter. Runs downstairs. Runs across the street to the cop and punches the cop in the face. He got sent to Bellevue, and had to spend a month or two there. Anyway, that’s how he got out of the draft.

Bill Beckley, one of the 112 artists, said 112 inhabited the “cusp of modernism and postmodernism. We were negating much about Modernist aesthetics, but at the same time we believed that what we were doing was new and that there still was the possibility of the new.” How did 112 help change the paradigm from modernism to postmodernism?

I would put it more squarely in post-modernism personally…They were all reacting, not just to modernism, but to early post-modernism. Particularly minimalism, but there was a sense of, “We’re doing something for the first time, we’re breaking the rules, anything is possible.” And I also think there was an immense generosity with a lot of the work. It wasn’t just art for art’s sake. There was a sense of a kind of social responsibility, even if they hadn’t put it in those terms yet.  

You devote some time in the book talking about FOOD, which is the sister space and restaurant run by artists.

FOOD was opened by Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark, along with Tina Girouard. It was a place where people could get a job if they needed one. It was a place where everyone could hang out. There weren’t really any restaurants around there, there weren’t these kinds of gathering places…This whole food culture really came up from the South with Tina Girouard, Richard Landry, and Keith Sonnier. The community gathered around food, and that eventually became FOOD restaurant. But it was also in some ways an artwork, which I find fascinating. Gordon made the “Food” film with Robert Frank…Also the ads about food in Avalanche magazine are works of art in themselves. FOOD and 112 Greene Street were very much brother-sister spaces.

Going back to this idea of these artists being sort of forerunners to relational practices, food was a huge part of Gordon’s work from the very beginning. It brought people together. It’s a ritual that everyone, no matter who you are, knows how to partake in. I think it was an extension of the ideas the artists were working with, beyond asking, not just how do I make a discreet artwork, but how do I exist within the world and relate to others, and what is that relationship beyond just having something in an exhibition that somebody comes to look at. 

It seems there were quite a few male and female artists working together at 112. What were the sexual politics of the space?

I think that, particularly given the time, it was quite equal…If you look at the timeline, it’s incredible how many women had solo shows there and started their careers there. [My book] stop[s] in 1974, but just after that, Mary Heilmann had pieces in an exhibition with Suzanne Harris. Susan Rothenberg had her first show there of her now-iconic large horse paintings, which really struck people at the time, as it was a very anti-painting era. Those paintings really took everyone aback and made them think painting anew. I emphasized Girouard and Harris because I just adore their work, but they have been overlooked…I personally want to keep pushing Harris. One of the reasons I love her is that she really is at the intersection of dance and the visual arts. She started out as a dancer and performer, and began building these beautiful installations that were activated by her body, then moved into installations that were experiential for the audience. Unfortunately, she died in 1979 when she was still quite young. So she has been largely overlooked. I hope that a lot of women from that generation are now starting to get the recognition they deserve. I hope that the women of 112 fall into that category.

112 received a grant in 1973 from the NEA. Was that the beginning of the end for the space?

It was the beginning of a change, of a transition; it was the end of this early period. It was the end of this core group of artists running the space. It was the end of the Jeffrey Lew years. 112 did continue. It received funding and was run by other people, but they did eventually lose the space in 1978. It moved and became White Columns, which is still around today. In order the recieve outside funding, they had to create a program, like this is what we are going to be doing for the next six months or a year, and that started to seep a bit of the spontaneity out of the organization. It required administration. There were a lot of inspired people there, but not necessarily administrators. 

For a time, you ran Thisisnotashop, a not-for-profit arts organization in Dublin. As the former director of an alternative space, what lessons can current art spaces learn from 112?

I think there is way too much emphasis on the idea of long-term sustainability. Some things aren’t meant to last forever. And that’s ok. You don’t need to sit around justifying a 10-or 15-year plan when what you’re doing in this moment is exactly what needs to be done. It’s not about longevity. It’s about impact and community.

George Trakas cut a whole through the space's floor. Richard Serra locked Leo Castelli in the basement. Bill Beckley’s created an installation involving live rooster, which later became a dead rooster, after it was accidentially exposed to some toxic substance. What was the craziest thing that happened at 112 Greene Street?

Vito Acconci’s performances were pretty sensational at that moment. Chris Burden did a performance where you went into an elevator and there was a sign that said “push pins into my body,” which they then did, and it was put into a live video feed back into the space. But I love the story that Rachel Wood tells about Gordon’s piece in the basement where he had a cherry tree and a mound of dirt that he then grew grass on. It was the middle of winter. Rachel says that, at an opening, this woman was just so moved by it, she took off all her clothes and lay in the grass. And I love that. It’s beautiful. I guess moments like that are wild. But they seem very genuine. There was a real sense of freedom and experimentation. People also talked a lot about the parties they had that sound like so much fun. Somebody told me — might have been Tina — that once they were at a loft party dancing, and the floor actually started to bounce dramatically with them all, bouncing up and down. At the end of the day, one thing you can say is that it sounded like a lot of fun.  

112 Green Street comes out of a specific set of cultural and economic circumstances. With the cost of living as it in New York as high as it is today, such a space wouldn’t be possible.

No it wouldn’t. It’s really interesting to think about what was going on in New York at that point. It’s hard to imagine that 40 years ago the city went bankrupt. It couldn’t fill [Soho and Tribeca], which had been its manufacturing base. Robert Moses even proposed to build a highway right through it. That proposal was blocked, but they were still left with this problem. Here was all this empty industrial space and no industry that wanted to move in. Obviously, the space suited artists’ needs and the city kind of got on board with certain tax benefits to encourage them to move there. Artists were doing a lot of work basically for free in terms of renovating these spaces, bringing life to the area, and making it an interesting place to go. I think nowadays that's kind of become a model that some people exploit, but really at the time it was genuine. It was a confluence of circumstances in terms of the economy, in terms of the urban space situation, and also in terms of what was happening with art practice at that time.

I love the descriptions of SoHo. How there are so few of them there. It was a community of about 500 [artists]. They would walk around at night and feel like they were the only people there. There is this sense of being in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world, but you’re kind of this fringe community. A lot of people I talked to, this was a really special moment in their lives. You get that nostalgia. I think today, people sometimes have a knee-jerk reaction against idealizing something, but I do think there was something special there. It might have only lasted a second, but it was a really special moment in our history. I just think it’s important to capture that history and the voices of the people who were there while we still can.

Book launch and cocktail reception for "112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970-1974)," co-hosted with D.A.P. and Radius Books, takes place on Wednesday, July 25th, from 5-7 PM, at David Zwirner, 533 West 19th Street, New York

 

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