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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Jon Davies' 20 Favourite Art Experiences in Toronto in 2009
(with no regards for conflicts of interest)
1-2. Noise Ghost: Shuvinai Ashoona and Shary Boyle (curated by Nancy Campbell) and Funkaesthetics (curated by Luis Jacob and Pan Wendt) at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Left: Shary Boyle, Iceberg, 2007. Right: Shuvinai Ashoona, Monster, 2003-2004.
3. What It Really Is (curated by Nicholas Brown, work by Kristan Horton, Liz Magor, Kristi Malakoff, Kerri Reid and Jennifer Rose Sciarrino) at Red Bull 381 Projects
Jennifer Rose Sciarrino, Supposed Stalactites (Purple and Green Pendants), 2009
4-5. Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva: Magnetic Resonance on Abissologic Experiments (with Images Festival) and Street Poets and Visionaries: Selections from the Ubuweb Collection (curated by Kenneth Goldsmith) at Mercer Union
Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva, Magnetic Resonance on Abissologic Experiments, 2006
6-8. To Die Like a Man by Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Trash Humpers by Harmony Korine and Phantoms of Nabua by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (with MoCCA) at the Toronto International Film Festival
Harmony Korine, Trash Humpers, 2009
9-11. Talking Points + Talking Ponies by Ben Coonley (with The Power Plant), In the Room 3 by Sung Hwan Kim, dogr (aka David Michael DiGregorio) and Byungjun Kwon (with Gallery TPW), Siting Cinema (curated by Jacob Korczynski, film/video by Oliver Husain, Emily Wardill, Isabell Spengler, Steve Reinke and others) at the Images Festival
Sung Hwan Kim, dogr, Byungjun Kwon, In the Room 3, 2009
12. Satellite by Redmond Entwistle at Gallery TPW (with Pleasure Dome)
Redmond Entwistle, Satellite, 2009
13. Drag Holes by Produzentin and Mary Messhausen at Pride Toronto
Produzentin and Mary Messhausen, Drag Holes, 2009
14. Micah Lexier: Two Parents and Three Children at Oakville Galleries
15. Candice Breitz: Same Same at The Power Plant
Candice Breitz, Still from Factum Kang (Featuring Hanna Kang and Laurie Kang), 2009
16. Stephen Andrews: As Above, So Below at Paul Petro Contemporary Art
Stephen Andrews, The View From Here, 2009
17. Derek Sullivan: Waiting Game at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
Derek Sullivan, # 47, The Whole World 2009
18-19. Ming Wong: Eat Fear at Trinity Square Video (with Reel Asian Film Festival) and Learn German with Petra Von Kant at the Art Gallery of York University (with Images Festival)
Ming Wong, still from Angst Essen/ Eat Fear, 2008
20. That Night Follows Day by Tim Etchells at Harbourfront Centre's World Stage
Tim Etchells, That Night Follows Day, 2009
So, yes, a good year.
Sholem Krishtalka's top ten list for 2009
#1-10: An Opera for Drella, Jack the Pelican Presents (Brooklyn, NY), Sholem Krishtalka.
Yeah, that's right. Me. My debut solo show in New York was the ten best things of 2009. It was ambitious, conceptually engaged, witty and fun. The paintings were vividly coloured, archly composed and seductively painted. And not even taking into account the fact that I made the work, I can say, fairly objectively, that my show was ten of the best things I saw this year; and I even saw the Venice Biennale (which mostly sucked, PS). I would go so far as to say, in fact, that, alongside the shows I saw this year and liked (oh, I dunno, Shary Boyle and Shuvinai Ashoona at the Barnicke, Stephen Andrews at Paul Petro spring to mind the quickest), my show was on par with my favourite thing at the Biennale, Elmgreen and Dragset's The Collectors. Yup. In complete and total seriousness, I can say with absolute conviction and objective critical authority that my show was on par with all those shows. It was the Top Ten.
Gabrielle Moser's Top Ten List
and Akimblog Editor, Terence Dick's five highlights from the past ten years of Canadian art.
My Top Ten Songs of the Century by Mike Canzi
They're in chronological order by year of release. I provided a link to "official" videos where I could find them, but I don't swear by the videos. It's the songs that I like.
1) Outkast - Red Velvet (2000) - Like most of the other songs on the peerless Stankonia, "Red Velvet" is a call to start thinking outside the box ... 'cause you know that fucker is made of pine. A decade later, this song still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it.
2) Queens of the Stone Age - Feel Good Hit of the Summer (2000) - A pounding, neanderthal beat, outrageous, buzzsaw guitar that'll rip your head off and lyrics that read like the shopping list for a party you ain't want your chirren going to, this song is what rock'n'roll is all about, not that limp, polite Beard Rock the scions of the weathy are churning out by the bowlful today.
3) The Weakerthans - Pamphleteer (2000) - "Pamphleteer" is the slow dance boy-loses-girl flipside to Left and Leaving's adrenalyne boy-bounces-back song, "Aside." It is clever, with lyrics mocking 20th Century red-scare propaganda, and Canadian, in the 20th Century meaning of the word, with countrified jangle and prominent slide guitar.
4) El-P - Accidents Don't Happen (2002) - A guitarist's worst enemy, other than a singer, is a patchcord that is plugged into an amplifier at one end, but dangling free at the other ... 'cause you know that shit is gonna buzz. Well, that buzz runs right through this track, the heaviest straw on this camel's back of an album of hobbling beats, grating electronic noise and impenetrable lyrics. (I like it, by the way.)
5) Deerhoof - Apple Bomb (2003)- Dissonant, jangling guitar and a singer with a childlike voice and tenuous grasp on the English language. What's not to like? Deerhoof was the one consistently great band of the decade and this song, 'round about the 3-minute mark, is where it first starting clicking with me.
6) Jay-Z - 99 Problems (2003) - In this, easily the most "punk" song of the century, Jay-Z tells you what you can do to protect yourself, legally, when stopped for driving while black. A civics lesson you can sing along with. Brilliant.
7) The Go! Team - Ladyflash (2004)- A gold star moment in the short history of Cheerleader Rock, of which The Go! Team was the only known exponent.
8) Clap Your Hands Say Yes - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth (2005) - This song has its charms--the warbling, David Byrnesian voice of the singer chief among them--but the big story here is how it came to my attention in the first place: Clap Your Hands Say Yes was the quintessential internet buzz band. Back when this song came out, the band probably couldn't even buy a friend in their own home town. Then one blogger took a shine to their self-released CD and told his two readers, both of whom were also bloggers, and they told their four readers, and so on.http://www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com
9) Black Lips - Veni Vidi Vici (2007) - Seamless melding of 1960's garage band fuzz with 21st Century studio trickery. I don't know how they made it sound like this, but I have enjoyed listening to it again and again trying to figure out.
10) Fucked Up - Black Albino Bones (2008) - Someone in this band knows something about electric guitars, because they manage to make them roar, ring and feed back at the same time. This one's up there in the electric guitar pantheon with Back in Black. It's that good.
Honourable mentions to Andrew Bird for "A Nervous Tic Motion," LCD Soundsystem for "Someone Great," Aesop Rock for "Daylight," Outkast (again) for "Hey Ya," and The Juan Maclean for "Give Me Every Little Thing."
Peter Bowyer's Top Ten for 2009
1. In March I was invited to a conference at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds on rethinking sculpture of the 60’s and 70’s in Britain. The institute had an excellent survey exhibition of the German artist Asta Groting. I liked her sculpture ‘Potatoes’ (2006), a line of 100 roughly peeled potatoes made of polished bronze, running along the floor in earth bound repetition.
2. In London I saw the tremendous Annette Messager show at the Hayward Gallery. I was familiar with her work from the early 90’s when she showed with us at Cold City in Toronto, but this exhibition covered her whole career. The piece I kept returning to was ‘The Boarders’ (1971-72), dead birds she had found and knitted sweaters for.
3. Mark Wallinger’s curatorial piece The Russian Linesman, also at the Hayward, featured a collection of works from all over the place. I got stuck on Jerome Bel’s video ‘Veronique Doisneau’. A ballerina recounts aspects of ballet life and the parts she hated dancing to in Swan Lake. In the men’s room I listened to James Joyce reciting from ‘Finnegans Wake’ over tiny speakers.
4. At The Saatchi Gallery I saw Unveiled: New Art From The Middle East. Shadi Ghadirian’s photographs from the Ghajar Series (1998-1999) attracted me with their serene beauty, especially the tall Persian woman with vacuum cleaner.
5. Wafa Hourani, a Palestinian artist living in Ramallah had one of the best sculptures in this show, imagining the future of the Middle East in cardboard, wire, colored thread and mirror. ‘Qalanda 2067’.
6. Rebecca Warren at the Serpentine felt like an important show to have seen. Galleries of similarly made objects, in dialogue with early modernist sculpture techniques. Serious and funny metal sculptures. I really liked this dried clay piece on a rotation pedestal. ‘The Mechanic’ (2000).
7. Keren Cytter, an Israeli artist had some interesting film projections of artificial drama in her show ‘Domestics’ at Pilar Corrias Gallery. Four Seasons (2009)
8. Spartacus Chetwynd’s sprawling installation ‘Hermito’s Children’ was a great place to start the Altermodern show at Tate Britain. An island of bean bag chairs, tangled up headphones, multiple monitors, hand held camera work and lots of people lounging around.
9. Further into the Altermodern show Rachel Harrison’s ‘Bike Week in Daytona’ (2008). A tall accumulation of drippy paint covered buckets and a monitor, kindled fond clownish memories of Abstract Expressionism.
10. Back in Toronto the visual impact of the freshly painted yellow Karen Carpenter room in Candice Breitz’s installation at the Power Plant has been hard to forget. ‘Double Karen’ (Close To You) 1970/2000. It was like looking at the sun.
Andrew Harwood - The Ten Best Tops in 2009
1) Guy Maddin's The Little White Cloud That Cried, a short film that is tranny-tastic in the vein of Jean Genet and Jack Smith with a bit Russ Myers thrown in, read great fake breasts. This film will premier at the Berlin Film Festival in January. Its such an amazing short piece that is just pornographic enough for German audiences to be pleased. Its saturated colours, fab sound track and enough cock and boobs to make even the most sated porn addict happy. Lexi Tronic is sure to become the new "Most Dangerous Woman in European Cinema." Ace Art Inc., Winnipeg.
2) R.M Vaughan's Sears Portrait Studio Shots in Taddle Creek magazine. The Christmas Number 2009. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen published in a magazine. Vaughan poses as a little boy in an actual photo shoot by a Sears photographer. I love this work mostly due to the critique on the emphasis in gay men's culture on youth, but this work also speaks about the Daddy/Son play not often talked about in polite press (not gay porn.) Vaughan is thirty-ish so the play is truly on age here and he has already been accused of being a pedophile!! The popish backgrounds of the pics are totes funny and also talk about the construction of the identity of youth and young-ness, through photography.
3) Kim Kitchen's amazing installation Movement of Water in Barrie at the MacLaren Art Centre - reminded me of how lucky we are in Canada to have fresh water available to us. Photographs and projections from her travels in Africa are placed in buckets of water locally collected. This show was very both aethetically pleasing and political all at once, kudos to curator Sandra Fraser
4) Being invited to participate in this year's Power Ball as Mdme. Zsa Zsa was fabulous - somehow there were no social gaffe's at all - except for the ones I created - like spraying people I didn't like with tonnes of Trés Semme hair spray!! & drinking glitter mixed with their themed punch - oh and smoking inside. Oh and keeping the money I made because I was so poor - I got $190 and Amy Lam got $750 go figure??? Equality rocks, Godess, you just put a dress on and you get paid less! Thanks tho for reals tho to Helena Reckitt and Paul Zingrone for this fabby invite. This art party was actually fun!
5) Not being in or near nor participating in Nuit Blanche in any way shape or form - fuckin' phew. OMG dodged that art-astrophe by 1,000 miles!
6) David Garneau's heroic portrait of Luis Riel, is one of the best paintings by far I have seen this year. It is an historical painting akin to a portrait of Napoleon on his horse. His exhibition at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art this November was chock full of other excellent work especially his small beaded painting called Metis? .
7) Jubal Brown's intense video's at MOCCA for the Videodrome program for the Images Fest this past spring were bloody and punk and amazing and alive and reminded me of why the fuck I became an artist in the first place.
8) Ken Gregory's wind coil sound flow at the University of Winnipeg in October. Gregory is not only a hot stud but, an amazing audio artist. His installation was like a gigantic sounding board. The whole gallery vibrated subtly and the accompanying sculpture was like a kite/gramaphone speaker/sitar sounding board. OK Video Pool was a sponsor so what - it was a great piece. Like there is no nepotism in Toronto? - f-youse!
9) Kevin Kelly's fantastical video installation 3 Minutes in Beijing at Golden City Fine Art, Winnipeg takes its inspiration in part, from the famed "bird's nest" stadium from the Beijing Olympics and turns it on it inside out and around and all over the place. Kelly takes architectural forms and animates them into spaceship like structures that plant themselves all over Beijing. The animated "buildings" are like sexual bullets, cocks, cunts that seem to reproduce spontaneously and independently. Cool!
10) Laura Kikauka's For the Love of Gaud (Damien's Worst) at MKG, Toronto, I am sorry I only was able to see this show through the window - but I loved it so much! The mirrored and sparkly skulls on the turntables were beautiful and hypnotic and yes, hit the nail on the head - literally - critical!! Ohh the horror vacui of it all!! I love you Laura and your work and I have never even met you!!
Sunday - Dusty Springfield
How Can I be Sure
Take Me to the Pilot
Spooky
Leah Sandals' 10 most memorable events/items/stuffs/experiences of 2009
1) Cedric Bomford @ Red Bull 381 Projects
Increasingly, it seems to me that art critical practice is just a machine for making cynics. But I have to say this Bomford work-a mashup of child's-play treehouses, surveillance-society paranoia and class critique-made me a believer again, if only for a day.
2) Candice Breitz's Factum @ the Power Plant
This year, I finally read some stuff by Michael Chabon, and wondered how his steadfast adherence to plot and genre in literary creation-ie. no creative-writing MFA-belaboured style-over-substance flimflammery, thank you very much-might find a collary in visual art making. I feel like I got some hints of an answer in Breitz's Factum. From the looks of her survey at the Power Plant, Breitz has always been clever when it comes to analyzing pop-culture mimicry. But in making Canadian twins her subject rather than film celebs, Breitz seemed to tap a vein of powerful emotional narrative that engages viewers just as much as her style does. The added dimensions around imitation and identity-particularly where women are concerned-was also really amazing. Call me a psychological-insight junkie, but to my mind this was totally terrific.
3) Up
If you do not cry at some point during this incredibly sweet movie, you are not human. Totally corny, totally distance- and irony-free and totally wonderful. Period. (As an aside, this is the year that I became very much fascinated with mainstream film criticism, perhaps due to its extreme differences in volume, tenor and breadth when compared to mainstream and non-mainstream art criticism. But that's another story.)
4) El Anatsui lecture @ the AGO
During this (sadly, poorly attended) lecture, internationally renowned artist El Anatsui did something I have never seen any internationally renowned artist do before-he talked about (and showed slides of) the work of his students before he talked about his own artistic development. The result is a departure point for many different considerations-the protection and promotion of individual ego among artists; the pressures for artists from Africa and other far-flung nations to represent not only themselves, but their communities, when travelling; the vast distance in practice, experience and context between Anatsui and his peers. (Full disclosure: the lecture was organized by one of my main freelance clients, Canadian Art.) Nonetheless, what resonates most of all is the sense of generosity that was evinced. I do hope it's catching.
5) Controversy-rama!
I suspect it may be unhealthy to relish a good controversy as much as I tend to-after all, a lot of good work gets done in the art world and elsewhere without controversy, and controversy tends to end up in someone getting dinged or bruised in the end-but I must say I was glad to see a few dustups in the local art realm this past year. Whether it was the Koffler's mega-gaffe with regards to Reena Katz, the AGO laying off employees on the day of one of their biggest fundraisers, or John Greyson crying oppression at TIFF, the fact is that controversy gets people talking openly about often-concealed politics and procedures in the arts-and-culture world. Because of conflict, art ends up being discussed on the radio and in regular news pages in ways that don't have to be justified (or justified quite as much) by gallery advertising sales as might typically be the case. Sure, the media simplifies these issues along the way (I'm guilty as charged on that front myself, over and over again) but it actually gets people talking about art and its connection to politics and community. It gets stuff hidden behind the scenes out in the open for a time. And to me those are good things, no matter what the outcome is.
6) Leona Drive Project
While it's kind of sad to think that this is the kind of effort it takes to get many downtowners to realize, "Hey, there just might be some value to life north of Bloor" I'm glad in the end that this project had that effect. Not all the works were great, but the mood onsite on the day I visited was buoyant and bustling, and Richard Fung's video of a former resident talking about her life in one of the houses was wonderfully illuminating.
7) Maura Doyle @ Paul Petro
As much as I try, I can't shake this as one of my favourite art experiences of the year. Beavers are sculptors, yes, I believe it now-especially when they use pink T-shirts, and scientists carefully document it all. So funny and smart, such a reversal of the whole human/animal superiority thang. Nice.
8) Libraries
The longer I cover the cultural realm in Toronto, the more and more radical libraries-all libraries-seem. You know-a place where cultural information can be accessed (and even brought home!) for free or next to nothing? The longstanding commitment of libraries to access and community (all in the name, remember, of information-sharing and literacy promotion) is an incredible example of cultural institutions done right. (And a tremendous counterpoint to the old argument "If people don't pay for culture, they won't value it or use it." Whatever.) To be clear, I'm no lunatic-I know museum artifacts and gallery artworks need to be protected, and need special environments and atmospheres, and shouldn't be brought home. I get that, and I totally support that. And yes, I know museums need money to do these things. But an increasing number of Toronto museums have ranged so very far to the other end of the access and community commitment spectrum, making our admission fees the highest in the nation and outsourcing museum access initiatives to-where else?-the library. Pure suckage, and bad for art and culture in the long run too. (Among ways to erode popular funding support for museums, raising fees high enough to prevent a visit would seem to run high on the list.)
9) Twitter
Putting Twitter on my year-end top 10 list means I'm officially among the uncool olds. (As if there was any doubt…) But I don't really care. For introverted dilettantes like myself, Twitter is a total gold mine-there's forever someone posting a link to this or that news item or blog post from their corner of the world, and a lot of what I've found this way is actually useful or inspiring. Pithy and snarky comments also, of course, also abound, which is great. Finally, Twitter has none of those awkward "friending" dynamics or frightening privacy-forsaking requirements that Facebook does. Pure information for an impure society-that's Twitter at its best.
10) ArtStars
ArtStars is a freaking hilarious godsend to the sleepy solemnity of art media in Canada. They also cover those parts of the art world most art media don't-the drunkenness, the leering, the snobbery, and the social awkwardness that permeate most openings and related events. I'll happily disclose that for some unknown reason host Nadja Sayej invited me to a panel this year. Nevertheless, I maintain that these guys are totally great and totally worth supporting (potential ad-money spenders, do take heed!). I look forward to new episodes all the time and recommend them heartily (even if they make me, and my drab, serious little practice, look as lame and somnambular as shite). Looking forward to the first 2010 episode for damn-snap sure.
R.M. Vaughan's Ten Most Disappointing Things About 2009
10. The Michael Jackson Funeral.
Brooke Shields? Brooke fucking Shields? That's the best they could do? She even admitted she hadn't spoken to MJ in over a decade.
Here's what I learned: Plan your own funeral, now, or you get that guy who shared your lab desk in grade 9 biology class, the one who smelled like a three day old peeled apple, delivering your eulogy.
9. Barack Obama
There, I said it. You are all thinking it, but I said it. Don't yell at me.
8. The Sobey Art Award
David Altmejd is a very nice man, but that's beside the point. David Altmejd makes wonderful art, but that too is beside the point. I sometimes think we don't really award culture in this country so much as confirm it - see a wagon, hop on board. Bring your band with you, kettle drums and brass section in front. I think this way because …..
7. The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award
I was on the jury, and I was flattered and happy to be asked, and I am ultimately very pleased with the books we selected and I got along just fine with my fellow jurors - but, well, sometimes it felt like the choices were somewhat pre-determined, by factors not entirely relating to literary merit. This feeling was confirmed when I did the announcement of the finalists for the press, and Every Single Media Outlet present asked me "What about the Atwood book?", as if I'd run over a pedestrian and kept going, oblivious, a pedestrian dressed in a brightly coloured clown suit and a three foot high top hat.
6. My Total Poetry Award Shut Out
I'm not bitter-ing, I'm just noticing. My book
(his book), Troubled got some of the best reviews of my life, and of any poetry book in the country. And yet, not a single nod. No Griffin, no Governor General's, no Toronto Book Award, no Lambda, no Trillium.
This guy, Jeramy Dodds, got it all instead, on his first book yet. Mr. Dodds is tall and handsome and straight. I am short and fat and gay. The top of my head is all scratched up by the lovely but very pointy lavender stucco that coats the ceiling of my career.
5. Swine Flu
I was promised an Omega Man-like flupocalypse, and I had plans, dammit, plans! There are several houses on my street I have already redecorated in my mind, once the corpses are cleared out. Cheated again.
4. Drag Queens
Not one Susan Boyle impersonator.
It's not like any of these hags would have to do all that much to get her look down. Yes, Keith Cole, I am looking right at you.
3. Elizabeth Taylor
As I write this, there are 9 days left for her to become the Best Dead Person of 2009.
2. My Complete Lack of Feeling A Lack
At the start of 2009, I decided that I was only going to go see art that was either made by my friends or that I was being paid to assess. As you can imagine, this gave me a hell of a lot more free time, because I don't care for that many people in the first place, and newspapers don't run art reviews anymore. What I thought would happen, however, was that by about June or July, I would start to miss going to see art. Nope, not one bit. When the fall season started, I felt the same. No phantom limb syndrome, no 5 stages of grief. Maybe I never really liked most art in the first place? Or, maybe a life without art is actually a perfectly acceptable type of life? Or, maybe I am just a tired, washed up hack (ask the poetry award juries)? My resolution for 2010 is to go to at least one art show a month by somebody I have never heard of and/or no newspaper will ever cover. Go bi-polar or go home.
1. Andrew Harwood
Herself moved to Winnipeg. He had many good reasons, and his life has improved - but what about the rest of us? The city is boring without him. I honestly didn't have great expectations of Barack Obama, but Mrs. Harwood, well, he always delivered.
A.B.'s A and B lists for 2009
LIST A - Top Five Classic Food Stylist's Tips As Revealed To Me in 2009:
1) For a farm-fresh looking bowl of cereal and milk, substitute white glue for the milk.
2) Scoops of mashed potato are an effective double for ice cream.
3) A thin application of hair conditioner lends sheen to vegetables, chops, etc. etc.
4) To keep food from absorbing moisture, spray with fabric protector.
5) For the pancake money shot, use WD40 instead of syrup.
LIST B - Five Reasons Why Led Zeppelin Didn't Reform This Year
1) Simon Cowell did not decree that this should be so.
2) Music is merely soundtrack now, so the game doesn't seem worth the candle, as the Brits say.
3) Of lemons and legs. These days their whole male-female stock in trade seems puzzling. Strangely, in their own way the lyrics valorized women (at the same time they totally exploited us).
4) The Mage is in his physick garden and probably sees no reason to deal with a load of tacky Entertainment-Tonight-style questions.
5) Have you listened to 'The Battle Of Evermore' recently?? It says you can't stop the tide of history, man!!
A recent TVO episode of the Agenda on the Future of Reading brought a panel of people together to worry and argue about whether the book as an object is going to disappear and (some of them) to advocate for e-readers and the potentials of reading in a networked environment. I got itchy and squirmy. Nobody was talking about libraries, nobody was talking about access to information, nor about the fact that critical inquiry is not just for those with post secondary degrees and money for electronic gee-gaws. Publishers are filters, they receive submissions and choose manuscripts based on their own criteria. Whether or not the reader agrees with the publisher's criteria, the system is one in which the reader expects to have their own assumptions challenged. Questioning, evaluating, participating, questioning...these are the processes of shared cultural activity, and they ought to be available to everyone. Who cares if it happens on paper or on a screen? What matters is whether or not the base of participants is broad enough that the challenges of diversity help keep things evolving. And that means doing more than just carving culture up into a jumble of isolated self-perpetuating, self-affirming niche communities.
Bob Stein had an interesting thing to say, but I wonder what he means by "successful" and I wonder what he means by "community."
"The reason why I disagree completely about the idea that branding of publishers is on the way out is that I think that the the successful publishers of the future are going to be those that understand how to build a community around an author and her work and her readers."
Anthony Easton's Ten Aesthetic Events of 2009
1. The Reptiles in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call; New Orleans. (Herzog)
The movie was as insane as a match-up of Herzog and Cage could be, and there was much that could recommend it—but the visuals of the reptile have cineaste/film study thesis all over it. From the engorged python swimming through the brackish muck of a flooded jail, to a crocodile POV of a sunbaked highway, to the instantly legendary double iguana a musical number; most hermetically visionary symbolism of the year.
2. Magdeleana Abakanowicz Head (Detroit Institute of The Arts, 1975)
The 70s were sort of a game in how ugly, how abject, how brutal an object could be before it was rejected out of hand, weren't t hey? This burlap sack, sort of like Harlon Ellison's mouth that could not scream, had a brutality and bluntness that gut hits with it's crudity and unskilled, almost democratic, lowest common denominator materials. (The DIA was strange, 5th largest collection in the united states, equally divided into European aristocratic prettiness and a tight/well curated contemporary collection)
3.The snapshot from Ray Nielson of Chicago, untitled 2009 Best use of orange evah.
and this shot by Brad Moore of Laguna Beach, California, “Kermore Lane, Stanton, California,” 2008
Because it is scant miles from Irvine, with the Lewis Baltz heritage, because of it's brilliant use of vertical and horizontal composition, because of its use of colour, because it finds sophistication in work that seems to be overly processed already, because it's digital.
4. The catalog essay from the NGO show about Dan Flavin's early works and icons Corinna Theirolf and Johannes Vogy.
Which for some reason, aside from being well printed, with great colour transfers, had a great essay about iconoclasm and iconography in modern art.
5. Matt Zoller Sietz's video of the follow scene http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/following/Content?oid=1185679
Because collating has been the new creating for decades (see also this fan video decimating the line b/w homosocial and homosexual in the case of martin and lewis):
)
(also Oliver Laric's baptisms and his clip art) [posted stills from Laric's ↓ ↑]
6. The Dirt Clod fight in Where the Wild Things Are
Earnest, and about child hood, but also about the painful, difficult, and not very rewarding traumas, the banal acts of violence and destruction that amalgamate somewhere near the cerebral cortex.
7.The George Ohr show at the Gardiner Museum
Ohr is one of the most important American artists of the 19th century. His work is visually innovative, radically new, and is among the first to figure out how to aestheticise craft—we all owe him a huge debt. This tight, badly installed show, with no publicity, and a jaw droopingly stupid review in one of the free weeklies. It had a dozen of his best pieces, but who would know it?
8.Otto Marseus van Schick's serpents and insects, 1690
New Orleans has a rep for being sexy, mucky, for climbing from the fetid swamp—this huge (10x20) foot painting of insects, snakes, frogs, and one menacing turtle stood out as meet and right, esp. In the context of acres of French meringue.
9. Kirk Cameron's Fireproof, and subsequent para-texts.
The pro-am cult of the evangelical latches onto American Christan's obsession with public confession and thinking they are not quite pure enough. There is a revolving mirror to this: Outsider work made by an insider for an outsider audience who likes the celebrity of the insider but always wants to maintain their outsider status.
10. Kevin Yates at Susan Hobbes
Tiny bronze trees mirrored perfectly into decrepit houses—the most exquisitely constructed, obsessive and melancholy show, one of profound tenderness and an almost permanent detachment.
(Runner's Up: John Heward's messy post minimalism at MoCCA, Nicholas Baer's abstracted, weirdly heart breaking landscapes at MOCCA; How all of the paintings in the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame were painted by a decent but not very memorable artist in the mid 50s, the wallpaper in my friend David Preyde's home, the giant tigers outside of Detroit Stadium; wool jersey's from Midwestern industrial teams from the 40s and 50s; Levi Johnson's gorgeous, meaty ass; Bob Dylan's xmas album; the insatiable ego of Jeff Koons; having a bf for 3 months that looked like the guy from the Pringles package; Wesleyan Methodist Church in Oshawa, that small Jack Bush at the fall Heffel auction, with the stripe of unprimed canvas; That long narrow one—Rose, in the TD Centre, that long and wide pink sash one at OISE; the quirky Benglis' pieces that pop up all over the web, Mooi's one/one scale horse, rabbit and pig furniture; the hand painted mural at the back of Norman Royal Furs; the bus driver portraits at Eglinton station; the card player portraits at the Bridge Club at Bathurst/Lawrence;the Jesus loves me banner made by children at the Church of Redeemer near keele; Jean the legendary Mississauga hoarder, Sholem Krishtalka's scarves; Eaton's spring catalogs from 1968; seeing the 34th floor of the Mies temple on King; Madam Levant's Grave; Shitney Bears; the exquisite disappointment of Obama; that weird bondage queen of a neo-classical martyr at Knox; the Ryman's at the AGO; Fighter; The Gaitor Bait Bar; the polychromed statue of Joan of Arc at the Catherdral of New Orleans; getting a handjob from the easter bunny at a bar called the Bourbon Cowboy in the French quarter; The Tulane episcopal centre; any number of dutch paintings of hanging rabbits; this wrangler king of the cowboys poster at the Ft Sask Laramie; the Wedgwood ROM show; Rob Lowe as Rough Trade shot by Nan Goldin; Tim Scott's giant and sexy sexy plastics at Mirvish's weird Scarborough warehouse; Silvercliff library; Funpix Eggos; Glittery Costco era Poinsettia's; “feel like a drag, leave like a queen” on a wig store near parliament; Andy Parke's house; Atwood's weird and slightly inappropriate purple eye shadow on the cover of Zoomer; Faith La Roque on Convenience Gallery; Swedish Folk Ribbon at MacFAB; the 70s murals at that public school near Christie I did the job classes at; and the Griffin Mac Funeral Home near Main Street Station.)
The Toronto Alliance of Art Critics panel organized by Nadja Sayej a couple of weeks ago is now available on Youtube. Leah Sandals and John Bentley Mays have both written interesting blog posts about it. Having watched the video documentation, I find myself most impressed with David Balzer. Here are two things he said that I like:
The reason why people don't care about criticism isn't because there's a general apathy towards it but because it doesn't do service to the community, to the art scene, for critics to have a voice...because [artists are the] audience for us. And that needs to change. What I'm interested in as a critic is actually not the artists reading me but rather the people that aren't artists, and I don't think that there are very many. Film is different. Film is an industry, it's part of the culture, its part of the zeitgeist, people put money into it and want to know if something's good or bad. (video 6 of 8 at 4:21)Balzer is right on. But interestingly both of his statements speak more to editing and publishing than they do to writing. It's the responsibility of a publication to encourage confliciting opinions, to set up a context in which a diversity of readers are welcomed, and create an environment that readers come to because they can expect to have their assumptions challenged. There are umpteen reasons why writers self-censor, but I think the biggest is fear of offending artists. But if it is clear in the context of the publication that the audience for criticism is not the artist, but a broad and unpredictable scope of readers, then the pressure on the writers shifts less on the negative need to establish defensible positions and more towards the positive need to communicate their points of view. Editors may be frustrated that writers hold back, but that just means editors have to work harder to encourage dialogue and set a precedent. This means actively seeking out challenging critiques and then assuming responsibility when artists get their noses out of joint, rather than putting everything on the shoulders of the writer. And keeping the conversation going from issue to issue. It doesn't really matter if the context is academic or populist, the importance of editorial risk and responsibility is pretty much the same.
[...]
Being an editor has really taught me a lot of things and one of the most dangerous things you can do as a writer is to assume there is editorial opposition to what you really want to say. There is a lot of self-censure in the freelance writer community, and actually the reality of it is that there's a lot of freedom, especially in Canada, and you can say what you actually want to say ...so say it. (video 7 of 8 at 4:23)
Sharon Switzer - I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies at Corkin Gallery, 55 Mill St, Bldg. 61, Toronto, ON. Until December 22, 2009
Soft Pink Explosion 1, (compound image) 2009 Digital video drawing, 14 x 16 inches
Stephen Andrews - As Above So Below at Paul Petro Contemporary Art 980 Queen St West Toronto. Until Dec. 19, 2009
(found)
Sunday - The Crystals
He Hit Me (Produced by Phil Spector, currently serving 19 years to life)
Da Doo Ron Ron
He's a Rebel
In the current issue of Taddle Creek Magazine a photo essay, The harsh Truth of the Camera Eye by R.M. Vaughan with text by Sholem Krishtalka. (It's wrong in so many ways and you don't want to be the last to find out what everyone has been complaining about all week.)
Actually it's Top Ten Aesthetic/Art Event time. (best or worst, we're easy) (of 2009 or the last decade, again we're totally easy on this point, unless all the art you liked, say, 8 years ago, turned out to have had best before dates stamped on them)
Send us your lists and links (so we can source images.)
Do not miss this opportunity to judge out loud instead of silently.
Do not miss the same opportunity for blatant self-promotion that Sally & I take advantage of every day.
Our sort of deadline is Dec. 27th. (let's not leak too much into the new year)
(contact info at top of the page)
(found)
(found)
Beth Stuart - If Not This, What at Board of Directors, 1086 Queen Street West, Toronto. Until Dec. 19th, 2009.
Opening: Thursday, Dec. 10, 6-9pm
Squeal 2009 oil on canvas
Squeal 2009 oil on canvas
Yinyin 2009 oil on canvas
Quiz: What's better...the Canadian Department of Justice website about the Indian Act, or Shannon Thunderbird's website about the Indian Act?
(Hint: The former has exactly 0 animated gifs, the latter has lots.)
Email from R.M. Vaughan*:
Wah Hoo, Krampus Wah Hoo Krampus, Krampus Day!!
Yes, it's that time of year again. Krampus Day!!
Gosh, it seems like just yesterday that we were all gathered 'round the Krampus log, singing Krampols and drinking Krampnogg. Where does the time go?
* Worst Art Critic in Canada™
(Garry-Lewis is a self-serving careerist and an insane little prick who bites everyone's ankles.)
That said, CONGRATULATIONS Garry-Lewis on your first solo exhibition at Paul Petro Contemporary Art, 962 Queen St West, Toronto, unitl Dec. 6, 2009
Email from Fastwürms:
Email from Patrick Macaulay in regards to Fastwürms:
(I love this installation too much)
Libby Hague - One step at a time 2009 Woodcut and handcolouring (installation view) photo: Sasha Pierce
Crossing Lines: an Intercultural Dialogue with Roy Caussy, Bonnie Devine, Ali Kazimi & Jeff Thomas, Afshin Matlabi, Yudi Sewraj, Greg Staats and Ehren Bear Witness Thomas at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, 20 Ava Road • Brantford • Ontario Nov. 29 - Jan. 22, 2010
Curated by Srimoyee Mitra
Afshin Matlabi - Natives 2009 pencil and ink on paper, 50.5” x 71”
Since I am doing comprehensive exams about neuroaesthetics right now, it seems like a good time to recycle these old gifs.
