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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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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.)