After Sherrie Levine, After Richard Avedon

Currently on view at SF MoMA is a retrospective of photographer Richard Avedon.  Here's the breakdown on MoMA's website: 

Whether photographing politicians, artists, writers, fashion models, or movie stars, Richard Avedon revolutionized the genre of portraiture. He rejected conventional stiff-and-staid poses and instead captured both motion and emotion in the faces of his subjects, often encapsulating their intrigue in a single charged moment. SFMOMA is proud to be the only U.S. venue for this retrospective that spans the artist's remarkable career. Featuring nearly 200 photographs along with a selection of vintage magazines, the exhibition presents work ranging from Avedon's earliest street scenes to his breakthrough 1950s Paris fashion pictures and the iconic celebrity portraits that brought him world renown. This in-depth retrospective reveals Avedon's singular ability to blur the lines between photojournalism, fashion photography, and fine art.

As a photographer primarily known for his "breakthrough 1950s Paris fashion pictures" and "iconic celebrity portraits," Avedon is a photographer working outside the strata of both art photography as well as postmodern photography (as per our discussion of Solomon-Godeau's "Photography After Art Photography").   The photographs featured in this retrospective had a very distinctive character: all were  iconographic images of human subjects, or, portraits.  Of all the conversations I overheard as I walked through crowded exhibition, not a single one was about Avedon's images.  It was clear that people were much more interested in discussing Avedon's subjects, a who's who of 20th century cultural icons.  Where much of the postmodern photography we examined in class were photographic re-presentations, Avedon's photographs were all, simply put, presentations.

After Sherrie Levine, After Richard Avedon

"Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank?" NYT Op-Ed

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/opinion/16dutton.html

Serata Futurista

Last Thursday I attended at UCLA's Fowler Museum called "Serata Futurista," an event celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Futurism by F.T. Marinetti.  Featuring live readings, performances and original Futurist films, Serata Futurista was intended to be a lively evening of Futurist art and entertainment.  Although I enjoyed watching the original Futurist films that were presented at Serata Futurista, I found that the live performances and readings were pretty off the mark.  As much of Futurist art and writing emphasized intense sensory stimulation, furious dynamism and hyper-kinetic activity, a event celebrating Futurism would either have to emulate these characteristics with 21st century fervor and innovation, or simply present a retrospective of Futurism that is temporally encapsulated as movement "of the past."  Yet Serata Futurist was neither, as it straddled awkwardly between presentations of original Futurist work and contemporary "interpretations" of Futurist writings.  A performance I was especially dumbfounded by was a reading of "Who's On First" that was interjected with snippets from Marinetti's 1909 "Futurist Manifesto."  I am still very unclear as to why on earth "Who's On First," perhaps the most trite, stale, tired example of archaic American comedy was read aloud at an evening celebrating Futurism.

Here's a few moments from another Serata Futurista performance "Science and the Unknown Synthesis of Syntheses":

The highlight of the evening was the screening of several Futurist films, which was what brought me out to Serata Futurista in the first place.  I think that the event would have been much more successful had it ONLY been a screening of Futurist films in that, conceptually, the live theatrical performances of Serata Futurista were extremely unsuccessful in their attempt to emulate Futurist proclamations.   Had the evening been limited to the presentation of original Futurist work and writings, the audience would have been able to examine Futurism retrospectively, as a movement that was responding to not only the many technological innovations of modernity but also the emerging political crisis of Italy's recent unification and subsequent WWI intervention.   The fervent and zealous character of Marinetti's first Futurist manifesto reflects an excitement and eager anticipation for a new era, for what is to come.  This excitement was made clear in the films screened at Serata Futurista, most especially a 1930 film by Futurist Tina Cordero entitled "Vitesse," or "Speed" (see video above).  Here, Cordero employs stop motion techniques, unconventional angles, dramatic silhouettes and other experimental production methods to create a film that truly deserves the title of avant-garde.  Yet as "Vitesse" and the other Futurist films were screened at the end of Serata Futurista, I did not enjoy them as much as I would have had they been screened independent of their awkward, modern-day counterparts.

Jack Goldstein's "The Jump"

Analog Hell: Projection Performances by Bruce McClure

Per our class discussions relating to the emergence of video art in the seventies, I made it out to the REDCAT Theatre last Tuesday night to check out the "Projection Performances" by New York artist Bruce McClure.  Using three 16mm film projectors as his medium, McClure's "projection performance" is thus created by his ability to manipulate and distort the hollow images projected onto a black screen.  McClure's performance Tuesday night was appropriately titled "Locative Enigma - Frameshape of Hard Mettles - A Personal Problem."
A personal problem indeed: MY personal problem.   The performance began without any visual gimmickry: the dimming of the house lights were followed by the projection of two, flickering white squares as well as a looped audio track of blaring (so blaring in fact that ear plugs were handed out to each audience member), repetitive, mechanical sounding thuds.   THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD (this 'beat' was continuous throughout the performance).  After my first three minutes of enduring this audio/visual assault on the senses I began to grow increasingly impatient.  At what point does McClure's artistry reveal itself?  Well, I can't answer that because I got up and walked out after about twenty five minutes.  I can certainly make the claim that my nerves were too fragile to endure another moment of what I would undoubtedly refer to as analog brutality.  What really concerns me more isn't necessarily my distaste for McClure's seizure invoking art practice, but instead, the immediacy that this distaste manifested itself.  I would imagine that McClure's entire performance lasted roughly ninety minutes, and of that ninety minutes I could only bear about twenty five before I could no longer resist the urge to exit the theatre and flee.  If McClure's intention was to test the limits of his audiences' endurance, I definitely failed this test...but I know I wasn't the only one.   As you can see in the video footage I shot of McClure's performance below, a fellow deserter is caught in the act.