Oliver Herring Opening

Oliver Herring's opening was packed with people who have participated in his TASK events where he solicits suggestions from the audience and then makes them perform the function. For this show he was working with teens who suggested "Make a knife, then kill someone." The resulting portraits are packed with a faux violence, like a late night horror movie.

But at the opening, everyone seemed friendly and unthreatening. He also had the best idea for an after-opening dinner. Outside a truck pulled up from Rickshaw Dumplings and dished out meals in plain white containers. Guests picked up the food then went back into the gallery for a fun sit down gathering.

Billy Sullivan Opening

Though I've been traveling a lot in recent years, I've still managed to keep some friends in New York. One of them is Billy Sullivan, the sweetest painter that I've ever met. Maybe, it's because he is a photographer too and teaches with me over at SVA's photo department. At his opening the other night, there were plenty of other friends of the artist including Joe Gaffney, Marilyn Minter, Mary Heilmann, and Elaine Reicheck. But the best friends were the subjects in his paintings who all showed up and peopled the opening as if the paintings had come alive. Actually, this was not much a stretch since Sullivan captured his models as if they were in mid conversation, fully spontaneous with real life.

Generous as he is, Sullivan also curated a group photography show in the smaller project room of the gallery. My favorite was an image of a chalk outline of human body on the wall by Dustin Wayne Harris, a former SVA student.

Dachshund Parade

The Dachshund version of the Whitney Biennial opening happens twice a year in Washington Square Park. Yesterday, there had to be over 200 doxies nuzzling each others' butts and occasionally playing with each other. Mostly, the dogs seemed pretty happy to meet others of their own kind, but since no dachshund is aware of its size--they all think they are bigger than they are--they probably would have been just as happy at a convention of Great Danes. Still, my dog Felix made friends...that is until he peed on a lady's handbag.

Back on track

I've taken a hiatus, but now I'm back on track because so much is happening in NYC right now, I can't stop commenting.

On Sunday, April 19th, I was at the benefit for Participant Inc. Totally fun, so I hope it raised lots of moolah for Lia Gangitano, the most self-sacrificing curator in town. My good friend Jim Dart did his bit, picking up my photo of Model UN which I showed at Partipant in 2006 as well as another photograph of a psychiatrist's office by Shelburne Thurber. The turnout was great, packed with Lia supporters, including Jay Gorney, collector Howard Morse, NYFA director Ted Berger and PS1 curator Klaus Biesenbach. But, as always, Lia stacked the crowd with artists--Laura Parnes, Kathy Burkhardt, Lovett and Codagnone, board president Adam Ames, Robert Boyd, and others. Performances by Kembra and Beaut, brought everyone back to the 1980s. The Pyramid Club isn't dead. It's just resting.

Anyone who thinks the China art market is over just needs to meet Yang Bin and Zhang Rui, the most visible collectors in Beijing. I had dinner with them, and about 15 other people, in Zhang's enormous, Guggenheim inspired, Mc Mansion on the northwest outskirts of Beijing last night. Neither seemed perturbed a bit by the downturn in the market, saying over and over again that this is a good opportunity to buy artists, especially younger artists. Yang Bin is about to open a humungous gallery and Zhang Rui is working on an art hotel, but as we chomped through course after course at this banquet, I kept thinking, "Are these guys on drugs?" Everyone here that I've met says, "NO!" They are still doing well, not feeling the pinch of these economic times, confident that the Chinese domestic market will continue to grow and bolster prices at least in the mainland. I can't wait to see if they are right.

This is a little glimpse of the sculpture by Taiwanese artist Huang Zhiyang. He had his opening last night at Pekin Fine Arts. In case you can't make it out, these are gold-leaf giant cocoons set on top of a black plexi base filled with flashing red LED signs. Doesn't that sound over the top?

At dinner after the opening, people were discussing the state of Chinese art, which is clearly past the pioneer stage but not yet into anything approaching maturity. I had spent Saturday running around different galleries and I was pretty disappointed. The best show I saw all day was the Hans Op de Beeck exhibition at Continua, an animation with beautiful drawings of his impressions of China. The worst show of the day was Qui Zhijie's installation at the Ullens Center, big, pompous and too much of everything to make much sense.

When are the Chinese artists going to take responsibility to make their work as good as possible? That's what I asked at dinner. Most blamed the west for choosing the wrong Chinese artists. Meg Maggio of Pekin Fine Arts argued that the generation who made it big in the west--those painters such as Liu Xiaodong or Zhang Xiaogang--were the last gasp of state artist system, playing the game with the Ministry of Culture types in order to have access to museum shows in China and trips abroad. She felt that something new was on the horizon. Obviously, the education system here has a lot of catching up to do as well, since teaching artists to critique themselves is not part of the vocabulary here. Meg has been dealing with the problem by showing more and more artists from Taiwan and Korea, in addition to young Chinese artists. I have to be careful not to be too New York centric when I approach the art I see here, but now that all the top Chinese artists are showing in New York, I am not sure it is so bad to apply the same standards that I use for all the other art I see. Hopefully, I'll find some new names on this trip that will give me more hope. Huang Zhiyang is not a bad start.

Colin Chinnery, newly appointed director of the ShContemporary art fair, thinks he can get New York dealers to sign up for the September event. I am not so sure, given that the fair did terribly last year and the overall fair-phobic atmosphere that has set in with the economic slowdown. We had lunch and discussed his plans--to be covered in detail in an upcoming piece in artinfo.com--and I was tickled by his enthusiasm and idealism. In China, even an art fair serves noncommercial goals, in this case, setting the ground work for more first rate contemporary art to get shown in this country where museums fall down on the job and galleries cannot take the risk. My question--why would foreign galleries take the risk, since there isn't yet a collector base here for foreign artists. Last year, the fair had any number of dealers from the US and Europe sitting around, trying to attract attention for artists that are well known in their hometowns but not at all understood in China. Most said they wouldn't repeat the mistake. But Colin is exceedingly bright and energetic, so if anyone can attract fair participants he should, with his way of making the whole thing sound more like a biennial than a market place.

Cold Night in Beijing

This corny picture of Tiananmen Square is not like anything I experience in Beijing. I arrived today and went straight to Pekin Fine Arts which will open a show of Huang Zhiyang tomorrow. More about that later....

Meg Maggio, Pekin Fine Arts owner, took me over to 798 where there was a party for the French Pavilion for the World Expo in Shanghai 2010. We ran into my friends, Zhang Fang and her husband Wang Qingsong, the artist. I just wrote a profile of Wang Qingsong for an upcoming issue of Art news. So we all went out to dinner at a restaurant called 3 Guys from Ghizou. Waiting on line for a table we ran into Leng Lin, director of Pace Beijing. It's all a small world in the Beijing art scene where everyone knows everyone and so far, everyone seems a lot more upbeat than in New York.

More Beijing art tomorrow, now to bed.

Time Sure Flies

I didn't realize how much time has passed since my last posting. But, it is a sign of how depressed everything has been over the past two months, that I have not been inspired to write. Overnight, the art world ground to a halt and the art magazines stopped returning emails. I've been at a loss to think of things to write about, since most of the shows I've been seeing have either been about apocalyptic disasters or seem woefully out of step with the times.

One bright spot--Elizabeth Dee's X Initiative--she'll be installing shows at Dia's old space on W. 22nd Street all year. But the real aim is to stimulate discussions about where to go, what to do, how to think about all that's happening right now. What is to be done? That question seems more on the money (excuse the expression since there is no money) than any of the pictures, paintings, sculptures, videos and installations on exhibition in Chelsea these days.

Holland Cotter wrote a column, "Long Live Art," this Sunday, basically saying that the best art occurs in a down market. It was uplifting, but a little rose-colored for me. I wish this will be the case, but right now things are a little scary. Let's see what happens.

Max and Obama

Max has just made a video in time for the election. Those of you who are still trying to make up your minds should see this. Better yet, those of you who are Obama supporters will really enjoy this.

You can find it at Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ovs6BTxcZU-<3

Zhang Xiaogang in New York

Here's Leng Lin, Arne Glimcher and Zhang Xiaogang at the opening of Zhang's show at Pace this week. I always wondered if an artist could become a household name if his name was impossible to pronounce and Zhang Xiaogang has proven that this is possible. The paintings at the gallery, all new, were huge and didn't look at all like his usual sullen faces. Instead, he dished up surrealistic bed scapes, somber and thoughtful. I still have doubts that this is the best work out of China even if it is the most expensive. According to Leng Lin, almost all of them were sold by the end of the evening.

Glimcher has become a total Beijing enthusiast now that he has opened the biggest gallery there. He even told me that he would like to install an apartment in the gallery so he can move to Beijing or at least spend more extended time there. Leng Lin, who is now President of Pace Beijing, has been a friend for a long time. I remember one of his first trips to New York when he was still advising Max Protetch. Now, Max remains gracious though he's been cut out of the picture. It's a shame, since he gave Leng Lin his first shot at the international art market and was the first dealer to show Zhang Xiaogang in the U.S.

Max stayed away from the festivities on Thursday night but Jack Tilton was around, fretting about the current art market. According to him, it's frozen--that's the word he used--and won't warm up until the major auctions start this week. There's a Malevich with a starting bid of $60 million. But no one knows how the rest of the sale will go. Apparently, Zhang Xiaogang doesn't have to worry and maybe that's a good sign for the Chinese market. Or as Chin Chin Yap of Phillips put it, at least now we have a Chinese market. Only a few years ago, that was not even a possibility. I spent a while talking with art historian Irving Sandler who was at the dinner. He wanted to know if the market was corrupting the Chinese artists. I had to explain that the market is not viewed that way in China, but is seen as a reliable indicator of the strength of the work. It's just so much less puritanical over there, which may or may not be a good thing.

Glimcher has been awfully generous to me, always taking my calls and answering questions. When he gets enthusiastic about something, there's no bigger booster. And he's been the best on China--smart as always--which he sees as the future. We chatted a bunch and agreed that Beijing is city that could be a second home.

Tim Rollins Dinner

On the night of October 22, I attended the dinner for Tim Rollins and K.O.S. at Lehmann Maupin gallery. Sit down for 100 in the gallery, very lovely with the nearly abstract paintings all around. I feared that it was going to be boring but I was sitting near Bill Ehrlich, collector-developer, who had a fascinating story to tell. Seems he was with Rauschenberg when the artist brought his ROCI show to China in 1985. That was the first time western art was shown in China and I can't tell you how many Chinese artists that I've interviewed have mentioned the show as a key influence. I asked Ehrlich where he stayed when he was in Beijing. Oh god, was his first reaction. Seems he was kept up all night by cockaroaches crawling over the walls of his room He went down to the lobby of the hotel to sleep. He also said that Rauschenberg was kind of bitter about the experience, not due to the Chinese, but because he couldn't find a single American sponsor at the time.

Here's Tim Rollins who was incredibly gracious in his remarks. Lots of the Kids of Survival were on hand, now all grown. At my table were a couple of young men who had worked with Tim since they were 12 years old. As you know, Rollins taught high school in the South Bronx and involved his students in his art making projects. They recalled flying to Europe for openings while they were still in high school thinking that this is what their life would be from then on. Well, K.O.S. didn't stay a hot item but now they were back to enjoy Tim's renewed success.

Censorship in China

On Tuesday, October 21, I will host a discussion about censorship in China at China Institute. My good friend Colin Chinnery, former chief curator at the Ullens Center, is flying in for the event, joined by Zhang Hongtu, an artist based in NY, who encountered problems with his painting of the Bird's Nest this year in Beijing. (It was stopped in customs and not allowed into China.)

It's funny. With all the hype around the Chinese art scene, little attention is given to this issue, which still hovers over everything that takes place. As Exhibit A, I am passing along this email I just received from Defne Ayas in Shanghai who has run into problems curating the E-arts festival, a city run event.

hi dear barbara,
how are you?
shanghai is busy and continues to be sceptic and more inward-looking than ever.
i am now up to my nose in e-arts, a first attempt to work with a gov't foundation.
dealing with not so much political censorship (so far it has all been smooth), but more so an aesthetic one. after submitting proposal 6 month ago, giving materials for cship review 3 months ago, the young staff tells me that they do not like the way shih chieh huang's work look, how it is ugly and should be replaced, can we remove it?!
they ask me to screen an artist video twice on different screens, when the artist has given me the mandate to screen the work only in one screen.
when i say, i cannot, they say well the artist wouldn't know, it looks so nice on two screens. !!
it is a learning curve for all of us.
hope to see you here again.
love,
defne

here is the link to the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBRXn4ahblw

I dont get it

Elizabeth Peyton's show opened at the New Museum this week. Roberta Smith says in today's New York Times, "The best collapse the distances between realist painting, modernist abstraction, personal snapshot and magazine, and are accessible, devotional and visually alive. Their gem-rich colors are applied with brazen abandon, like miniature action paintings."

I've obviously been looking at Chinese art too long, since these small scale, awkward paintings barely register with me and I find the references to rock stars and art stars far too insular. Not that anyone cares what I think, but the world feels like a far bigger place than conveyed by these works. Still, I know they sell for millions and Peter Schjeldahl once described Peyton as the "moral center" of the Whitney Biennial. I don't get it. Do you?

G&G and Meckseper

Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum press preview

Josephine Meckseper at MoMA

More Art, Some Politics

Sarah Palin makes me crazy. I hate that anyone finds her appealing since she so embodies a goyishe version of what my mother wanted me to be--success as a Donna Reed looking mom in a man's world. Last night watching the debate, I kept thinking of works by Marilyn Minter and Lutz Bacher, the way they were once accused of adopting the male gaze and dressing it up as a feminist statement. Sarah Palin is exactly that, the centerfold posited as feminist in the midst of a male arena. It never becomes feminist, but it's powerfully alluring, at least to those who never revised their gaze to begin with. In other words, it works - if you are unself-conscious in your sexist outlook on the world.

In any case, the debate made everything posited as political outside the political sphere look out of date and old-fashioned. At least, that's what I thought at the preview for Gilbert & George, a retrospective resolutely stuck in the 1990s. G&G make these mural-sized collaged statements that look a lot like stained-glass windows, but in spirit are the Disneyed rendition of queer theory. Lots of AIDS, sperm, cocks and youths turned into punchy logos for the G&G brand. The duo have always posed as prim, grey suited, dandies, a bit nerdy, that sets them apart from the all-black art world. And their billboards are populist though I'm not sure if they are popular.

Over at MOMA, there was a different style of political art, but one equally rooted in past tactics. Rmember deconstruction? That's Josephine Meckseper's installation using fashion shoots plus ads from the 1970s that could have been made by Victor Burgin circa 1977. This work really cried out for a picture of Palin--let's deconstruct that--instead of women in lingerie, an easy target. There's one small corner piece where Meckseper mentions the war, but the rest of her attack on consumerism and power was already being taken care of by Wall Street which has unilaterally rid of us of our spending power this week. Oh, well, since this hasn't yet effected the art world--Christie's is putting up a Matisse for $160,000,000 in November--we can think about that tomorrow.

Vik Muniz in China

So, I'm at the party for the show, Untitled (Vicarious): Photographing the Constructed Image, on view at Gagosian Gallery and who do I meet but Vik Muniz who currently has a great show up at Sikkema Jenkins. This conceptual artist always gives you a lot to see and think about--this time he has meticulously reconstructed the underside of masterpieces, so all you seen is the back of the frames and the provenance labels--and I would never doubt his tastes which are impeccable. So, he tells me he's working on a project in Beijing. He will garb 600 students at the Central Academy in grey, black and white sweatsuits, then arrange them into a tableaux vivant of a pixalated photographic image. He's doing this as a project with Coca Cola and China is the perfect place to do to get together a choreographed mass of people.

But Muniz made it quite clear that he was less than impressed with the Chinese art scene. "There's certainly alot of it, but I only like maybe two artists, Ai Weiwei and the guy with the silver boulders", he told me, referring to Zhang Wan, who I think is terribly superficial. As much as I was tempted to argue with Muniz--after all, he made me feel like a fool to have devoted so much of my time to a bad art scene--I felt he was on to something important. Japan impresses someone like Muniz, an avid traveler, but China, especially Beijing, is downright declasse and cheap in comparison. The way the art seems mass-produced only adds to the impression of a city with a scintilla of grace or design, despite the latest architectural Olympic additions. I can't argue with that. I just said, China is difficult. But, it wasn't the difficulties that rubbed this artist the wrong way, it was the lack of taste. The thing that confounded him is how this art scene had grown so large and so successful without the elements that he views as essential to culture--style, grace, thoughtfulness, ideas. But, for me, that's the fascinating thing about the Beijing art scene: it is a total extravaganza of bad-ness (bad ideas and bad art) that represents the epitome of art at this moment in the 21st century. After all, if Damien Hirst can raise $170 million in two days for highly commercial Hirst knock-offs, whose to say that China isn't entitled to produce an entire art market doing the same thing. In fact, one can argue, Hirst learned from China. In that light, even artists as talented as Vik Muniz come off as second-tier wannabes, who can't quite understand how their good intentions and self-discipline is getting in their way.

Cultural Revolution

Creative Time's Democracy in America extravaganza at the Armory got me thinking about political art again. And what better follow-up than the Art of the Cultural Revolution show at Asia. Now, that's when art was political, leading to arrests and executions for those who did not follow the party line. It's a fascinating show--like every Cold War-age American, I am a sucker for this kitsch--though I am not sure it makes clear the dark side of state-run art production. Instead, it emphasizes how much this period has influenced contemporary Chinese art by introducing western painting to the Chinese academy. That's one way of looking at it, though sometimes these days, I wish it had more lasting influences. At least these pictures of peasants, soldiers and workers depicted peasants, soldiers and workers as opposed to alot of today's Chinese art which only reflects the blatant consumerism of the society. Two shows up now in New York demonstrate exactly what I mean: He Sen at Jack Tilton, near pornography of China dolls, and Xu Zhen at James Cohan, a replica of a Shanghai minimart. Though I found the supermarket charming--it made me miss China a bit--it really wasn't much of a concept. (It did appeal to the tourist in most art lovers, who clammered to buy a stick of gum or a bottle of water with Chinese on the label.) He Sen, I'm sure appeals to another brand of tourism, the white guy shopping for an Asian girlfriend, which is also prevalent in China. In contrast, the women in the cultural revolution material looked far more forward-thinking and active. And the tschtokes on view at the Asia Society--Mao plates, mugs, match books, statues--were more satisfying souveniers than the items on sale at Xu Zhen's shop. Though my skin crawls whenever I hear a Chinese culture official talk about art "uplifting the people," some of these shows now up in New York make me long for an art that is about something more than cashing in on stereotypes.

Creative Time's Democracy in America

This Sunday, Creative Time opened its one week convention titled Democracy in America: The National Campaign, more than 40 projects filling the Park Avenue Armory. Like a mini-biennial, though actually the same size as the one I saw in Taipei, it was a real antidote to all the somber political art videos that I saw in Asia. Here, instead of routinely recycling well-intentioned issue-oriented text-based tropes, anarchy ruled with political icecream, political soup, political karaoke, political reenactments, political queer, political t-shirts and bumperstickers, most of which made fun of the notion that democracy was still up and running in America.

The entire afternoon was an exercise in some kind of public art celebration---the art world with lots of kids on hand. So you found Carlo McCormick, Jeffrey Deitch, Kirby Gookin and Robin Kahn, my favorite editor Barbara Macadam, Nancy Princenthal, and even, the usually shy Holland Cotter, spending their day wandering around the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, while Creative Time director Anne Pasternack and curator Nato Thompson gave face time like professional politicians. My favorite moment--Nato taking the stage at the karaoke station to belt out some tunes--not Bob Dylan, surprisingly. And lots of people licking creamsicles from the icecream truck that also dispensed advice on first amendment rights. Yes, political art can be fun, especially when it both participates and pokes fun at the state of the activism today. The show sure beats the endless emails I get from Artists Against the War and other activist groups that think that waste our time urging us to sign web petitions against Sarah Palin. (Yes, I hate to say it but its true, these group serves are less interesting than art that makes fun of list serves.)

Democracy at the Armory

Here are some of the artworks at the Armory, or at least some of the more visual projects on view there. Mark Tribe's reenactment of political speeches--here's Angela Davis--was truly moving, reminding me of what it's like to hear a speech in public forum, rather than on You tube. At the same time, I really loved Kenneth Tip-Kin Hung's anarchic animation.