• Interview with Art Fag City’s Paddy Johnson

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    ARTList has a great interview up now with Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City, one of my daily blog reads. On the lighter side, this excerpt is very funny (emphasis mine):

    EM: Who do you think are some of the most influential artists today?

    PJ: I think the most important work being made today is in the medium of new media, which isn’t clear to many yet, but it is why artists like Cory Arcangel (who I suspect will be the next Jeff Koons), MTAA, Marisa Olson, and PaperRad are mentioned so frequently on Art Fag City.

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  • Sophie Scholl at Film Forum

    Geschwister Scholl Memorial

    Memorial at Geschwister Scholl Platz

     

    We saw Sophie Scholl at Film Forum yesterday. It’s a very powerful film about using one’s conscience when everyone else is trying to just “get by” in a totalitarian state. I highly recommend seeing it. It runs through the end of the month.

    The image above was taken in Munich, at the site of their distribution of anti-Nazi leaflets at the Ludwig University. We visited it in September 2002.

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  • On the MTA’s attempted murder of Williamsburg’s gallery scene

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    image source

    I don’t normally recommend reading the New York Sun, but my friend Madge the Manicurist sent me this pretty good article on the L train’s effect on Williamsburg’s galleries. Here is the beginning:

    On a normal weekend in Williamsburg, with the L subway line running on schedule, several hundred people might visit artMovingProjects if it has a popular exhibit. But when the L train is shut down, owner Aron Namenwirth said he’s lucky if 10 local artists show up.

    But such is life along the L line. For the last three years, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been modernizing the line so that it can someday accommodate a higher capacity. In order to do the work, the MTA often shuts down the line on the weekends. Since January 1 of this year, the L line has been closed on four weekends out of nine. It’s a situation that hits Williamsburg art galleries especially hard: Most are only open Friday through Sunday.

    A co-owner of Schroeder Romero gallery, which recently packed up and moved to Chelsea, said her gallery was losing about $10,000 a year because of weekend disruptions on the L line when it was located in Williamsburg. The neighborhood is known for its upstart art scene, but the problem also affects the bars, restaurants, and shops that usually do their best business on weekend nights.

    The MTA originally promised to be finished by June 2005. The current estimate from them is June 2006.

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  • LA = divas?

    The funniest thing I heard about the art fairs was said to me last night at the closing party at White Columns.

    I was telling an artist that James and I attended every fair except DiVA, even Fountain. His response was, “Diva? Was that the LA one?”

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  • A new gallery website as ArtCat spreads beyond New York

    I’ve just launched a new gallery site running on the ArtCat system:

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    Thomas Robertello Gallery (Chicago)

    To give you a feel for how flexible my hosting system can be, both that and

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    Foxy Production

    are running the same software, with minor changes to HTML, CSS, and a bit of Flash in the case of Foxy Production.

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  • Don’t miss Scope

    I’m too tired to post more at the moment, but based on all that I’ve seen so far, the Scope art fair is the one to see.

    Tonight was the “new” opening after the problems of yesterday, and it was quite the scene. There was good energy, a lot of great art, and performances / installations / wandering artists galore.

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  • Art Fairs Day one

    Valerie Hegarty at Guild & Greyshkul

    Valerie Hegarty installation at Guild & Greyshkul

     

    We attended the press preview of the Armory Show today. It was called a press preview, but we often had trouble looking at work because of roaming packs of coifed collector women. I’m sure all the big name collectors were there, and I spotted the Rubells and Horts right away. I had heard from at least one gallery that they had had some difficulties with getting a reasonable number of passes for their collectors, but I guess plenty of them didn’t have too much trouble.

    On to the positive!

    My favorite galleries in the fair so far:

    • David Kordansky – Patrick Hill, Mark Flores, Aaron Curry
    • Zeno X – Jenny Scobel, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven
    • Stuart Shave Modern Art – Tom Burr, Collier Schorr

    We only made it through most of one pier, so we have to go back.

    Strangest overheard utterance at Armory:

    Commercial. It’s the new non-profit.

    I have no idea to what it referred. Perhaps the presence of non-profit art spaces selling work at the fair?

    We tried to go to the press preview for Scope, but that didn’t work out.

    Fountain had some fun stuff from several galleries, and a good mixed crowd, ranging from grungy art collective types to prosperous collectors.

    I just put up a bunch of photos of things I liked, and could get decent photos of, on Flickr.

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  • In March We Remember

    I know everyone is distracted by the Whitney Biennial and the art fairs, but it has now been three years since the disastrous attack on Iraq. James and I will be attending this event tomorrow. I’ve been to other concerts by Ensemple Pi. They are amazing.

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    An event of contemporary concert music, poetry readings, and visual images, with showcases of several independent publishers including Seven Stories Press, The New Press, Akashic Books, Verso Books, and Autonomedia. Participant artists include composers Frederic Rzewski, Elias Tanenbaum, composer/performers Kristin Norderval and Philip Wharton in collaboration with Ensemble π, led by pianist Idith Meshulam. Poetry readings by Charles Bernstein, Carolee Schneemann and Peter Lamborn Wilson. Visual images selected from the archives of the art critic David Levi Strauss.

    The event is made possible by the support of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Edward T. Cone Foundation, and Cooper Union.

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  • Artist & Gallery RSS feeds

    Sorry to be commercial here, but I wanted to announce that the sites I host on ArtCat (see clients list) now have RSS feeds. As the galleries and artists add news items, or works (artists) or exhibitions (galleries), you’ll see new info in the feed.

    What’s RSS you ask? This is a good link that explains it. I use RSS feeds and www.bloglines.com to keep up with 98 different web sites — mostly blogs.

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  • Two recommendations for people in Boston

    We’ll miss them, but I recommend two shows in Boston:

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