TOOLS FOR THOUGHT | Rebuild Haiti | Benefit Party
MONDAY MARCH 15TH 2010
7:00PM to 9:00PM

Sotheby's
1334 York Avenue
New York NY 10021

Above: Jeff Koons, Monkey Train, Heat transfer prints on wood skateboard, 2006

Tickets are $100.00
($85 Tax-deductible)
Supports the efforts to rebuild Haiti
Click here to buy tickets

* Cocktail reception
* Exhibition and silent auction
* Special performance by Patti Smith and guests
* DJ: Alexandra Richards
* Drinks by Apotheke

2010
The "Who Dat?" Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art
February 23 - May 30, 2010

Adam Weinberg addressing the troops

Tuesday, February 23, 2010. 7:00 PM. In his charming remarks earlier this afternoon during the press opening of the less than charming 2010 Whitney Biennial, co-curator Francesco Bonami (who wistfully regretted how difficult it was convincing artists half his age to have dinner with him) alluded to the intrinsic arbitrariness of all Biennial exhibitions. As an institution just turned 75 years old, and facilitated under the venerable aegis of the Whitney Museum, each particular Biennial, despite its essential claim to showcase the best and brightest art production of the past two years, is still dependent on the whims and prejudices of its organizers. Hence the unavoidable hit-or-miss possibilities of every succeeding exhibition.

There is no cumulative formula for success, as new curators tend to establish new priorities and then select new artists as the avatars of same. If the turnover seems particularly extreme this year, even educated observers of the art scene might feel confronted by a "Who Dat?" Biennial, an exhibition at least partly populated by a fickle and jejune cast of characters.

CONFUCIUS: His Life and Legacy in Art
February 11 – June 13, 2010
China Institute Gallery
125 East 65th Street, New York

February 16, 2010. Growing up, I didn't have much time for Confucius. Among the prominent Asian philosophers, he took second place to Lao Tzu and Taosim, and for obvious reasons. Taoism seemed more laissez-faire, less involved with propriety and property. It embraced a certain ease and modesty, a harmonious accommodation with nature. There was a nonchalance that sat well with my hipster, slacker ideal of "there's a road we're all on, man, but it really leads nowhere except right back to where we all started from, so don't get me uptight, just chill and pass that j."

My rebellious, reductivist streak left no room for the conventional wisdom of the Confucian status quo, for its apotheosis of family, for using the correct ritual and sacrifice on every occasion, for a strict legal code that could deaden spontaneity. I had dabbled in the Analects, and these dialogs were obviously "wise", but my lingering suspicion was that they were wise in the wrong way. There was no escaping their prim orientation towards duty and decorum.

Changing the World through Art/Auction and Gala
to benefit The Time In Children’s Arts Initiative

Haunch of Venison
1230 Avenue of the Americas
Between 48th & 49th Streets
20th Floor
New York City

For further information and tickets:
917-318-9499 or http://tinyurl.com/ybd4qt6

Time In on the web:
http://hiartkids.com/fr_timein.htm
Time In on facebook:
http://tinyurl.com/yld2rm

It didn't take long. That old viral meme featuring Hitler, as portrayed by Bruno Ganz in the film Downfall, going postal over something or other, has been applied to the recent special election in Massachusetts to fill the late Edward Kennedy's Senate seat.

The drollest bit, aside from the general incongruity of accepting Hitler as a liberal Democrat: "Health care was supposed to be done by August, now it drags on forever, like Stalingrad!"

from the New York Times:

Kenneth Noland, whose brilliantly colored concentric circles, chevrons and stripes were among the most recognized and admired signatures of the postwar style of abstraction known as Color Field painting, died Tuesday at his home in Port Clyde, Me. He was 85.

December 26, 2009. In the wake of the New Museum's announcement of a controversial exhibition drawn solely from the extensive collection of billionaire Dakis Joannou, one of their trustees and founder of the Deste Foundation in Athens, and slated to be curated by artist Jeff Koons, who is heavily represented in that very collection and who is a close personal friend of Joannou, there has been a glut of commentary both pro and con. Mostly con.

Many resent the obvious conflicts of interest and the elitist monopolization of the finite resources of the art world by just a few players, who strive to dominate, manipulate and benefit their own interests to the exclusion of all others. Many find this cronyism quite reprehensible, and feel it represents "business as usual" at the New Museum, entrenched abuses of power and privilege that the current "Joannou-gate" has merely made more glaring.

William Powhida, How the New Museum Committed Suicide with Banality, cover art, Brooklyn Rail, November 2009
(For a larger, more legible image, click here.)

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December 25, 2009. The Brooklyn Rail, founded in 1998, is a scrappy, independent cultural/political broadsheet that covers issues in Brooklyn's waterfront neighborhoods (Williamsburg, Greenpoint, DUMBO, Red Hook) from a politically progressive vantage point. It publishes poetry and fiction and reviews local developments in music, film, dance, theater and books. Most significantly, it provides passionate, detailed, idiosyncratic coverage of the NY arts scene in each and every issue, with a full roster of exhibition reviews, feature articles and long, in-depth "conversations" with artists. Under publisher Phong Bui, it has developed an essential and original voice, and is part of my regular reading list. [Full disclosure: James Kalm, who maintains an ongoing video blog here at post.thing.net, has also contributed regularly to the Rail.]

Viewable online, distributed for free at certain bookstores and alt.culture locations, and also available by subscription, the Rail has a relatively small circulation (around 7,500). Even so, it regularly engages in adventurous promotional efforts normally the province of larger publications; for example, the printing of multiple covers for certain issues to better showcase the artists and contents within.

A case in point: the three different covers of the November 2009 issue. The one I have at home features an image from a Carroll Dunham painting. I understand there was also a Helmut Federle cover. (Both artists had solo shows in NY that month and are interviewed in the November Rail.) However, it is the third cover choice I wish to address here, a b/w drawing by artist, activist, satirist and draftsman William Powhida, executed in full caricature/agitprop mode (and pictured above), in which he addresses cronyism at the New Museum in gleeful, graphic, subversive detail.