James Kalm is delighted to bring viewers along for a holiday stroll through this exhibition of small works by one of New York’s most influential painters. Executed during a five year period while Guston was developing his “Hooded Figure” and “Roma” series, these pieces show the concentration and focus the artists was bringing to his return to figuration. Divided into four categories - single objects, hoods, city scapes and studio interiors - these small pictures retain their power despite their size, and give testament to the high regard Guston maintains among young contemporary painters.

Not long ago, Internet art was the latest thing. Today it seems historical, along with postmodernism and New Media. Until its peak in the mid 1990’s, Internet art had a scent of the future. It was invested – symbolically and economically – with the capacity to signify and even prefigure a glorious global future for all.

Due to popular demand - OK actually it was just editor Steven Kaplan’s request - I’m reposting this snippet of video from an expanded program that will appear soon on my “super page” at Babelgum.

Call me nostalgic, I prefer to think of it as interested in “history”, but this clip of Smithson and Holt gives us a great insight into the types of people they were, their habits (check out Smithson lighting his cigarette) and their dry sense of humor. “1969” is the kind of show that makes PS1 so essential to the New York arts dialog.

Robert Smithson and Nance Holt riff in an experimental video performance and we sneak a view at the exhibition within an exhibition, a re-staging of MoMA's 1969 exhibition, Five Recent Acquisitions, organized by noted curator Kynaston McShine, highlighting then-recently acquired works by Larry Bell, Ron Davis, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, and John McCracken.

De La Cruz Collection, facade

December 1, 2009. Artworld Salon, a site to which I have not actively contributed for a year, just posted an open thread on "What to expect when you’re expecting to go to Miami?", and suggested readers send their thoughts.

The following comments will not appear on AWS, but since I have already been down for four days and want to say something about my second home, here are some first takes from Art Basel Miami.

I will not try to make any market predictions regarding who might sell out their booths, or how many satellite fairs will be vindicated in their tents, warehouses and hotel ballrooms. The hundred ring circus will certainly continue. Sixty galleries might have decided to sit it out, but have been handily replaced by ABMB management from the many hopefuls on the waiting list, a testament to the eternal optimism of the human spirit and the unvanquished entrepreneurial appetite of art dealers the world over.

James Kalm slides through this exhibition just before closing time to bring viewers a glance at works by one of today’s most influential “bad” painters. Robert Williams has been a presence on the West Coast art scene for decades. He came to my attention while I was still in high school as the artistic director of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s studio. There after, he teamed up with the likes of Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson as a contributor to the iconic Zap Comix. In 1979 he birthed and became the Godfather of “lowbrow” and, in 1994 founded JUXTAPOZ Magazine. His aesthetic encompasses Hotrod and surf culture the seamy side of Hollywood grudge, punk, hipster, slacker, and scuzz, the epitome of current “bad taste".

dancelovesart
presents
PDA
dancelovesart is a series of nomadic dance acts, installations, and video and performance interactions taking place in and around Art Basel Miami Beach.

dancelovesart will be hosted by Morgans Miami properties with daily performances and dance installations in the pools and onsite at Mondrian, Shore Club and Delano

Sunsets December 4 l 5 l 6 2009, 4 - 6pm.
curated by Natalie Kovacs

For more information go to PAM:
http://www.perpetualartmachine.com/content/view/677/48/lang,en/

John Zinsser
Art Dealer Archipelagoes

Nov 20, 2009 - Jan 5, 2010

James Graham & Sons
32 East 67th Street
New York, NY 10065
http://www.jamesgrahamandsons.com/
(212) 535-5767

Holly Solomon Gallery

We can all readily cite John Donne on no man being an island, but somehow this inclusive, democratic sentiment never really applied to art galleries. Galleries seem rather to mirror the structure of small duchies in their aloof, quasi-diplomatic hauteur, their protective claims to territory and privilege, and their innate hierarchies: the semi-divine owner/dealer installed in the autocratic center, closely surrounded by a jealous court of advisers and directors, who assiduously attend to the "state visits" of wealthy collectors and influential curators in the snug recess of well appointed private rooms. In this extended metaphor, the icy gallerinas barricaded at the front desks serve as the gatekeepers, the scarecrows or the customs police.

On its own level, the gallery world can be viewed as a miniature recapitulation of the structures and protocols that attend to larger national or corporate regimes. This aping of status and importance is captured with dry, acerbic humor and meticulous historicist rigor by artist John Zinsser in this show of "archipelago" pieces, up at James Graham through January.