James Kalm, through his studies of the "beat" artists, has heard rumors of the legendary Brion Gyson for years, but it wasn't until this New Museum show, put together by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator, with assistance from Amy Mackie, that he was able to experience the work that spawned the myth. Since the New Museum's relocation to the Bowery, this is their first show dedicated to a dead artist. Gysin is probably best known for his long term collaboration with William Burroughs, and his invention of the "cut-up" technique, which he gifted to Burroughs and used to great effect in his collage and poetry. With over 300 works, including the famous "Dream Machine", this show should be required viewing for anyone wishing a deeper understanding of the "beat". Includes an interview with Laure Hoptman and a conversational tour with Valery Oisteanu.

Normally James Kalm would have been present for the press preview at this exhibition's opening. Unfortunately, due to assignments overseas, your reporter was out of town. To try and fulfill his mission of bringing viewers the latest in arts happenings in New York, Kalm slips into the show and tries to document a walk through on the DL (down low). A vigilant docent catches him with his camera on.

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.

James Kalm braves fall showers and trains his way to the Bowery’s New Museum for the first major museum exhibition by Urs Fischer. Lionized as one of contemporary art’s most distinctive talents, Fischer earned the New York spotlight in 2007 by cutting a hole in the floor of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and digging out tons of dirt leaving a gaping crater for visitors to climb into and explore. As an astute observer of spatial perception, and a master of digital technology with a mischievous sense of humor, the artist uses the most advanced commercial printing techniques to tweak space and challenge “reality”.

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus
New Museum
235 Bowery, New York
4/8/09 - 7/5/09

Younger Than Jesus is the first edition of The Generational, the New Museum’s new signature triennial. It includes work of fifty artists from twenty-five countries. The artists cannot be older than 33; none were born prior to 1976. The show is curated by Lauren Cornell, Massimiliano Gioni and Laura Hoptman.

The texts below are based on a number of comments I posted on the blog of a local magazine. Dates and times of their original postings are included, as are images found online.

Here's a show that begs to be loved. Anything less would be like kicking a puppy at its first sniff of art stardom. So I knew Jerry Saltz's carefully constructed persona - zeitgeist-er, confidante, ear to the ground, eye on the sparrow - would necessitate a thumbs-up review of this show and on the inauguration of the Nu Mu's ambitious triennial project. Even if he has to hedge his bets with phrases like "flawed but tantalizing" and "despite its clinical spaces and a couple of misfires". Even if he includes a polemical, cautionary first paragraph that states the problem - "received ideas about appropriation, conceptualism, and institutional critique...a cool school, admired by jargon-wielding academics who write barely readable rhetoric" - and then pretends the Nu Mu is the solution to this problem rather than one of its prime exemplars.