Papers by Clayton H B Press
Forbes.com, 2019
In Ragnar Kjartansson’s seven-screen video installation, Death Is Elsewhere, repetition and durat... more In Ragnar Kjartansson’s seven-screen video installation, Death Is Elsewhere, repetition and duration are key techniques. In fact, they are the artist’s signature principles in this 77-minute video. While Kjartansson embraces “the artifice and conventionality of theater, his performances [and videos] do not unfold as traditional theatrical entertainments with narrative beginnings, middles, and endings.” (Auslander, p. 14.) Kjartansson’s art functions like that of Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright, who spoke about “art that had no real object, in other words, art whose object is the nonexistence of objects.” (Milutinović, p. 344.) Beckett’s art thus directs us to the work of attending to what is directly in front of us, to immanence. (Davis, p. 136.)
Forbes.com, 2019
There is not one adequate word to capture the wonderment of Addicted to Remedios Varo. (Adictos a... more There is not one adequate word to capture the wonderment of Addicted to Remedios Varo. (Adictos a Remedios Varo.) on view at the Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City). Varo, who died in 1963, and her art are not widely known in non-Spanish art communities. Her first and only painting retrospective in the United States was at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC) and the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (Chicago, IL) in 2000. Her career is barely represented in North American museum collections. Yet from time to time, some of Varo’s most important paintings have entered the international auction market. One late work—Hacia la Torre (Towards the Tower), 1960—achieved $4,309,000 at Sotheby’s (New York) in November 2014.
Forbes.com, 2019
Matias Faldbakken is both an author and an artist. After finishing his education at the Academy o... more Matias Faldbakken is both an author and an artist. After finishing his education at the Academy of Fine Art, Bergen, Norway and Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Faldbakken was completely disillusioned with being an artist. Many of his art ideas were conceptual, language-based, so he began writing. Plus, book distribution was better (the work got more visibility), and the literature audience was more welcoming. He asserts, “My books are deliberately easy to read and entertaining, whereas my art is, as you say, more hermetic and mute.” Nonetheless, his writing and art making have the same themes—negativism: “hate, misanthropy and so on,” as he puts it—but they have different intentions.
Forbes.com, 2019
Suzanne Bocanegra’s exhibition Poorly Watched Girls reaches back to—if it does not originate in—a... more Suzanne Bocanegra’s exhibition Poorly Watched Girls reaches back to—if it does not originate in—a 1765 gouache on paper by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin—a studio mate of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, the 18th century artist who may have best captured the hedonistic spirit of the upper echelons of French society. Baudouin was a masterful cartoonist of libertine scenes with questionable morality and also the son-in-law of François Boucher, the French artist known for his idyllic, often voluptuous paintings.
Forbes.com, 2019
“Banerjee’s work embraces the messiness of contradictory meanings.”[1] This is an uncommonly succ... more “Banerjee’s work embraces the messiness of contradictory meanings.”[1] This is an uncommonly succinct and genuinely respectful description of the artist’s work, which is dazzling, breathtaking and confounding. Reality and fantasy, history and mythology partner with each other. Her work is like a cartographic fiction, in which Banerjee schematizes and visualizes an imaginary world based on real world pliable fact. Banerjee is a rarity among artists, who can simultaneously enable and enrich meaning without being intentionally didactic or moralizing. Hers is a poetic activity that creates opportunities for viewers to awaken to alternative meanings in art.
Forbes.com, 2019
Shut Up and Look is the title of a 2012 documentary film about Richard Artschwager. Six minutes i... more Shut Up and Look is the title of a 2012 documentary film about Richard Artschwager. Six minutes in, the artist opined, “I think the object[ive] of an artist's making a picture is seeing how long you can get somebody to look at something.” In an era of short attention spans, looking—let alone seeing—is a challenge. Various studies—all of them inexact—suggest that the average amount of time a person spends looking at an art work in a museum is between 15 seconds and 30 seconds.
Forbes.com, 2019
Todo lo otro (Everything Else) is a sprawling solo exhibition of 300+ works by Germán Venegas (b... more Todo lo otro (Everything Else) is a sprawling solo exhibition of 300+ works by Germán Venegas (b.1959). At Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), you see Venegas’ mastery of expressive technique—drawings, woodcarvings, sculptures, tempera paintings on canvas—along with 15 thematic series that meld Venegas’ Buddhist practice with his intellectual interests: art history, Greek mythology, pre- Hispanic cosmogony, his personal Nahuatl ancestry and Mexican nationality.
André Breton, the French writer and poet, wrote the first Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. Fourt... more André Breton, the French writer and poet, wrote the first Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. Fourteen years later, he and Jacqueline Lamba, his wife, arrived in Mexico at the invitation of the National University to give a lecture entitled Modern Transformations of Art and Surrealism (Las transformaciones modernas del arte y el surrealismo) at the Colegio de San Ildefonso. After this visit, where he had been steeped in Mexican identity and culture, Breton described the country as "the very land of surrealism." He was among the first of several famous European surrealists to visit Mexico. Even Salvador Dalí made a short visit. He reputedly said, “There is no way I’m going back to Mexico. I can’t stand to be in a country that is more surrealist than my paintings”.
French Sudan was a colonial territory in the federation of French West Africa from around 1880 un... more French Sudan was a colonial territory in the federation of French West Africa from around 1880 until 1960, when it was separated from Senegal and was renamed Mali. Malick Sidibé was born in 1936 into French colonialism in the village of Soloba, approximately 185 miles from the country’s capital Bamako. From the age of 5 or 6, he began herding animals, first sheep, then cattle in his Mandé village, a geographic homeland centered between Mali and Guinea. Sidibé’s family owned a large number of livestock, and his mother decorated huts. Sometime after 1948, Sidibé’s parents sent Malick to the “white school,” where he began to draw. He recalled, “There is a certain pride in imitating nature. I drew trees, and even animals. . . I think that drawing is somewhat innate in a being, in man.”
Why Do I Carve Wood?” Jack Whitten posed this question in August 2017. He first saw the African s... more Why Do I Carve Wood?” Jack Whitten posed this question in August 2017. He first saw the African sculpture collections at the Brooklyn and Metropolitan museums, as well as in reproductions, when he moved to New York in the early 1960s. He confessed that he did not understand it then, but he “knew African art held a secret. Something that could possibility help me [sic] as a young Black man.” In 1964, Whitten met Allan Stone, the obsessive collector and expert dealer (Watch: The Collector: Allan Stone's Life in Art, 2007). Stone would become Whitten’s first gallerist. Stone instructed the artist to approach African sculpture with genuine intimacy, “’Pick it up, feel it, smell it.’” In other words, he enabled Whitten to “get in touch,” real, physical touch. It was this encouragement that propelled Whitten’s carving. He left behind more informal multimedia assemblages.
Fran Lebowitz recently opined that the American president is “a poor person’s idea of a rich pers... more Fran Lebowitz recently opined that the American president is “a poor person’s idea of a rich person. They see him. They think, ‘If I were rich, I’d have a fabulous tie like that.’” It would be interesting to get a poor person’s, a middle class person’s, even a wealthy person’s idea about the people who lead and operate the contemporary art market. If we believe the art “business” media, the art market is largely run by a cabal of middle-aged or aging men, with insatiable appetites for money, fixated on name brand art and celebrating an "art lifestyle." This is not the case.
The apparent visual simplicity of Hazoumè’s masks belies their true complexity. Made from plasti... more The apparent visual simplicity of Hazoumè’s masks belies their true complexity. Made from plastic jerry cans—gasoline or petrol cans—they are not casually recycled art. Hazoumè’s masks are objects that are plastics re-formed, re-made by hand. Yacouba Konaté, the Ivorian philosopher and curator, calls Hazoumè’s masks “Extreme Petrol Can[s],” “found objects,” each one speaking to Hazoumè “by its shape, its pedigree, its patina, or inscriptions, [then Hazoumè] negotiates its retirement from the field . . . from active duty, withdraws it from the trafficking world and reinvests it with an aesthetic mission.” (“The Art of the Extreme Petrol Can,” p. 112.)
"What would America be like if we loved Black people as much as Black culture?" Unidentified woma... more "What would America be like if we loved Black people as much as Black culture?" Unidentified woman, Arthur Jafa: Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016
"My whole life I’ve felt like I was looking into society from an outer edge, because I embodied so many things that were supposedly reprehensible." David Wojnarowicz, “The Compression of Time,” 1990
Kara Walker’s Virginia's Lynch Mob (1998), a recent acquisition now on view at the Montclair Art ... more Kara Walker’s Virginia's Lynch Mob (1998), a recent acquisition now on view at the Montclair Art Museum, is geographically located in the American South. It could represent racial violence anywhere in the United States and at almost any time. To call this work the centerpiece of Walker’s solo exhibition at the museum would be an understatement. It is an epic, 40-foot long wall-based work, presented on a curved gallery wall, using the artist’s iconic silhouette form to depict a lynching about to happen. Twenty-three other works made between 1997 and the present accompany Virginia’s Lynch Mob and showcase the breadth and depth of Walker’s artistic activities.
Af Klint was a gifted medium, and she had contact with “spiritual forces” in her early years, for... more Af Klint was a gifted medium, and she had contact with “spiritual forces” in her early years, foretelling—among other things—her two brushes with death after serious illnesses. Her interest in mysticism and the occult began as early as 1879, when she started participating in séances, and was further intensified after the death of her sister in 1880. She was engaged in a variety of spiritualist movements from the 1890s onwards. Later, she developed a strong interest in theosophy and anthroposophy, and she also explored alchemy and Rosicrucianism. Af Klint had frequent meetings with a group of women, De Fem (The Five) as they called themselves.
2’10” (two minutes, ten seconds)
Before uttering a word of his introductory remarks for the June ... more 2’10” (two minutes, ten seconds)
Before uttering a word of his introductory remarks for the June 2018 opening of Charline von Heyl’s Snake Eyes exhibition at the Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), John Corbett, the Chicago gallerist and music champion nonpareil, lifted his smartphone to the mic and played a 2’10” free jazz piece by the Norwegian trio Moskus (Musk Ox). The piece was Fjesing (Emoticon) from their album Mestertyven (Master Thief). Corbett’s intent was to get the audience’s attention and to just, simply, make them take the time to focus on what they were hearing, experiencing. It was a lesson in mindfulness, presentness. In his remarks, Corbett spoke about his relationship to poetry as well, saying, “I read poetry the way I listen to improvised music. It’s not so important to interpret an improvisation as it is to experience it. . . at full scale. No abstract; no précis.”
In the mid-19th Century—the age of reform—Worcester, MA was an industrial boomtown, the crossroad... more In the mid-19th Century—the age of reform—Worcester, MA was an industrial boomtown, the crossroads of New England. It was also known as the “seething centre” of all social, moral, intellectual and political reforms. The local Lyceum movement, an early form of adult education, focused on stimulating intellectual awareness and debate, broadening school curricula and encouraging the development of local museums and libraries. By 1896—a mere 26 years after Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and The Metropolitan Museum of Art were chartered—the Worcester Art Museum Corporation proposed to build an art institution "for promotion of art and art education . . . [including] instruction in the industrial, liberal and fine arts . . . for the benefit of all the people of the city of Worcester.” (1899)
According to Derek Bickerton, Ashley's father, the artist "was conceived in the mid- Atlantic, in... more According to Derek Bickerton, Ashley's father, the artist "was conceived in the mid- Atlantic, in the cabin of a passenger boat, during a thunderstorm. Maybe a lightning strike had something to do with it" [with Bickerton becoming an artist.] Or perhaps Bickerton was touched at birth by a duppy, a ghost or spirit in local Bajan dialect. He was born in 1959 in Mrs. Stout’s Nursing Home in pre-independence
Barbados. The Fates favored him with an exotic path from Barbados to Spain, from Ghana to Guyana, from Hawaii to California, from New York to Bali. Along the way, Bickerton became conversant in five variants of English. In true anthropological terms, Bickerton’s art—like his life—is syncretic, yet authentic. It is a mix of high and low culture references in a truly exhilarating way.
“I consider that I became an artist 1981, when I had a public exhibition. I think that until it’s... more “I consider that I became an artist 1981, when I had a public exhibition. I think that until it’s on sale, you’re not an artist. A bit terse, isn’t it?” Swennen has quipped. “It’s what Broodthaers used to call ‘getting laid.’” This early exhibition marked Swennen's rite of passage from poet to artist. Earlier, at university, Swennen had studied philosophy, before moving on to engraving, then on to psychology. In the 60s, he discovered the Beat Generation poets and the Dada Manifesto, which propelled him deeper into poetry and early art making. By the 70s Swennen had become a lecturer in psychoanalysis before actively resuming art making in 1980.
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Papers by Clayton H B Press
"My whole life I’ve felt like I was looking into society from an outer edge, because I embodied so many things that were supposedly reprehensible." David Wojnarowicz, “The Compression of Time,” 1990
Before uttering a word of his introductory remarks for the June 2018 opening of Charline von Heyl’s Snake Eyes exhibition at the Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), John Corbett, the Chicago gallerist and music champion nonpareil, lifted his smartphone to the mic and played a 2’10” free jazz piece by the Norwegian trio Moskus (Musk Ox). The piece was Fjesing (Emoticon) from their album Mestertyven (Master Thief). Corbett’s intent was to get the audience’s attention and to just, simply, make them take the time to focus on what they were hearing, experiencing. It was a lesson in mindfulness, presentness. In his remarks, Corbett spoke about his relationship to poetry as well, saying, “I read poetry the way I listen to improvised music. It’s not so important to interpret an improvisation as it is to experience it. . . at full scale. No abstract; no précis.”
Barbados. The Fates favored him with an exotic path from Barbados to Spain, from Ghana to Guyana, from Hawaii to California, from New York to Bali. Along the way, Bickerton became conversant in five variants of English. In true anthropological terms, Bickerton’s art—like his life—is syncretic, yet authentic. It is a mix of high and low culture references in a truly exhilarating way.
"My whole life I’ve felt like I was looking into society from an outer edge, because I embodied so many things that were supposedly reprehensible." David Wojnarowicz, “The Compression of Time,” 1990
Before uttering a word of his introductory remarks for the June 2018 opening of Charline von Heyl’s Snake Eyes exhibition at the Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), John Corbett, the Chicago gallerist and music champion nonpareil, lifted his smartphone to the mic and played a 2’10” free jazz piece by the Norwegian trio Moskus (Musk Ox). The piece was Fjesing (Emoticon) from their album Mestertyven (Master Thief). Corbett’s intent was to get the audience’s attention and to just, simply, make them take the time to focus on what they were hearing, experiencing. It was a lesson in mindfulness, presentness. In his remarks, Corbett spoke about his relationship to poetry as well, saying, “I read poetry the way I listen to improvised music. It’s not so important to interpret an improvisation as it is to experience it. . . at full scale. No abstract; no précis.”
Barbados. The Fates favored him with an exotic path from Barbados to Spain, from Ghana to Guyana, from Hawaii to California, from New York to Bali. Along the way, Bickerton became conversant in five variants of English. In true anthropological terms, Bickerton’s art—like his life—is syncretic, yet authentic. It is a mix of high and low culture references in a truly exhilarating way.