Touring Prospect.1 (Part 3), the Lower Ninth Ward
If the impact of Katrina now seems minimal in the rest of New Orleans, in the Lower Ninth Ward it was obviously devastating. My guide, who has since become a friend, explained to me that the fields all around were once as densely packed as the city’s other neighborhoods. That knowledge deeply impacted the way I looked at the art in the area.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that many artists decided to use the “home” as a basis for their art. Katherina Grosse chose to paint a home at 5418 Dauphine Street; Wangetchi Mutu “sketched” one out of wood at 540 Caffin Avenue; and Leandro Erlich erected a ladder which leans on a window in mid-air, hovering as if it was ripped from a wall.
Below are some of what I saw among the ruins of the Lower Ninth Ward. It’s not surprising that many of the works seem obsessed with standing witness to the injustices that the surrounding community faced.
Janine Antoni (Season 2) T-E-A-R (2008)
The lead wrecking ball stands alone in front of a projected eye. The giant eye evokes the nightmare vision of George Orwell’s big brother (1984), where we are always being watched. But here the eye seems to have witnessed some form of destruction. The wrecking ball sits in a spotlight and echoes the shapes on the screen. I sensed the heavy burden that witnessing a tragedy can entail.
Ghada Amer, Happy Ever After (2005)
My guide told me that this piece was moved during the biennial and as a result the vines never grew up the trellises, which read, “Happy Ever After.”
Situated by the infamous levee that flooded the Lower Ninth Ward, when I sat on the round bench in the middle I could only imagine that if the vines had grown fully, the whole landscape would disappear, allowing me to imagine myself in a fantasy world of blue sky and greenery. Unfortunately like the promise of the Lower Ninth Ward, Amer’s piece was never fully realized in New Orleans, but it was a beautiful idea nonetheless.
Touring Prospect.1 in Photos (Part 2)
As promised, here is a small visual taste of the sights and sounds of New Orleans’ Prospect.1 biennial. More detailed posts about the art in the Lower Ninth Ward, the French Quarter/Marigny & the Warehouse District will follow in the coming days.
In the Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Mark Bradford, Mithra (2008)
At the New Orleans African American Museum, which is located in Treme–the oldest African-American neighborhood in the United States.
William Kentridge, What Will Come (has already come) (2007)
McCallum & Tarry, The Evidence Of Things Not Seen (2007-8)
There Goes the Neighborhood
Artistic interventions in neighborhoods and community-inspired artworks are popping up all around us, from Pierre Huyghe’s playfully ritualistic Streamside Day (2003) to Mel Chin’s New Orleans recovery effort SAFEHOUSE (2008). It will be interesting to see how these kinds of projects develop in the tough economic times ahead, and with the new energy and sense of civic duty encapsulated in this week’s U.S. presidential elections. The four videos below show how the act of re-imagining may be a crucial strategy in the years ahead.
Mattress Factory | The Making of Street with a View
RE-IMAGINING MAPS: Artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley organized the first-ever intervention in Google Street View by enlisting residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to decide how they wanted their neighborhood to be pictured online. Check out the results on Google Maps by searching for ‘Sampsonia Way Pittsburgh’ and more via Google Sightseeing.
L.A. Times | Watts House Project (WHP)
RE-IMAGINING DEVELOPMENT: A decade in the works, artist Edgar Arceneaux’s Watts House Project is located across the street from the landmark Watts Towers. A civic project modeled after artist Rick Lowe’s successful Project Row Houses in Houston, Arceneaux’s aim is to revitalize the surrounding area beginning by refurbishing 20 local properties. Read the full article.
Ill Doctrine | Kara Walker, Down in the Hole
RE-IMAGINING MEDIA: Fans of HBO’s groundbreaking television series The Wire will appreciate this one: after spotting the actor who plays Chris Partlow at the Whitney Museum’s recent survey of artist Kara Walker’s work, Jay Smooth created this video spoof set to the show’s opening theme song “Down in the Hole” (lifting some artwork from the Art:21 episode). The Wire and Walker’s artwork share innumerable themes — from the blurry line between victim and victimizer, to the complex expressions of race, gender and sexuality — and one can only imagine what a sixth art-centric season set in fair inner-city Baltimore would be like. Or as Omar Little would say, “Indeed.”
Houston Chronicle | Art in the Lower 9th Ward
RE-IMAGINING SPECTACLE: Biennials are typically excuses for various degrees of civic pride — from the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale to the continual redefinition of American-ess at the Whitney Biennial — in addition to performing the dual function of identifying trends and generating income out of tourism. What’s rather unique about the current Prospect 1.New Orleans is the explicit association of a biennial-like event with a well-known tragedy: Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath. How this kind of spectacle will evolve, and what impact it will make on the community is still unclear. The video features new works by Art21 artists Mark Bradford and Janine Antoni, but be sure to wait for the contrasting moment at the end of the video, when an alternative project slips into view.
I Left My Heart in New Orleans
Prospect. 1 New Orleans, the largest biennial international contemporary art ever held in the United States, opened to the public today. Produced by U.S. Biennial, Inc. and directed by Dan Cameron, Director of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, the biennial was conceived to help expand on New Orleans’ already rich cultural profile and galvanize art world participation in the city’s post-Katrina rebound.
Art21 artists Mark Bradford, Allora & Calzadilla (both Season 4), Arturo Herrera, Cai Guo-Qiang (both Season 3), Trenton Doyle Hancock, and Janine Antoni (both Season 2) are included in this exhibition of works by 81 local, national and international artists that is spread across more than 25 venues. Bradford’s wooden Ark is located in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. The artist utilized the shell of a destroyed house and other discarded scraps of wood from the area to construct the piece (in situ above).
Traversing installations in the Lower Ninth Ward–where you can also find works by Antoni, Superflex, Wangechi Mutu, Nari Ward, Paul Villinski, Miguel Palma, and Robin Rhode–sheds light on the devastation and loss that occurred three years ago. It is still heartwrenching today. Where the levee breached, sweeping houses off of their foundations and submerging the area under water, installations by Ghada Amer (above) and Leonardo Elrich (recently featured in ArtKrush) rise from the ground. On surrounding lots only grass and weeds, concrete slabs, and steps that once lead to a front door remain. Katharina Grosse’s painting/mural below (top) stands a short distance from the house on the bottom, which still displays the force of Hurricane Katrina.
To learn more about efforts to rebuild New Orleans, visit the websites for Make it Right Foundation, a project by actor and philanthropist Brad Pitt; Common Ground Relief, a community-based volunteer organization that offers support to Lower Ninth Ward residents that suffered losses in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; and, of course, Prospect. 1. The exhibition closes January 18, 2009.
Mark Bradford and Hurricane Katrina
Tomorrow, October 11, the Carnegie Museum of Art will host a public conversation between Art21 artist Mark Bradford (Season 4) and 2008 Carnegie International curator, Douglas Fogle. Topics include the artist’s rooftop installation Help Us, which was inspired by the stranded victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The free one-hour program takes place at 4pm in the Carnegie Lecture Hall.
Bradford’s latest project for the U.S. biennial, Prospect.1 New Orleans, was recently featured in the LA Times. Pictured above on the streets of Los Angeles, the “Post-Katrina Ark for New Orleans,” measures in at twenty-two feet high and 64 feet long. The ark will be reassembled in the city’s Ninth Ward, which is located in the easternmost downriver portion of the city–the area hardest hit by the hurricane. Read more about Bradford’s project here.
FLAG, Ruscha, Kruger, Brain
The FLAG Art Foundation last week opened the exhibition WALL ROCKETS: Contemporary Artists and Ed Ruscha, curated by Lisa Dennison. The title of the exhibition refers to a painting made in 2000 by Ruscha, whose consumerist aesthetic has influenced a host of artists. Gathered together in this broad show is photography, painting, and sculpture from over 70 artists, including Art:21’s Mark Bradford (Season 4), Roni Horn (Season 3), and Barbara Kruger (Season 1).
By extension, Kruger’s “brainy illustration” for a New York Magazine cover with Eliot Spitzer also recently won magazine cover of the year from the American Society of Magazine Editors.
Collier Schorr & Mark Bradford in Los Angeles
On October 10, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will host a public conversation between Collier Schorr (Season 2) and curator Christopher Bedford in conjunction with the exhibition Contemporary Projects 11: Hard Targets-Masculinity and Sport. The public program begins at 7pm.
The premise of the exhibition, which opens on October 9, is artists who revise the archetype of the male athlete as an aggressive, overtly heterosexual, hyper-competitive, and emotionally remote subject. Hard Targets includes works by Schorr, Mark Bradford (Season 4), Harun Farocki, Brian Jungen, Shaun Leonardo, and Joe Sola. ”Each examines the way masculinity is characterized and performed in a sporting context, and each suggests the existence of complex systems of desire and identification that accompany the way we view and consume athletes and sporting events.”
Bradford’s 2003 video Practice is included in the exhibition. In 2006, an article in LA Times Magazine quoted Bradford:
“Practice was a personal piece. At its core it was about negotiation and desire. I set up a proposition, a metaphor, in which I really simply wanted to play basketball. That’s it. But I had constructed this huge structure that was going to encumber me. I couldn’t control it, and doing what I wanted to do was a struggle. In some ways, that’s sort of how my life can be. I also knew that by taking the Lakers uniform and making it into a dress, that’s iconoclastic. I’m always interested in dismantling or questioning our icons. I want to make them problematic, awkward and uncomfortable.”
Watch a clip from Bradford’s Art:21 segment in which he discusses Practice:
Hard Targets is on view through January 18, 2009.
Contemporary Art Start at MoCA, Los Angeles
Two weeks ago, from August 11-15, I had the pleasure of spending a week working with a number of outstanding art teachers at the MoCA, Los Angeles summer institute, Contemporary Art Start: High School. Organized by Jeanne Hoel and Denise Gray in MoCA’s Education Department, the institute brought together two dozen L.A. teachers from a variety of districts to learn more about bringing contemporary art into the classroom, as well as giving teachers the chance to create some of their own work inspired by Marlene Dumas (currently on view at the museum) and by Season 4 Art21 artists.
Over the course of one week, teachers created three separate works of art (one being a site-specific work on the 7th floor of the museum itself) and critically viewed eight different Season 4 artist segments including Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Bradford, Jenny Holzer, Lari Pittman, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. They also had the opportunity to learn ways of incorporating Art21 and contemporary art in their curriculum, options for encouraging active participation while watching film with students, ways of organizing a variety of critiques, and considerations before giving praise in the classroom. This was a packed week that featured a lot of hard work all around and it was an honor to be in Los Angeles as this institute kicked off its first year.
Please feel free to share some of your summer work and experiences as we prepare for a new school year. Exhibits that were particularly influential? Destinations that inspired new ideas for the classroom?
Mark Bradford | Paper
EXCLUSIVE: Mark Bradford painting Ridin’ Dirty (2006) in his Los Angeles studio.
Mark Bradford transforms materials scavenged from the street into wall-sized collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks—underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space—that emerge within a city. Bradford’s work is as informed by his personal background as a third-generation merchant in Los Angeles as it is by the tradition of abstract painting developed worldwide in the twentieth century.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Mark Bradford.
LEARN: Mark Bradford is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Paradox of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Mark Bradford, Ridin’ Dirty, detail, 2006. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Monte Matteotti. Artwork courtesy: Mark Bradford.
Mark Bradford at Artpace
Artpace annually invites nine artists to conceive and create new art projects as part of their International Artist-in-Residence program in San Antonio, TX. Each residency is for a period of two months and composed of one artist from Texas, one from elsewhere in the United States, and one from abroad.
An exhibition of works by the program’s most recent residents–Mark Bradford (Season 4), William Cordova and Marcos Ramirez ERRE–opens July 10. Curated by Lauri Firstenberg, the exhibition is titled New Works: 08.2. A dialogue with Bradford, Cordova and ERRE will take place during the opening reception.
Previous participants of the Artpace residency include Art21 artists Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), Do-Ho Suh, Paul Pfeiffer, Kara Walker (all Season 2) and Arturo Herrera (Season 3).
