Italian Artist Killed in Turkey

By Woopidoo | May 31, 2008

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The 33 year old Italian performance artist Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo (Pippa Bacca) was recently killed during her “Brides on Tour” project. The artist was hitchhiking through Turkey in a white wedding dress to promote peace in the Middle
East. 38 year old Turkish man Murat Karatas was arrested for the murder and sexual assault of the artist.

They would have no set timetable. They would require very little in the way of funding. They would make new friends everywhere. They would, in the largest sense, be free. When they arrived in Istanbul, Moro and Bacca were two weeks into their journey. They had already traveled by road through the Balkans; after Turkey, they were heading to Syria and Lebanon; their final destination, still weeks away, was Israel. There, they planned to stage an exhibition whose centerpiece would be the white gowns they had worn on the road, tattered and tattooed with the dust of the long journey. LA Times

Sunday Secrets

By postsecret | May 31, 2008

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PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail
in their secrets anonymously on one side of a “sweet potato”.

—–Email Message—–
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2008 7:59 AM
To: frank
Subject: ifoundyourcamera

My wife discovered a hidden memory stick I had with naked pictures of an old girlfriend she didn’t know. I told her I found the memory stick and was going to mail it to ifoundyourcamera

See 10 more secrets - join the facebook page.

Book Signings This Week

June 3rd Maryland Science Center
June 6th http://www.artomatic.org/
June 7th Smithsonian

Bill Henson Nude Teen Controversy

By Woopidoo | May 30, 2008

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An exhibition by the Australian photographer Bill Henson was recently raided by police in Sydney, Australia. The Henson exhibition included images of a naked 13 year old girl. Photographs were taken and police are now investigating the matter.

The announcement came as an online forensic expert said there was “no doubt” the controversial photographs had already made their way on to pedophile websites. “I’d be very surprised if the photos are not already (on pedophilia sites),” said law academic and computer forensic examiner Ajoy Ghosh, who has worked on several child pornography investigations. The Age

I have mixed feelings about the controversy. He does make beautiful photos but I don’t think artists are above the law. If it’s wrong for a kiddie porn website to have photos of underage nude girls on them, it should be wrong for an art gallery to hang them. But I don’t like rules or the law very much either, so who knows.
>> Photography, Australia, Controversial News

A People Day

By Martha Marshall | May 30, 2008

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Had a people day today, a day outside the studio to spend time with friends and perhaps get a new perspective on things.

This morning Candace Knapp came over for coffee and shared with me an exciting music CD she has created — her very first, using her own voice. It was amazing and exhilirating to be the first to get to listen to it. Her intent is for it to be part of an installation of her sculptures some time in the future.

Then on to Michael Murphy Gallery to talk to the staff there and see what’s going on. On the way back home from the gallery, I called Dina Kerik to see if she wanted to do lunch. She thought that was a marvelous idea, so I swung by her place and we went to the Acropolis in Ybor City for a wonderful Greek meal. Afterward we stopped by Clayton Galleries to see the new fiber art solo show of works by Victoria Rivers that opens tonight. Since Dina is a fabulous fiber artist in her own right, I knew she would love that, and so did I!

The show is one of several fiber art events surrounding “Convergence 2008″ in Tampa, a biennial international conference of the Handweavers Guild of America.

Oh yes, and I’m still working on new pieces for the Key West Art Bar.

I hope you had a fun Friday. I did.

A Lack of Faith or Just a Lag in Understanding?

By Edward_ | May 30, 2008

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My poor chemistry teacher. She patiently tried to explain the concept to my satisfaction, but eventually gave up and said that, because of the way I was asking the question, it was clear I wouldn’t understand the concept until later in the course, when some other things were clarified. For the time being, however, I’d just have to accept what she told me and move on.

Unfortunately for me, such a leap of faith was impossible for my teenage mind, and I don’t think I actually learned another thing for the rest of that year in chemistry. This penchant caused me problems in German as well, where the teacher would suggest I keep reading, rather than look up each word I didn’t understand, and cull the meaning from context. I looked up each word instead. If I didn’t get it, my mind shut down. No faith for you, chemistry concept. Keine Glaube fuer dich, Chemievorstellung (the brutality of that translation explains why my teacher was right to steer me away from my attempts at word-by-word comprehension, btw). But to bullheaded Ed, if the meaning wasn’t clear, if I couldn’t grasp and tuck away the idea to then build upon it with more complex concepts, my brain would sit down, legs crossed on the floor, with a big pout, and not budge. I’m happy to say I’ve matured a bit since then (perhaps), but still very much understand the impulse.

This notion came back to me when traipsing through one of my favorite sections of ArtNews: their Retrospective segment, where they group quotes from 100, 75, 50, and 25 years ago, generally verifying that the more things change, the more they say the same. From their June issue came this gem:

75 Years Ago
M. Matisse’s most engaging statement was undoubtedly his pat reply to the World Telegram’s inquiry as to the aesthetic perceptions of rich old lady patrons:

“When a painting is finished, it’s like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then, do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist does not yet comprehend?”
—“Matisse Speaks,” June 3, 1933

We’ve already been all over how unlike giving birth creating a painting is, but I think perhaps Henri’s second idea here provides insight into what I see as evidence that not only does the general public not give itself enough credit with regards to how much they “get” (or don’t “get”) contemporary art, but that artists should care more about what other artists thing about their work than the public if they’re attempting to break new ground or push beyond what they think they know.

But there are two ideas in there, so I’ll tease them out. First is the observation that the general public, which is frequently cited as not really getting (i.e., liking) much of contemporary art, might be getting a bum rap on that. Consider the widespread public reaction to Impressionism when it first hit the salons. Critics and amateurs alike were aghast. Today, however, an Impressionism exhibition is almost a guaranteed blockbuster for any museum. Likewise with pure abstraction, which perhaps only a few decades ago was still widely being labeled as fraudulent, but increasingly I hear as cited as casual art lovers’ favorite genre of painting. In other words, the public does seem, eventually, to catch up with the artists. Matisse’s assessment, then, isn’t a condemnation of the amateur, but merely an honest observation that comprehension can take time and if you’re not up to your hips in an investigation or practice, it can take you even longer.

The other idea, my not being an artist, represents perhaps a bit of talking through my hat, but I can only imagine how much courage it takes to keep working on a new concept/approach to one’s art when there’s only head-scratching (or worse) in response by the general public. When I talk with student artists about the importance of building a support network if they want to enter into the art world’s gallery system, I nearly always see a bit of resistance to the idea that the most important subgroup within that network should be other artists. “Aren’t they my competition for getting into a gallery?” Only if you’re making essentially the same work, would be my honest reply, but instead of saying that I focus on how even the best art dealers and curators out there won’t be as good a sounding board as fellow artists oftentimes. Letting a dealer or curator, who might have agendas far different from why an artist is investigating unchartered terrain, impact whether he or she continues down that path seem an unavoidable reality of the art world, but without at least comparing such advice with that of artist friends first, I can’t help but think the artist is denying him/herself potentially the best evaluation.

OK, so I see I’m rambling. Thank God I don’t have an editor on this thing. Otherwise, I might have to go back and make more sense of some of that…but coffee calls.

Happy Weekend all.