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@icpbardmfa
Is it contemporary art?
Water Towers Shaped Like Other Things in Alabama.
End of the school year got me like....
Jennifer Bolande_Desert X_2017 A cinematic experience animated by driving along Gene Autry Trail, viewers will encounter a series of billboards featuring photographs of the very mountains towards which they are heading. (Gene Autry Trail, Palm Springs, California)
THE READABLE CITY
Angell Gallery April 7–29, 2017
Opening reception Friday April 7 from 7 to 9pm
ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present THE READABLE CITY, a group show featuring seven artists from Toronto and Montreal, working in photography, collage, video, sculpture and installation. The exhibition is curated by Associate Director Bill Clarke and features artists: Anna Eyler, Malka Greene, Eva Kolcze, Ella Dawn McGeough, Aude Moreau, Simone Rochon & Jessica Thalmann. Taking its title from a phrase in French scholar Michel de Certeau’s essay “Walking in the City”, the exhibition runs from April 5 through 29, with an opening reception on Friday, April 4 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
How often have you traversed a city park using a path worn into the grass by others rather than walking the route laid down by the park’s designers? When describing how to get from point A to point B in the city, are you more likely to think in terms of street names and numbers, or landmarks and buildings passed by on the way? Have you walked in a parade or occupied a public space during a demonstration.
In “Walking in the City” and “Spatial Stories” - essays found in The Practice of Everyday Life* - French scholar Michel de Certeau examines how we unconsciously navigate urban environments by using “tactics” like those above in response to the “strategies” employed by institutions and governments to control our movements and influence our behaviours. Certeau, surveying New York City from the top of the then newly built World Trade Center towers, describes how governments, institutions and corporations view the city as a unified whole, structuring streets in grids, naming parks or squares, and raising buildings and monuments that “historicize, hierarchize and semantically order the surface of the city.” The city’s inhabitants, meanwhile, resist these strictures by creating shortcuts, seizing control of public areas or defacing surfaces. For Certeau, cities are sites of struggle between forces of control and those of expression.
Unlike the capital cities of Europe, New York hasn’t “learned the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts,” according to Certeau. The same could be said of Toronto, which, like New York, seems always to be “in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future.” (The same may not be said of a city like Montreal, which has done more to preserve a sense of its past.) Cities, however, are more than architecture and infrastructure. They are places where people seek success, acceptance and community, and arenas in which social movements coalesce and ideas ferment.
The exhibition also picks up on another thread in Certeau’s essays; that is, how people’s presence in spaces turn them into places. The artists here closely observe the surfaces of the city and give them new form, We are invited to consider how our actions shape the cities in which we live, and how, through collective action, we can produce communities in which everyone can say, “I feel good here.”
Text by Bill Clarke
*Quotes taken from: de Certeau, Michael: The Practice of Everyday Life: translation: Steven Rendall, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984.
http://www.angellgallery.com/exhibition/the-readable-city
>>>BEGIN TRANSMISSION …The ICP-Bard MFA class of 2017 solo exhibition schedule… 24-20 JACKSON AVENUE LONG ISLAND CITY 7, G, E, M >>>COURT SQUARE… // MARCH 2ND 20…
“Pandora's Box: Jan Dibbets on Another Photography,” Musée d’art moderne, Paris
Whether it’s part of a news headline or the name of a nightclub, the phrase “Pandora’s Box” is such a cliché nowadays that it’s easy to ignore. In fact, I Googled it just now to check I hadn’t forgotten the story, which is basically this: In Greek mythology, Pandora, the first woman on Earth, opened a “box” that contained all the evils of creation, thus releasing them into the world. (Wikipedia is vague on the details, but crystal clear on slut-shaming Pandora.)
In choosing the title for this exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne, curator Jan Dibbets seems to be playing devil’s advocate – literally. “In the course of photography’s brief history,” says Dibbets, “we can see how this diabolical, [emphasis mine] hybrid medium [photography] began to insist increasingly on its place in the arts, especially since the 1960s and the coming of Conceptualism.”
In which case not only does the devil have all the best tunes, he has quite a bit of the coolest imagery as well.
Dibbets is a 74-year-old Dutch Conceptual artist, who has been exhibited at MAM, but who has never curated an exhibition before, let alone a photography exhibition (nice work if you can get it). His approach is original, and it doesn’t always make total sense, but it sure is thought-provoking.
Specifically, it makes you think: Do we really know what photography actually is?
Anna Atkins, “Aspidium obfussum,” c.1850
The first few rooms (and there are quite a few rooms) are dedicated to the earliest days of photography: an 1840 daguerreotype by German physicist Andreas Freiherr von Ettingshausen; cyanotypes by British botanist-photographer Anna Atkins from the 1850s; “vortoscopes” by American Wunderkind Alvin Langdon Coburn, about 1916; Brassai and Man Ray images from the 1930s.
Andreas Ritter Von Ettingshausen, “Clematis”, 1840
Alvin Langdon Coburn, vortoscopes, c.1916
Man Ray, “Untitled, Detail of Project for a Tapestry,” 1925-1926
There is a big room of Eadweard Muybridge’s series’ Animal Locomotion. And images of light effects captured by Etienne Trouvelot in 1888, and moon shots by 19th century astronomer brothers Paul-Pierre and Prosper-Mathieu Henry (as well as moon shots by NASA.)
Multiple Muybridges.
Étienne Léopold Truvelot, “Figures de Trouvelot,” 1888
Juxtaposed with these are more modern images – mostly by Thomas Ruff – echoing the form of the older works. It’s not quite clear whether this is meant to validate the 19th century material, or to remind the viewer that the history of photography is, as Dibbets says, “brief.” But visually the resonance works.
In some cases, like that of Harold E. Edgerton, the work of one photographer spans decades, suggesting a single-minded devotion to a personal “decisive moment.”
Harold E. Edgerton, “Milk Drop Coronet,” 1957, and “Milk Drop Coronet,” 1936
In others, such as Ruff set against Atkins and Karl Blossfeldt’s botanic studies from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you can’t help but question whether photography has really, um, developed. Or whether the medium achieved some kind of perfection early on – call it Classicism – with subsequent practitioners merely working through Mannerist phases.
To put it another way, whereas painting clearly has developed – the eye of Picasso is different to the eye of Raphael, Francis Bacon learned from and built on the achievements of Velázquez – photography today blithely reproduces the styles of the past. Nowhere more so, of course, than in popular photography – i.e., Instagram – where we rely on on filters to achieve the patina of professionalism, whether that’s the snowy backgrounds of a classic studio shoot or Facetune’s DIY glossy magazine standards of perfection.
This is where you being to realise where Dibbets’ might be going with “Pandora’s Box”…
Thomas Ruff, “neg-stil-03-2015″
Karl Blossfeldt, “Working Collage 33,” 1898-1928
Back to the exhibition. The selection of work on display is unpredictable, mostly abstract, and rather marvellous. The MAM website admits, “It is the scientifically oriented photographers of the 19th century who emerge here as the true visionaries” – which is true, if a bit unfair on Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, et al.
Among others, there are fascinating images by Moholy-Nagy, and Francis Joseph Bruguière – a San Francisco-born protegé of Steiglitz, who made a living for a while shooting for Vogue and Vanity Fair, and who pioneered solarization years before Man Ray.
Francis Joseph Bruguière, “Light Rhythms,” 1930
As the exhibition moves through the 20th century, it gets a bit erratic, like a gyroscope slowing down, a bit random – dipping into Arte Povera with Giuseppe Penone (why?), Walker Evans with Sherrie Levine’s After Walker Evans, with Michael Mandiberg’s After Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans – the self-referencing takes over.
Walker Evans, “Tenant Farmer Wife (Annie Mae Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama),” 1936
Sherrie Levine, “After Walker Evans,” 1981, and Michael Mandiberg, “After Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans,” 2004
The last section of the exhibition is about “photographic objects,” and/but is the most challenging section. Exhibits here include fabric pieces, sculpture, and installations, from artists “seeking an extreme expression of the photographic principle.” Some of these, even with the Conceptualist meta-notes, are baffling, others – like Spiros Hajidjanos’ huge aluminium iPhone – wryly amusing.
Spiro Hajidjanos, “Displaced Smartphone,” 2014
In the end, Dibbets’ curation may not be actually diabolical, but it’s certainly mischievous. By showing the timelessness of (some) “old” photographic objects and the uncomfortable direction of (some) “new” photographic objects, he poses the question, What do we expect of photography? Do we look at it as a medium, or as an art form in itself? Photography liberated painting from the obligation to represent reality, but what will liberate photography?
Pandora’s Box: Jan Dibbets on Another Photography, continues at Musée d’art moderne, Paris, until July 17th, 2016
Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula, 2000
Man Ray, Venus Restored, 1936 (1971)
This week! Come check it out!
The enigmatic model made her way to London from Jamaica in the early 19th century to sit for the Pre-Raphaelites, and her legacy lives on in their impactful work
Evening Conversations
Candidates for the 2017 ICP-Bard MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies are pleased to present two evening conversations at the ICP Museum. Each evening will begin with presentations by two artists and a moderated discussion, followed by a Q&A with the audience.
These conversations are intended to foster an open dialogue between students, artists, and the general public. The cross-pollination of ideas that result is also meant to inspire a more fluid, interdisciplinary exchange between all aspects of the ICP community.
Evening I: Nicole Eisenman and Lucas Blalock, moderated by Kelly Shindler
Nicole Eisenman and Lucas Blalock approach picture making with an expanded notion of their depictive medium (painting and photography), and their shared histories. By considering the pictorial space between the real and the virtual, representation opens up a conversation where pictures mediate and reflect on the material and emotional fabric of our contemporary experience. How do their respective working methods reveal a concurrent attraction and distrust, perhaps even humor, over the appearances of things?
Evening II: Caitlin Cherry and Abbas Akhavan, moderated by Daniella Rose King
Through their response to the exhibition space as a terrain, where access gets negotiated from the inside and the outside, Caitlin Cherry and Abbas Akhavan’s work address the formation and institution of boundaries. Whether paintings are set up on catapults or the entrance of the gallery is obstructed by sandbags, each artist subverts the functional use of objects to question the history of contested territories and the sites of conflict from which they individually draw.
Tuesday and Wednesday, December 13 and 14, 2016, from 6:30 – 9:00 pm. ICP Museum, 250 Bowery, New York, NY, 10012. Free and open to the public.
More Information: Evening I & Evening II
About The ICP-Bard MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies: The ICP-Bard MFA program offers an exploration into the ways in which the photograph operates in society, emphasizing creative vision and openness to examining the many iterations of the image, from photography to digital imaging, installation, and video. By considering how photographs are created, presented, discussed, used, and documented, students gain an intimate knowledge of the ways in which images increasingly structure modern society and consciousness.
The ICP-Bard MFA class 2017 candidates: Sasha Bush, Hyungjo Moon, Marla Hernandez, Sam Margevicius, Melchior de Tinguy, Gülsüm Kavuncu, Nechama Winston, Emile Rubino, Cristina Velasquez.
Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910–1950
“PHILADELPHIA — Politics or beauty? Take your choice. Conventional wisdom says they don’t mix. But “Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art argues, with reservations, otherwise. The show is the first all-out attempt in the United States in seven decades to grapple with the contradictions of early-20th-century Mexican political art. (The last one was also at this museum.) It has plenty of pumped muralist muscle — all those clenched fists — but offsets it with pictures as pretty as valentines.
Organized with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, where it will travel in February, the show focuses on pioneers of the Mexican movement for artistic nationalism, following the timeline of revolutionary events. In 1911, the country’s longtime president, Porfirio Díaz, was chased out of office. He had kept peace for decades by pampering the elite, enriching the army, and treating the poor, which meant practically everyone else, like dirt. Finally, dirt said no, and everything changed, including art.”
Read the full review here.
Images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s website (www.philamuseum.org) below:
Pottery Vendors, 1934, Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Mexican, 1871-1946, Tempera and charcoal on newsprint, 57.5x42.2 cm. (Private collection)
Portrait of Martin Luis Guzman, 1915, Diego Rivera, Mexican, 1886-1957, Oil on canvas, 72.3x59.6 cm. (Fundacion Televisa Collection and Archive, © Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./VEGAP, Madrid, 2016.)
War, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican, 1896-1974, © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City.
Dance in Tehuantepec, 1928, Diego Rivera, Mexican, 1886-1957, Oil on canvas, 199x162 cm. (Collection of Eduardo F. Costantini, Buenos Aires, © Banco de Mexico Diego Rivero Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./VEGAP, Madrid, 2016.)
Classical Landscape with Horse, 1934, Emilio Amero, Mexican, 1901-1976, Watercolor on paper, 42.5x43 cm. (Private collection)
Troubled Waters, 1949, Jose Chavez Morado, Mexican, 1909-2002, Oil on canvas, 106x135cm (Acervo Patrimonial, Secretaria de Hacienda y Credito Publico, Mexico City © VEGAP, Madrid, 2016).
Carnival at Huejotzingo, 1939, Jose Chavez Morado, Mexican, 1909-2002, Oil on canvas, 71x96.5 cm. (Phoenix Art Museum: Gift of Dr. & Mrs. Loyal Davis, © VEGAP, Madrid, 2016)
Barricade, 1931, Jose Clemente Orozco, Mexican, 1883-1949, Oil on canvas, 139.7x114.3 cm. (The Museum of Modern Art, New York: Given anonymously, 468.1937, © VEGAP, Madrid, 2016)
Self-Portrait on the Border Line between Mexico and the United States, 1932, Frida Kahlo, Mexican, 1907-1954, Oil on metal, 31.8x34.9 cm. (Collection of Maria and Manuel Reyero, New York, © Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./VEGAP, Madrid, 2016.)
The first telescopic observations of Mars
Source: Nathaniel Everett Green (1823-1899) and the Observations of Mars (in Portuguese).
“Nathaniel Everett Green, an English artist and astronomer, was born Aug. 21, 1823. In the summer of 1877, there was a favorable opposition of Mars, which means Mars was directly opposite the sun from the earth, high in the sky at midnight, and as close as Mars can get to an earth-bound observer. Green packed up his telescope and headed for Madeira, hopeful that the seeing would be better on the mountainous island. Indeed it was. When he returned to England, he presented his drawings of Mars to the Royal Astronomical Society, and they were published in 1879. They are some of the finest renditions of Mars ever made, with Green even doing the lithographs himself. Also included was a full map of Mars. The nomenclature system he used had been devised by Richard Proctor in 1867, naming the supposed continents and seas after astronomers, so you can pick out the Beer, Maedler, and Herschel continents, and the Dawes and Del La Rue oceans. Unfortunately for Green and Proctor, Giovanni Schiaparelli was also mapping Mars in 1877, and he came up with a different nomenclature system, using classical terms such as Syrtis Major and Solis Lacus to designate the formations. Schiaparelli’s scheme won out, and Green’s map slipped into obscurity.
“No doubt part of the reason for the appeal of Green’s Mars sketches lies in his abilities as a landscape painter. His pastels and watercolors are abundant but hard to find; we reproduce one above, a view of Jerusalem from Mount Zion, that he made on a visit to the Near East in 1884.” Source.
Also see “Geographers of Mars,Cartographic Inscription and Exploration Narrative in Late Victorian Representations of the Red Planet,” by K. Maria D. Lane,*and “Nathaniel Everett Green: artist and astronomer” by R. J. McKim.
Figure 1. Planet Mars drawings made by Francesco Fontana in 1636 (left) and 1638 (right), in Flammarion, C. (1892) La Planète Mars et ses conditions d’habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 2. Planet Mars representations made by C. Huygens in 1656 (left) and 1659 (right) in Flammarion, C. (1892) La Planète Mars et ses conditions d’habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 3. Mars Observations made by G. D. Cassini in 1656, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 4. Mars observations made by G. F. Maraldi in 1719, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 5. Mars Observations made between 1781 and 1783 by F. W. Herschel, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 6. Reflector telescope built by Johann Hieronymus Schroeter.
Figure 7. Mars drawings made by J. H. Schroeter in 1798, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 8. Mars observations made by Beer and Mädler between 1830 and 1832, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 9. First map the surface of Mars design by Mädler, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 10. Mars drawings made by Warren De la Rue on April 20, 1856, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 11. Mars design by A. Secchi in 1858. in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 13. Drawings made by N. Green in 1877 (Madeira), in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
Figure 14. Map of Mars surface designed by N. Green Madeira Island. Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, 44: 1877-79: 138
Figure 15. Mars map drawing by Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli in 1877, in Flammarion, C. (1892), La Planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité. Gauthiers Villars et Fils, Paris.
A powerful solar storm nearly heated the Cold War up catastrophically five decades ago, a new study suggests.
Some amazing captures of solar jet transits below…
Solar jet transit (20111105). Takahashi FS128 F/8.1, 2" Lunt Solar Wedge, DMK41.
Solar jet transit (20111227). LUNT 152 F/6, BF3400, DMK41.
Solar jet transit (20121028). Astro-Tech 80 F/7, LUNT Ca-K Module with B1200 Blocking Filter, DMK51.
Solar jet transit (20121226). PST CaK, DMK41.
Solar jet transit (20130313). LUNT 152 F/6, BF3400, X1.6 Barlow, DMK51.
Solar jet transit (20140410). TV101 F/5.4, Coronado SM60, BF30, PGR Grasshopper 3
Solar jet transit (20140417). TV101 F/5.4, LUNT Ca-K Module with B1200 Blocking Filter, PGR Grasshopper 3
Solar jet transit (20141231). IKHARUS 80 F/7, Coronado SM60, BF30, PGR Grasshopper 3
Solar jet transit (20150516). LUNT 152 F/6, X2 Barlow, PGR Grasshopper 3
Solar jet transit (20160723). TV101 F/5.4, Coronado SM60, BF30, PGR Grasshopper 3
Source: astrosurf.com
“…a solar transit is a movement of any object passing between the Sun and the Earth. This mainly includes the planets Mercury and Venus. A solar eclipse is also a solar transit of the Moon, but technically only if it does not cover the entire disc of the Sun (an annular eclipse), as “transit” counts only objects that are smaller than what they are passing in front of. Solar transit is only one of several types of astronomical transit.
Solar transit (or a solar outage, sometimes solar fade, sun outage, or sun fade) also occurs to communications satellites, which pass in front of the Sun for several minutes each day for several days straight for a period in the months around the equinoxes, the exact dates depending on where the satellite is in the sky relative to its earth station. Because the Sun also produces a great deal of microwave radiation in addition to sunlight, it overwhelms the microwave radio signals coming from the satellite’s transponders. This enormous electromagnetic interference causes interruptions in fixed satellite services that use satellite dishes, including TV networks and radio networks, as well as VSAT and DBS.
Only downlinks from the satellite are affected, uplinks from the Earth are normally not, as the planet “shades” the Earth station when viewed from the satellite. Satellites in geosynchronous orbit are irregularly affected based on their inclination. Reception from satellites in other orbits are frequently but only momentarily affected by this, and by their nature the same signal is usually repeated or relayed on another satellite, if a tracking dish is used at all. Satellite radio and other services like GPS are not affected, as they use no receiving dish, and therefore do not concentrate the interference. (GPS and certain satellite radio systems use non-geosynchronous satellites.)
Solar transit begins with only a brief degradation in signal quality for a few moments. At the same time each day, for the next several days, it gets longer and gets worse, until finally gradually improving after several more days. For digital satellite services, the cliff effect will eliminate reception entirely at a given threshold. Reception is typically lost for only a few minutes on the worst day, but the beam width of the dish can affect this. Signal strength also affects this, as does the bandwidth of the signal. If the power is concentrated into a narrower band, there is a higher signal-to-noise ratio. If the same signal is spread wider, the receiver also gets a wider swath of noise, degrading reception.” - Source: Wikipedia