Friday, March 28, 2008

it's the week of the armory show... tuesday night i went to the phillips de pury preview show. big crowd, crowded bar, 2 or 3 good pieces in the whole 2 floors. ran into the writer, anthony hayden guest. we talked boxing and fighting in general... his nose is pretty bashed up, missing some teeth, so he looks the part. my friend andrew miller, former dealer and bon vivant, was visiting from the bahamas. he's known hayden guest for  a while and has some good stories... we took a cab with anthony to the home of the publisher of modern painters and art and auction-- top floor of the richard meyer building on charles street. fully catered (i parked myself at the tray of crabcakes when she started her speech), guys in black walking around with trays of champagne and wine. ran into an old freind, katya and her husband greg, a good painter. she introduced me to some girls from pace wildenstein including arnie glimcher's wife or daughter. the cute pace girl from houston looked at me and said, "you're more a brice marden kinda guy..."

hit some openings last night and somewhat predictably, ended up at an outside table at half king drinking pints... met a gallerist from belgium, jan. cool guy, white glasses and long hair. he didn't seem engaged by talk of painting... fair enough.

which actually brings up the really, really wretched amount of bad photography and video nonsense i've suffered through since tuesday. why are people doing this?? why is it making money? of course the answers to those questions are easy to come by. or maybe not... a lot of it is the blurring between media and culture. 

a lot of it is just having a little art school, a tepid creative buzz and a fear of getting your hands dirty... 

Monday, March 24, 2008

so, once again, i've read something that sets me off... an article in new york magazine about dealer, larry salander and his troubled times. seems larry tried to hedge his bets and go for the old world works of masters, versus the koons, hirst bullshit of the day. and it seems he's paid that price. i won't go into his hardships-- suffice to say he had the guts to try to place real value (in the international commercial art world) on the works of masters like tintoretto, rafael and canaletto. it cost him. big time... of course, this is the business end of this game, so there are accusations of some sleazy actions behind the scenes. but anyway... these rich guys don't play nice. lets not kid ourselves and think he was doing this for the sake of culture (well, maybe a bit) he was looking to cash in like the rest of them. anyway, it was a good read. try to check it out...

and now, i'm gonna relax a bit...

in the end, life is good.
but much of the art isn't.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

ok, back in nyc... it's colder, but sunny. of course, my first day back i noticed that it was gonna be 86 degrees in the  valley. fine... i need the hardship. give it to me. 

so i read the jerry saltz review of the whitney biennial. as one would think, it's crap (the show, not the review)... i won't be going. the only good thing to be said is that one of the curators is good to look at.  sorry, but thats it. and i will proudly say that i've never been to a whitey biennial. actually i have-- and jason rhodes rocked it. fine... the irony here is that, years ago,  i was writing about rhodes and thinking about how much i disliked the work and at the end of the essay i realized i made him sound pretty good. thats the trick-- you might not like something, but you might think about it a bit and realize a bit more. sadly, at 41 and a veteran of the nyc art world, i know what these girls at the whitney are putting out (no pun intended).... its the same ole' same ole' that was on shop last year and the year before and the year before and i've tired of what they're selling-- long ago... it would seem they have no faith (read: understanding , or sensitivity) in painting or sculpture. fine. thats the way the world works. they play video games in their off hours and text message untold hours away into nothingness, waiting for the next career move.  to each their own.  as for the work, it's the sameness of it all that rubs me the wrong way. sure, lets wrap a garden hose around the perimeters of the space, lets take nude, polaroid self-portraits, lets figure out cute riffs on environment and race; class and bullshit takes on what could be considered "culture (if we tried really, really hard)..." enough already. where is the art? where are the balls?and if that makes me sexist, fine, what would joan mitchell think of this crap? 

not much... 

not much at all.

but we move on. i no longer concern myself with this aspect of the art world. i will comment on  its frivolities and it's inanities and pound my chest for a sense of honor and quality. 

all well and good. 

fuck them...

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

so i made it. or so it seems now... i titled the painting, "nagoya". while i studied it, the images of that city came back to me. the first morning, walking along with my camera and map, stumbling across shinto shrines and buddist temples tucked away off alleys and side streets. the painting had this quiet, insular feel to it. i'd been sitting out there in the night, hearing the raccoons stumble through the bamboo and the painting was really talking to me. finally.

sometimes this art nonsense comes together. sometimes it even makes sense beyond the romantic...

yeah.

Monday, March 17, 2008

just in from the little studio under the orange tree... trying to pull together a horizontal piece to take down to the gallery tommorow. that would make four new pieces. we'll see... getting a painting ready for the world outside the studio is always a precarious undertaking for me-- the final adjustments, the final sanding, etc. anyway...

drove out to alta loma and spent the evening with alex couwenberg and his wife andi campagnone. after dinner we finished off the night at andi's gallery/wine bar. dba 256. a beautiful space in pomona. andi had a group show up of 6 or 7 women. and as far as the art exhibited went, a little testosterone would have gone a long way. having said that, the work of virginia katz was looking good. i first came across her work in nyc and she is an artist of a certain consistancy and inventiveness. i particularly enjoyed a suite of painted drawings. andi asked me to write the exhibition essay for the next show, a survey of the american landscape. several artists i'm not familiar with are going to be involved along with my good friend, james austin murray. but the main point of the evening was winning about $15 rolling dice on the bar and the girl who lives in the upstairs loft telling me that the only hair on her body was the hair on her head. good to know...

somehow andi made me drink a lot of belgian beer and then the waitress who served us dinner earlier in the evening came in, sat next to me and smiled.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

so, i must say, after much reflection, as far as the group show at turner gallery goes-- peter lodato is a heavyweight painter. period... in terms of scale and proportion, as well as pure paint handling-- this was good, good painting. the work was totemic and clean; epic and serious as a heart attack. i have to add- his is a work that must be seen in the flesh. digital imagery does nothing for this man; the work can drift into vapor. but live, standing there in front of it's form it becomes a very real force of nature. a few years ago i explored a very similar aesthetic. seeing lodato's efforts gave me pause enough to appreciate what i was doing and examples enough of what i was missing. any serious artist should seek out this man's work...
i guess it does work... drove to bergamot station in santa monica and checked out my buddy alex couwenberg in the group show he's in at the william turner gallery. the show, curated by peter frank had alex in there with peter lodato, larry bell, mike braden and charles arnoldi. alex's work was kick ass. in particular the piece, "guardrail", a large, thin horizontal in blue. yeah, a serious work. the matte surface created it's own light and allowed you to check out the detail and intimate workings of the piece. i was telling alex later, on the phone, while navigating 405 traffic back to the valley, that, with all the gloss, "finish fetish" action out here, so much gets lost... in any event, it was great painting, as was a large dyptich that didn't get in the show. alex said he's saving it for his upcoming st. louis show.

also checked out the ed moses show at frank lloyd gallery. pretty solid-- liquid paint laid out and spread with a trowel-- sparse, strong. ed came in for a moment or two then turned around and split before i could say hello. an enigmatic dude going strong in his 80's. god willing...

some good richard serra etchings at bobbie greenfield gallery, next door. heavy, circular works, very intense surface... it's serra, what could you expect? i would like to see some straight up drawing by the man though-- some pencil on notebook paper would be cool. maybe...

when i'm out here, it's always good to get out into the scene. tough to pull myself from the studio and the pool, however... the day after i got into LA, i went out to the secluded studio of robert kingston. i've known robert for about a decade now. his work has gone all over the spectrum, but always with a strong, intellectual resolve. in any event, the few pieces he had working were looking good. a gold piece, very rugged, was ready to be titled and wrapped. the question was which gallery would get it. and kingston pulled out a large black painting that was truely awesome. he flipped it's orientation several times and hit it a few strokes editing and adding elements here and there. it was a winner. and i gotta say, it was an honor to be there as he worked it...

so tuesday i take 3 works down to the the turner gallery and rob brander, bills director, will take some photos and take them in. i guess i'll bring back a few pieces they haven't sold. fair enough...
looking outside the blinds, it seems the rain has stopped.

good...
a rainy afternoon in LA... still not sure if this thing works. or if i do, for that matter...

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Welcome


Hello - Welcome to Zimmermann on Art. Postings describing events in the New York and Los Angeles art worlds will be forthcoming.