Visual Arts Briefs

As part of SVA’s rigorous MFA Art Criticism and Writing program, students develop their skills by contributing to Degree Critical, the department’s online journal of articles and exhibition reviews, which is edited by faculty members Raphael Rubinstein and Nancy Princenthal, both contributing editors at Art in America magazine. Emerging critics must refine their ability to talk about art and its role in life in engaging and meaningful ways, and the current crop of students are doing just that. As 2011 draws to a close, the Briefs looks back at some of the highlights from the journal over the past year.

In April, Alex Allenchey reviewed Gagosian’s noteworthy exhibition “Malevich and the American Legacy” as it tried to make ambitious connections between Kazimir Malevich and conceptual art, and Noah Dillon provided perspective on the state of fine arts education in his book review of Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century (MIT Press 2009). Kareem Estefan discussed the fine art of assemblage in his review of Christian Marclay’s blockbuster, 24-hour video work The Clock, and Sarah Stephenson (MFA Art Criticism 2011) wrote about Fine Arts faculty member and alumnus Sarah Sze’s (MFA 1997 Fine Arts) first New York gallery show in five years. More recently, Juliet Helmke examined the legacy of Haim Steinbach when he had his first solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar this fall, and Sara Christoph discussed Michelle Lopez’s penchant for abusing surfaces at Simon Preston.

To read more reviews and features, visit Degree Critical. For more information about MFA Art Criticism and Writing, visit the department’s Web site.

SVA presents “Critical Information: Mapping the Intersection of Art and Technology,” an interdisciplinary graduate student conference hosted by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department on Saturday, December 3 at 132 West 21 Street, 6th floor, New York City. Beginning at 10am, this daylong event features multiple panel discussions and follows seven tracks—Art, Technology and Identity; Information Art; Digital Costs; Site and Subjectivity; the Future of Signs; the Art of Sound; and Mediated Memory.

The conference’s international roster of participants represents a wide array of disciplines, from cultural studies and media arts to design and art history. Presentation topics include a discussion by Victoria Salinger (University of Chicago, Art History PhD) on the role of gender in the perception of art, science and technology in the 1970s through a comparison of the work of conceptual artists Hanne Darboven and Sol LeWitt. Matthew Lange (MFA 2011 Photography, Video and Related Media) presents a performative lecture called the “Plummet Machine,” which is a satirical cosmological theory consisting of seven Organs, each of which is an outlandish or anachronistic symbol of power that represents order and governance in contemporary society. And Erin Bell (Wayne State University, English, PhD) asks us to consider how social networking sites are transforming not only our lives, but also our deaths.

After the panels, McKenzie Wark, Associate Professor of Culture and Media at the Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, delivers a keynote address at the SVA Theater, 333 West 23 Street, at 4pm. Wark’s lecture entitled “Spectacles of Disintegration” reconsiders the role of art in contemporary society by suggesting that art practice is about the place where aesthetics and technology meet. Wark has written at length on new media, and critical theory. His books include The Hacker Manifesto (Harvard University Press 2004), Gamer Theory (Harvard University Press 2007), and The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso, 2011).

“Critical Information: Mapping the Intersection of Art and Technology” is free and open to the public. For more information and a complete schedule of panels and presentations, visit http://criticalinformationsva.com.

Image: McKenzie Wark.

SVA’s “Art in the First Person” lecture series continues on September 22 with two events that are sure to generate some lively discussion. At 6:30pm in the SVA Amphitheater, 209 East 23 Street, the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department in partnership with Professional Women Photographers present “The Role of Women in Photography: Are We There Yet?” Moderator Elisabeth Bondi, former visuals editor for The New Yorker, will be joined by curator and writer Lyle Rexer; photography critic Vince Aletti; and photographers Martine Fougeron, Sarah Silver, and Lisa Kereszi.

Across town at 7 pm at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street, the MFA Art Criticism & Writing Department hosts “Making It Visible,” a talk by Robert Storr, critic, curator, artist, and Dean of the Yale University School of Art. Storr will reflect on Gerhard Richter’s painting September, a work that powerfully evokes 9/11, and compare it to Robert Ryman’s paintings, which pose alternatives to “realism.”

On October 12 at 7pm at the SVA Theatre, the BFA Photography Department presents “Unseen in The Unseen Eye” in conjunction with the release of author, curator, collector and SVA faculty member Bill Hunt’s new book The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious. Hunt will discuss the book, his life as a collector, and his passion for photography with fellow author, curator, and faculty member Susan Bright. On October 13 at 7pm at the SVA Theatre, the MFA Art Criticism & Writing Department welcomes artist Carolee Schneemann as she explores the “Mysteries of the Iconographies” during what promises to be a stunning visual lecture.

As part of Performa 11, the BFA Fine Arts Department and the BFA Visual & Critical Studies Department present “I Feel Your Pain,” a new multimedia performance by artist Liz Magic Laser based on the idea of a “living newspaper.” Laser’s politically charged work will be performed at 8pm on Sunday, November 13 and at 8pm on Monday, November 14 at the SVA Theatre.

Most “Art in the First Person” events are free and open to the public. For more information on the more than 20 events, visit sva.edu/artinthefirstperson.

Images: (top) Photo of Robert Storr by Lyle Ashton Harris. (bottom) A still from “I Feel Your Pain” by Liz Magic Laser.

Featured exclusively on The Brooklyn Rail Web site is an interview with artist and filmmaker George Gittoes conducted by Rail publisher and SVA faculty member Phong Bui and several students of the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department. Gittoes, who participated in the interview from Pakistan via Skype, discusses the challenges of traversing dangerous territories for the purpose of documenting wars, conflicts, and the stories most Americans would never get to see. The Australian native has produced several films about the Afghan and Iraq wars within the past five years, including Rampage, The Miscreants of Taliwood, and the upcoming Love City Trilogy.

Gittoes said the decision to work amidst war zones was not as farfetched as some might think, due to the fact that he grew up in a rough neighborhood. “From my youth I knew how to draw and had an artist’s sensitivities, but the neighborhood made me very tough. That’s how I’ve been able to go to the places that I film and paint,” he said.

On November 3, Gittoes will present The Miscreants of Taliwood at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street. The screening will be followed by a conversation with MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Chair David Levi Strauss. Miscreants depicts the hostilities Pakistani filmmakers face from the disapproving Taliban (video stores are often blown up in Pakistan), and attempts by filmmakers to turn the country’s grim reality into movie drama. The most jarring scene in Miscreants may be a Taliban-distributed propaganda clip of a boy performing an execution.

“I reluctantly felt that we had to use the decapitation scene in Miscreants because you needed to see what the Taliban are distributing to replace legitimate film,” Gittoes said. “Believe me, there are much worse Taliban films than that.”

Gittoes, who worked in Afghanistan both before and after 9/11, also offered a piece of advice to fellow artists. “One of the problems artists have these days is that they think too much before doing anything, worrying what others will say,” he said. “You’ve got to see anyone who tries to damage your self-esteem as a mortal enemy because often, that’s all that artists have, their self-esteem.”

With news of Osama bin Laden’s death last month, international media attention quickly turned from whether or not he’d been killed to whether or not the Obama administration would release any photos of him. When TIME covered the President’s decision to withhold images, the editors turned to MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Chair David Levi Strauss for perspective. Drawing a comparison with Argentine revolutionary leader Che Guevara, Strauss writes, “Osama bin Laden was no Che, but he was an extremely charismatic figure and a master of iconopolitics who meticulously crafted and controlled his image, and that image will be around for a long time. So the handling of his image upon his death at the hands of the Americans had to be very carefully considered.” (Read the full story here)

In his latest piece for TIME, Strauss tackles the topic of photo doctoring, as illustrated by the decision of two Orthodox Jewish publications to remove Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Director of Counterterrorism Audrey Tomason from the now-historic shot of President Obama and his national security team watching the live raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Strauss acknowledges this as a “politically loaded erasure,” but also points out that even “the ‘original’ image released by the White House had already been digitally altered.” He goes on to suggest: “At a time when any photographic image, old or new, can be digitized at will, we should not believe any image that we see in print or online or anywhere else.” (Read the full story here)

Strauss has written widely about art and politics, including an influential essay on the Abu Ghraib photos, and will be regularly contributing to TIME about images and their effects.

• In and Out with Dick and Jane: A Loving Parody (Abrams Image, 2011) by Ross MacDonald and James Victore: For this short book of social satire, BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department faculty member James Victore teams up with illustrator Ross MacDonald to put the old-school children’s primer characters Dick and Jane through the paces of the contemporary world. Behind the squeaky-clean images and peachy-keene text lie sex, violence, gluttony, drug use and other sins. Definitely not for kids.
• Bello Bike People by Gina Bello: Combining a love of collage with a passion for cycling, alumnus Gina Bello (BFA 1985 Graphic Design) has created the Bike People series, which transforms recognizable cycling iconography into a quartet of unusual figurative images. Each of her Bike People collages is available as canvas or paper prints, T-shirts and coasters; more information is available at bellobikepeople.com.
• The Narrative (R)evolution: A Re-Writing of Ideas in the Interplay of Language, Art and Cyberspace (VDM Verlag, 2010) by Kara Rooney: The debut book by Art History Department faculty member and MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department alumnus looks at the fundamental human inclination to tell stories across aural, visual and electronic media. Rooney’s examination of storytelling reaches back to the earliest moments in history and moves through to the current era’s digital-narrative landscape.

Each year, The Alumni Society of School of Visual Arts grants Alumni Scholarship Awards to graduate and undergraduate students working on thesis/portfolio projects, and this year’s slate of recipients has just been announced. The awards are funded by generous donations from alumni, parents and friends of SVA, and are based on detailed project proposals submitted by the students.

This year’s winners are: Angela Branco (MFA Fine Arts), Sachio Cook (BFA Animation), Michelle Czajkowski (BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects), Daniel Fishel (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay), Erin Franke (BFA Visual and Critical Studies), Sasha Friedlander (MFA Social Documentary Film), Carly Gaebe (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media), Ben Gewant (BFA Fine Arts), Susie Hong (BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects), Maya Kaplun (BFA Graphic Design), Spencer Katz (BFA Film and Video), Mark Kendall (MFA Social Documentary Film), Shien-Yuin Lai (BFA Animation), Ying Hsu Lai (MFA Computer Art), Lillian Lee (MFA Design), Sara Macel (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media), Drew Magner (BFA Film and Video), William Russell Maschmeyer (MFA Interaction Design), Jinah Min (MFA Design), Kimberly Moy (BFA Interior Design), Tempest NeuCollins (MFA Fine Arts), Alex Nuñez (BFA Photography), Nathan Ramirez (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media), Christopher Sellas (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media), Olena Shmahalo (BFA Visual and Critical Studies), Sarah Stephenson (MFA Art Criticism and Writing), Michael Williams (BFA Film and Video), Zack Williams (BFA Animation) and Selim Yang (BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects).

In addition, The Alumni Society administers several named scholarships established in honor of alumni, former students or faculty. The 2011 recipients of these awards are: Lisa Anchin (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay), Illustration as Visual Essay Award; Lauren Baker (BFA Illustration), Illustration and Cartooning Award; Alysha Colangeli (BFA Fine Arts), Amelia Geocos Memorial Award; DaYoung Jung (BFA Cartooning), Will Eisner Sequential Art Award; Kayla Jang (BFA Graphic Design), Robert I. Blumenthal Memorial Award; Amanda Lanzone (BFA Illustration), 727 Award; Bo Ae Lee (BFA Cartooning), Bob Guglielmo Memorial Award; So Na Lee (BFA Fine Arts), Sylvia Lipson Allen Memorial Award; Victoria Rivera (BFA Film and Video), William C. Arkell Memorial Award; and Heather Renée Russ (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media), Thomas Reiss Memorial Award.

Images: (top) Daniel Fishel, Unnecessary Neighborly Competition, 2010; (bottom) So Na Lee, Skin of something, 2009.

We asked MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department student Noah Dillon to write up his experience seeing art historian T.J. Clark’s talk at SVA, which was part of the spring 2011 Art in the First Person lecture series. Below is Dillon’s dispatch from the event.

Professor T.J. Clark delivered a stunning lecture on Tuesday, March 1, sponsored by theMFA Art Criticism and Writing Department. The SVA Theatre was packed to hear Dr. Clark’s talk, Looking Again at Picasso’s Guernica. Clark has repeatedly proven himself to be an art historian capable of changing the way that art is seen and experienced. This lecture was no different. Dr. Clark, talking the audience through the painting’s creation, made clear its radicalism both in art history and in Picasso’s career.

Guernica (1937), commissioned for the Spanish Republican pavilion at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, was to serve as documentation of the very recent destruction of Guernica, Spain, by Luftwaffe bombers in the ongoing Spanish Civil War. The city was leveled and hundreds of civilians were annihilated. The problem of Guernica (the painting), as described by Dr. Clark, was for Picasso to depict human suffering in the public sphere, to describe the exterior world and its political space. Dr. Clark portrayed Picasso as a painter of interiors, the nostalgic bohemian rooms of the 19th century. “Space was truth for Picasso,” said Dr. Clark. However, Picasso had never successfully painted real, exterior space. When asked why he never painted landscapes, Picasso replied, “I’ve never seen one.” Picasso’s landscapes were typically fantastical, but cramped, as indicated by Dr. Clark with the inclusion of a watercolor made by Picasso for Paul Éluard. Guernica would prove to be a grueling challenge for Picasso.

Using Picasso’s previous paintings, preparatory sketches and documentary photos by Dora Maar, Dr. Clark examined Guernica’s execution from start to finish. Completed in only about five weeks, Picasso’s struggle to solve various problems of form and content were extensively and vividly catalogued by Dr. Clark with whirlwind prose that brought Guernica to bright life in the darkened theater. In remarkably lucent language, Dr. Clark identified the methods and steps, retractions and risks that Picasso took.

Following from rough composition sketches to erasure to color to collage and to the final touches that give the painting depth, Dr. Clark described how and why Guernica does what it does. The painting’s towering scale absorbs viewers into the work. Anguished women are not (as in many of Picasso’s previous works) objects of male desire, but people in pain. The figures have been edited to convey empathy but not sentimentality. Cubism is broken out of the isolated interiority it had so prized previously. Classicism is absorbed and re-formed with heightened, forward-looking vitality. Guernica is both public and political but not haranguing or partisan; the space is vast, poignant and truthful. The difficulties illustrated by Dr. Clark put into words the practical challenges Picasso faced in making beautiful and meaningful works of art.

Following the lecture, Dr. Clark took questions from the audience, including colleagues Robert Morgan and Phong Bui, giving informed and candid responses to a variety of concerns. A downloadable edition of Dr. Clark’s talk will soon be available on iTunes U, along with other events from the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department lecture series.

Image: T.J. Clark at the SVA Theatre; photo by Noah Dillon.

In commemoration of the centennial anniversary of the publication of Wassily Kandinsky’s seminal text On the Spiritual in Art, the BFA Fine Arts Department has invited renowned artists and scholars to participate in Beyond Kandinsky: Revisiting the Spiritual in Art, a 10-day online symposium beginning Wednesday, March 30. The symposium will examine the book’s influence on artists and writers throughout its 100-year history, as well as its relevance and interpretation within a contemporary context.

Organized and moderated by artist, writer and faculty member Taney Roniger and writer and filmmaker Eric Zechman, the symposium will open a dialogue between participating art historians, media historians, critics, visual artists and filmmakers on how the questions raised by Kandinsky’s book can be explored within the current cultural landscape. Symposium participants include: artist, theoretician and BFA Fine Arts Department Chair Suzanne Anker; philosopher, curator and BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department and Art History Department Chair Tom Huhn; and scholar, critic and MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Chair David Levi Strauss; among many others. Beyond Kandinsky symposium participants are currently posting their introductory statements online; to read these and to follow the full event, visit beyondkandinsky.net.

In conjunction with the symposium, SVA will present a screening of four works by avant-garde filmmaker and symposium participant Nathaniel Dorsky at the SVA Theatre: Sarabande (2008), Winter (2008), Compline (2009) and Aubade (2010). The films will be shown on Tuesday, April 5, 7pm at 333 West 23rd Street. The screening is free and open to the public.

Image: Nathaniel Dorsky, still from Compline, 2009.

If you’re looking to catch up on the many art and design-focused lectures and events that happen at SVA each month, iTunesU offers a growing catalog of free video and audio podcasts.

The College’s iTunesU archive is available through Apple’s iTunes software (free download here), and has video and audio downloads from undergraduate, graduate and other SVA programs. The BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department and MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department have been uploading their Art in the First Person lectures; last year’s Dear Dave, photography conversations are available; the SVA Galleries have exclusive video of select gallery events; and more. To see all SVA iTunesU downloads, click here.