Pablo Picasso, The Charnel House, Paris, 1944-45. Oil and charcoal on canvas, 6' 6 5/8" × 8' 2 1/2" (199.8 × 250.1 cm). Mrs. Sam A. Lewisohn Bequest (by exchange), and Mrs. Marya Bernard Fund in memory of her husband Dr. Bernard Bernard, and anonymous funds. © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via MoMA website

On Monday, James and I participated in a guerilla "Communist Tour" of the Museum of Modern Art led by artist Yevgeniy Fiks. The first paragraph of his project statement says:

For the past fifty years, the Museum of Modern Art has been separating artists from their politics and in so doing sanitizing the history of Modern Art. “Communist Tour of MoMA” connects the history of Modern Art to history of the 20th century Communist movement. The project is based on research conducted at the Museum of Modern Art archives in New York, focusing on Modern artists from the MoMA collection whose careers overlapped with the trajectory of the Communist Party.

Below are some highlights from the notes I took during his whirlwind talk in the permanent collection floors of the museum. C-Monster was also tweeting during the tour using the hashtag #commietour.

We began with Picasso, in front of the painting above. Picasso joined the French Communist Party in 1944. He thought of Charnel House as a political/war painting in the tradition of Goya. Over his lifetime he donated millions of francs to the party and participated actively through peace conferences as well as publications and petitions. He was refused a visa to visit the the United States in 1950 due to his communism. Picasso and Leger contributed drawings to a French brochure honoring the Rosenbergs after their execution.

Mark Rothko was a member of several communist-backed organizations, including the American League Against War and Fascism and the American Artists’ Congress. Like many others, he left the Congress, after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact of 1939.

Ad Reinhhardt contributed cartoons to communist publications such as "The New Masses" and "Soviet Russia Today" in the 1930s and 1940s. Some were published with his real name, some with a pseudonym, and some anonymously.

David Smith was a member of the party from the late 1930s until the end of World War II, and joined at a time when one had to belong to a study group to learn about Marxism before being admitted.

Jacob Lawrence taught at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca, was a cartoonist for "The New Masses," and signed a 1937 letter protesting against the potential banning of the Communist Party of the USA. While we were learning this, and standing near Lawrence's Migration Series (jointly owned by the Phillips Collection and MoMA), Yevgeniy was shocked to have a tourist come up and ask, "Are these primitives?"

Of course we all know about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's communism. The most interesting facts for them were: Rivera getting expelled from the Soviet Union during a 1927 visit for "anti-Soviet" politics, and Kahlo's remark that she was a better communist than Rivera was or ever would be. After her death, Kahlo's body lay in state at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City covered with a red flag bearing the hammer and sickle.

Stuart Davis is considered by historians to be the most serious Marxist in the history of the American cultural left. He led both the American Artists Union and the American Artists Congress at different times in the 1930s. The latter held the meeting announcing its formation at the Museum of Modern Art itself! He left the party in the late 30s after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. [Note: see comment below from Davis's son.]

That seems like plenty for now even though there were many more, so I recommend talking to Yevgeniy at his #class presentation on March 12. Ask him about Matisse!

Update: James now has a post with some photos of the tour.

One of the reasons that bloggy.com has been so quiet lately is that I've been working on a few web projects including our new collection web site. The installation view above was taken by the lovely and talented Fette, and there are more images on our site from her.

This Saturday, February 27, at 6pm, James and I will be participating on a panel at Winkleman Gallery that we organized called "Collecting with your eye not your ears" as part of the William Powhida / Jennifer Dalton project #class. Please join us.

Dan Perjovschi, one postcard from Postcards from the World (North America), 2009, ink and marker on paper, 4 × 6 inches, via Lombard-Freid Projects

This is one of hundreds (thousands?) of postcards from Dan Perjovschi's show at Lombard-Freid Projects, closing February 20. Don't miss it.

The show is closed, but I wanted to put up a couple of photos I took on the last day of the installation Drippy by Ben Godward and Famous Accountants (Ellen Letcher and Kevin Regan), all of whom I met via the wonder that was/is Pocket Utopia. The "dripping blood" on the walls is by Famous Accountants, and the site-specific sculpture in the middle is by Ben Godward.

Visit my flickr set for more images.

I, along with a few other people you have probably already heard of, will be participating in a panel on blogs and contemporary art organized and moderated by Robin White for ArtTable. Full details below. I recommend RSVP-ing right away, as seating is limited.

WHEN

Friday, January 15, 6:30 pm

Please note that the Gallery is open 12 - 6 pm so arrive early if you want to view the final phase of exhibitions at X.

WHERE

X Initiative
548 West 22nd Street
New York NY 10011

Moderator: Robin White

Panelists:

Barry Hoggard, Bloggy, ArtCat, Culture Pundits: blogger, collector, entrepreneur

Paddy Johnson, Art Fag City: news and opinion blogger, writer

William Powhida: artist, blogger

Kelly Shindler, Art21: educational blogger

Edward Winkleman: gallery owner, blogger

Blogs about contemporary arts and the art world play an increasingly important role by providing multiple viewpoints, information and commentaries about the art market, the gallery scene, artists and their work on a daily basis. As the number of printed newspaper and culture journals decreases, some blogs are becoming a source for substantial art journalism and art criticism. By pairing the 5-most read, and hotly debated, bloggers of New York City, we want to touch on a topic that is timely and relevant, and offer a dynamic and lively conversation at the X-Initiative.

We have curated the panel to incorporate a wide spectrum of practicing bloggers: from art news to art education, from the perspective of the art market including both the point of view of an artist and a gallerist, and those who are taking the online art world to a whole new-networked level.

About the Panelists:

Barry Hoggard writes about art and politics on bloggy.com. He is the editor, along with James Wagner, of the arts calendar ArtCat, and proprietor of CulturePundits.com, a curated network of today’s leading cultural websites and blogs. He recently began publishing Idiom, an online publication of urban artistic practice. He is also a software developer.

http://bloggy.com/

http://www.culturepundits.com/

http://www.artcat.com/

http://idiommag.com/

Paddy Johnson aka ArtFagCity blogger, has been published in artreview.com, Art in America, FlashArt, Print Magazine, Time Out NY, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post and many others. Paddy lectures widely about art and the Internet and in 2008, she served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowships and became the first blogger to earn a Creative Capital Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital Foundation.

http://www.artfagcity.com/

William Powhida’s blog has covered controversial topics including creating an "enemies" list as well as letters addressed to famous contemporary curators, collectors and critics, requesting recognition. According to Wikipedia as an artist he constructs work deliberately about growing his own fame, addressing the major obstacles facing emerging contemporary artists.

http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/

Kelly Shindler, Art 21 Blog Founder and Editor, has worked at Art21 since 2003, where she is presently Director of Special Projects. She is also a curator and writer, as well as a dual Master’s candidate in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism/Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

http://blog.art21.org/

Edward Winkleman is an art dealer and a blogger. He started his eponymous blog about the art world and politics in 2005 and is a contributing editor to the international blog Art World Salon. He began his career in the art world with a series of guerilla-style exhibitions organized in New York and London under the name 'hit & run'. In 2001 he co-founded the Plus Ultra Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Moving into Manhattan's art district Chelsea in 2006, he changed the name of the gallery to Winkleman Gallery.

http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/

About the organizers:

Robin White Owen is a principal at MediaCombo, an award winning multimedia production company that specializes in working with culture, science and environmental organizations. As a blogger, she writes about culture, social media and multimedia in and out of the gallery and museum. Robin has worked on productions for the The Jewish Museum, and the British Museum, in addition to working with VIART, View Magazine, and ArtForum.

www.mediacombo.net

http://mediacomb.net/blog

twitter.com/rocombo

Heather Darcy Bhandari is the director of artist relations at Mixed Greens. Since joining the gallery in 2000, she has curated over forty-five exhibitions while managing and advising a roster of nearly two-dozen artists. She curates independent shows, sits on the board of NURTUREart, and co-authored the professional development guide for artists, ART/WORK, published by Simon and Schuster in 2009. Heather majored in visual arts and anthropology at Brown University and received an MFA in painting from Pennsylvania State University. Before joining Mixed Greens, she worked at contemporary galleries Sonnabend and Lehmann Maupin in New York City.

Lauren Pearson is a contemporary art historian and is currently Assistant Director at ArtCycle, a contemporary art consignment gallery. She recently received her Master's degree in contemporary art and cultural theory from the University College London, UK. Her thesis was titled, "The Spectacular is the Obvious: Negotiating Place in Postcolonial, War-torn and Embodied Geographies" and explored notions of contemporary art and geography. She received her undergraduate degree in art history from New York University in 2001, and has worked for the Smithsonian Institute's Archives of American Art, Milton Glaser Inc., Peter Halley Studio, and FRED [London/Leipzig], LLC. A native of San Francisco, she currently lives in New York City.

About X Initiative

X is a not-for-profit initiative of the global contemporary art community founded to exist for one year at 548 West 22nd Street to present exhibitions and programming. Advised by a 50+ advisory board comprised of artists, curators, museum professionals, gallerists, collectors, art historians and critics, X reaches across traditional boundaries to form a consortium interested in responding quickly to the major philosophical and economic shifts impacting culture. Questions posed in the form of programming address relevant and pressing issues pertaining to the changing landscape of contemporary art.

I dropped by Cheryl McGinnis Gallery (at West 38th and 8th Avenue) last week to see Susan Hamburger's show with the delicious title Moral Hazard. The Economist has a definition but the meaning in this sense is primarily that powerful individuals and institutions take more risks when they know their failures will be bailed out by another party -- often the taxpayers.

Detail of The Low Road with Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Vito Fosella, and John Ensign.

The exquisitely-crafted works, using acrylic on paper and collage, contain aspects of Roman wall painting but according to the artist's web site are inspired by self-made ancien régime wallpaper manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon.

Detail from The Con and The Nine with Charles Ponzi

Susan uses her beautiful technique to reflect on the financial and sexual rogues of our current era, ranging from GOP Senator John Ensign to Wall Street bankers.

Detail from The Nine with John Mack (Morgan Stanley), John Thain (Merrill Lynch) and Henry Paulson (Former Secretary of the Treasury)

The show is up through December 18. Highly recommended as a response to the beautiful objects vs. serious issues "dichotomy" in the art world. Susan gives us both.

[All images are courtesy of Cheryl McGinnis Gallery.]

On this date in 2004, James and I launched the first version of the ArtCat Calendar (then called ArtCal). The first version just listed shows and dates by neighborhood, with the main innovation being the listing of Chelsea shows by street.

Some history:

• Images added: September 6, 2005
• RSS and iCal feeds added: December 12, 2005
• E-mail newsletter launched: March 30, 2006
• Newsletter reaches 1000 subscribers: March 13, 2007
• Redesigned: August 28, 2007
• Merged ArtCal and ArtCat: March 2009

James and I visited the New Museum three times during Nikhil Chopra's performance. For more background, and images of the first day, see James's post. We had been told by the curator, Eungie Joo, that we should expect a rather surprising transformation on the last day, and we were not disappointed. Below are few of my photos of the last hours of the performance. When we met him afterward, the artist told us that he had insisted that the museum allow photography of his performance. After all, he said, "it's a visual medium" and that photography is one of the ways people in our contemporary world engage with and process images.

I felt dazed, as if I had just left a moving ritual in a temple in a strange land, as I walked out onto the Bowery that day.

There will be performances and lectures related to the project this weekend, starting tonight (Friday, November 13) at 7pm. James and I will definitely be there.

getting made up

3 images of his final pose, held for about 45 minutes

We missed this Jack the Ripper-esque costume. See it in action here.

A set of scattered thoughts on the New Museum's plans to show works from Dakis Joannou's collection selected by Jeff Koons.

• Many people have argued online via blog posts or comments that the collection is so interesting that it doesn't matter what the ethics are in presenting it at the museum where Mr. Jouannou is a trustee.
• I for one don't want to see some of the limited resources and spaces available to show art in this city devoted to a huge exhibition mostly composed of previously-market-validated living artists that we have all heard of already.
• The New Museum and other museums receive public funding, to say nothing of the subsidies represented by the tax exemption of donations of art and money. The 990 for the New Museum for 2008 shows over $940,000 coming from government grants.
• Because public funding is still a relatively small percentage of their operating budgets, museums and other non-profit cultural spaces must raise money from wealthy patrons, foundations, and other sources (which are subsidized through tax deductions or the non-profit status of foundations).
• This is a country that has trouble convincing taxpayers that guaranteeing decent education and healthcare for all American children is something government should do. If that is considered a luxury in the USA, the use of tax-exempt art museums to show works (owned by wealthy collectors) by artists who have been successful in the commercial art market is a rather decadent use of public subsidies.
• If the market is how we decide what works of art are important, then the market should find a way to cover the costs of presenting these works to the public. The curatorial, educational or scholarly mission of museums is tossed aside, and thus the rationale for providing subsidies, other than the tourism draw of such institutions, disappears.
• Abandoning the assistance that non-profit institutions have provided to emerging artists, unknown artists, and artists whose work is not successful in the commercial art market will further undermine public support for any kind of funding for culture, which is already pretty shaky.

Apparently, I'm quite behind for just now hearing about this. I'm impressed that Ukraine's Got Talent would have a performer who does Robin Rhode/William Kentridge-esque animation with sand about the Nazi invasion of her country.

Update: There is a FAQ for the video! Thanks, Marc Shifflett.