Henry Cowell as a young man, from Wikipedia

For all of America’s celebration of its own love of invention and innovation, there has been a dark side to American cultural life: an enormous pressure to conform, the rule of a marketplace that is intolerant of genuine individuality and dissent, and a risk-averse anti-intellectualism derived from mistrust, isolationism, and commercial interest.

-- From Leon Botstein's essay on Henry Cowell for the American Symphony Orchestra

We attended the amazing all-Cowell concert, conducted by Botstein, last Friday.

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.

All decent people should run away from home. -- Fritz Lang, 1975

I heard this quote in a fascinating interview with Fritz Lang by William Friedkin last night, from the bonus disc to The Criterion Collection's excellent release of "M."

Gentrification pushing out artists has a long history in New York. Via the New York Times:

A 1921 cartoon, courtesy of Duke University, shows a displaced artist walking past Vincent Pepe, an Italian-born real estate entrepreneur, and two rich clients in search of a Village home.

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.

Shostakovich on the cover of Time, 1942, via Zeitschichten

William T. Vollmann's historical novel Europe Central is at times a long, dark slog, but definitely worth the effort. His research into Nazi and Soviet history is impressive, particularly on musical topics -- don't miss the notes at the end. What other contemporary novel is likely to spend so much time with not only Dmitri Shostakovich, but less-famous composers such as Moisey Vainberg and Galina Ustvolskaya?

The only thing I disliked about the book was when the chapters about Shostakovich imitated the verbal tics he developed as he got older, due to the extreme mental stress he suffered under the Soviets. One example, from the "Opus 110" section of the book, when he is talking with NKVD men about his work, is below:

Because my hands get tired, comrades, even when I ... It, so to speak, subverts me. But I'm only a worm, and my symphonies are mere, uh, so it's no loss to, to ... I do apologize.

I understand the importance of conveying how he communicated later in his life, and a letter by Isaiah Berlin about his sad visit to Oxford in 1958 certainly documents that, but it's painful to read one hundred consecutive pages written in that style.

The long passages about the harrowing conditions for Soviet and Nazi soldiers on the Eastern Front, civilians in Leningrad, Dresden, and 1944-45 Berlin, as well as chapters set in East Germany after the war, serve as a strong antidote to the ridiculous idea that the USA saved Europe single-handedly in World War II. The Soviets and the countries of Eastern Europe lost millions of people -- soldiers and civilians -- as the West allowed them to grind down much of the strength of Nazi Germany. The people of central Europe were then abandoned to the sinister realities of Stalinism once victory was declared.

The novel is overlong, and could have used some more editing, but its empathy for the people of Europe Central is a worthy accompaniment to the works of Anna Akhmatova and Shostakovich regarding this dark period of our "civilized" 20th century.

James says it better than I can, as usual. Today marks the launch of our new publishing venture, Idiom.

Its mission statement:

Idiom is an online publication of urban artistic practice. By allowing emerging artists, writers and arts professionals to report on, review, and otherwise cover overlooked or under-thought aspects of the larger creative community, Idiom offers a local, engaged counterpoint to the prevailing discourse of contemporary art.

Thanks to the NY Times I learned of Here is Where whose mission is

to find and spotlight little known and unmarked historic sites throughout the United States.

I really love this story from the article:

The Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, Mr. Carroll's hometown, has agreed to install a marker that commemorates a moment on Nov. 27, 1925, when the poet Vachel Lindsay was timidly approached at dinner by a busboy who placed three poems he had written next to Lindsay’s plate. Lindsay was so impressed that he shared them with his audience at a poetry reading that night, prompting journalists to report on the "busboy poet." His name was Langston Hughes.

Carved ornamental wooden capital in the Auditorium Building, 430 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. Adler & Sullivan, architects. Via Atelier Teee on flickr.

James and I headed to Chicago for a few days on an art and architecture vacation. We're also seeing the Chicago Opera Vanguard's production of "Greek" by Mark-Anthony Turnage. We're meeting people for drinks on the 4th. E-mail for details if you would like to join us.

The Civilians are holding their annual performance and benefit party on Friday, April 17th at Galapagos DUMBO. Their current projects include an investigation of the monstrous Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn and its effects on the surrounding communities.

Please join us at the newly reopened Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO for a one-night-only performance created from your stories. After a season spent investigating community in Brooklyn and Colorado Springs, we turn our attention to you and invite you to participate in an original Civilians piece by sharing personal insights about what HOME means to you.

They also have a silent auction page up for bidding. Items include theater memberships and a print by Mixed Greens artist Coke Wisdom O’Neal.