Fifteen years in the making, the current Guggenheim exhibition on Gutai presents a groundbreaking spectrum of the art of that group, shaking to its core the notion of the West as the epicenter of contemporary art practices. The show, curated by Ming Tiampo, associate professor of art history at Carlton University, Ottawa, and Alexandra Munroe, senior curator of Asian art at the museum, is titled Gutai: Splendid Playground, an odd sobriquet to describe the annihilating force that birthed the group in postwar Japan.
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Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, contacted Hyperallergic with the following response to “When Artspeak Masks Oppression” (March 6, 2013) by Mostafa Heddaya.
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“Without its special language, would art need to submit to the scrutiny of broader audiences and local ones? Would it hold up?” So asks online art publication Triple Canopy’s widely circulated essay “International Art English,” in which the authors catalogued the death of meaning in the language of contemporary art. It’s a perceptive study, though after offering a half-alternative (“the elite … will opt for something like conventional highbrow English”). the article ends in media res with a sarcastic shrug: an evocative morsel of IAE — a press release — reformatted into a prose poem.
By so abstracting their position into parody, the authors misread the most significant consequence of this new language, loosed upon a world in which prisoners of conscience languish in the jails of the world’s emerging contemporary art superpowers. The unsurprising reality is that a specialized language fraught with euphemism and obfuscation is better known as propaganda.
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The Athens-based architecture practice Oiio Architecture Office has offered up a riff on an icon — they’ve taken Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim museum and mutated it, adding 13 more floors onto the structure’s famous spiral.
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If artist R.H. Quaytman’s name sounds a little bit mysterious, then that might just be fitting. The painter’s work, made up of series of iridescent, screenprinted images that span a decades-long career, is enchantingly obscure, like a trip through an autobiographical library.
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In a side gallery off the Guggenheim’s main spiral, it looks like a tide of water came and went, leaving behind piles of bricks, wood, and detritus ripped from their original contexts and tossed into disarray. It’s not unlike certain parts of the New York City area, post-Sandy. The difference is that in the museum, the scrabble is neatly arranged into a rectangular patch of floor and organized by color in a rainbow gradient only slightly darkened by mud.
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Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco is a master of the appropriated object — throughout his career, he has turned mundane objects like pool tables, soccer balls, and yellow scooters into extraordinary sculptures. On Tuesday, November 13 at 6:30 pm, he’s speaking with legendary art critic Benjamin Buchloh about his latest project at the Guggenheim museum.
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Last night and tonight, the Guggenheim is staging two special, performance-like readings of Pablo Picasso’s obscure play, “Desire Caught by the Tail,” as part of the museum’s Works & Process series.
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On Saturday, October 13, Hyperallergic will partner with The Guggenheim Museum to host a day trip to the Bronx to experience the museum’s final stillspotting nyc event, “Audiogram” Following the interactive audio experience, join Hyperallergic’s editors and writers for an adventure across New York’s northernmost borough, including a trip to the Marcel Breuer-designed Lehman Gallery and a visit to Bronx’s Little Italy and Emilia’s Restaurant for a traditional Italian dinner.
A limited number of tickets are now available for $50. Join us for the uptown adventure!
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It’s very rare that museum directors or curators, when introducing a new show to a room full of writers and critics, say anything remotely thought-provoking or profound. Introducing the Rineke Dijkstra mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim, however, the museum director Richard Armstrong made a simple, obvious, but truly striking declaration. “Rineke Dijkstra,” he said, “is an artist with very few peers.”
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