EAST LANSING, Mich. — On the sprawling grounds of Michigan State University, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum is a sleek, modernistic storehouse amidst the dull brick buildings that populate the campus.
Martha Rosler
Posted inArt
Martha Rosler Tackles the Problem of Representation
LONDON — In the ’70s, photographer (and videographer, and rigorous cultural critic, and possible genius) Martha Rosler brought a critical eye, politically and philosophically, to the medium’s seductive pretenses of objectivity.
Posted inArt
Images from the First Week of the Brooklyn Int’l Performance Art Festival
The Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF) has begun and I will be blogging weekly photo essays of all the performances — a small fraction of the complete schedule — I attend each week.
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A Tag Sale at the Temple of Modernism
There’s a garage sale at the Museum of Modern Art, and no, it’s not a high-end, designer consignment sale. Martha Rosler’s Meta-Monumental Garage Sale is about as real as they come, from the racks of battered shoes to the “great dad” statuettes, and from the worn lingerie to the splattered cookbooks. One notable difference, I suppose, is that Rosler’s sale includes a car (“NO ENGINE!” the sign advertises). But don’t worry: all the paintings for sale are as kitschy and bad as any you’d find on the sidewalk.
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Filmmaker Miranda July Finds Value (and Prices) in Everyday Objects
LOS ANGELES — It has always been a mystery to me how a signature Louis Vuitton bag can go for thousands of dollars while an impeccable knockoff (essentially the exact same bag) can go for mere hundreds. In the same way, a piece of art that can hardly be sold at the time of its creation can skyrocket at an auction decades later. Value, whether monetary or abstract, is a difficult quality to pin down, in regards to people, certainly, but surprisingly, for objects as well.
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26th Street Courts the Masses with a Block Party
In unofficial conjunction with the inauguration of Frieze New York on Randall’s Island, the galleries on Chelsea’s 26th Street decided to go big and throw a block party last Saturday. If there is one kind of party that galleries excel at, it’s glamorous and exclusive after-hours functions, on a rooftop suite somewhere far above the streets of Chelsea; if there’s one area where galleries are found unanimously wanting, it’s dealing with the public, with “regular” people, the viewers who venture through their doors simply to look and not to buy. Considering this, it was surprising and encouraging to see high-end Chelsea galleries reaching out, in a coordinated effort, to the art-going public.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, an unfinished masterpiece, artists on Facebook, Guggenheim’s free online catalogues, Okwui Enwezor lectures on art and civic imagination, Russian space, nasty ancient graffiti and much more …
Posted inOpinion
Tuesday Video: Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen
Youtube is a surprisingly excellent place to see art, and not just the latest glitchy gif set your neighbor came up with. The site is full of historical performance videos, all just a click away. One of the greats is Martha Rosler’s performance “Semiotics of the Kitchen” (1975), in which the artist goes through an alphabet’s worth of kitchen implements for a blistering feminist critique of traditional gender roles.
