“In the war, things were in terrible turmoil, out of parsimony, I took what I could because we were now an impoverished country.One can even shout with refuse, and this is what I did.”
–Kurt Schwitters
In the wake of World War I, the attitude towards the newspaper in Germany was not as celebratory as that of the Cubists.Artists of Neue Sachlichkeit and Dada condemned the post-war bourgeois newspaper tycoons’ militarism and apathy towards the victims and veterans of the War.However, they could not escape the ever presence of the newspaper torn up on street corners and hung neatly in cafes—they lived in a verbal environment.Newspapers had a daily life.They were pertinent at one moment, but outdated the next, tossed away and used for purposes from wrapping meat to collage.Otto Dix in Prague Street depicts a broken veteran on the street with a torn piece of newspaper; both are old news, modern refuse.Dada artists like Hannah Höch and Kurt Schwitters used photomontage and collaged poems as a means to mimic the chaos of modern life, thus brining form to content.Newspapers were the perfect media for this anti-art group whose famed member, Duchamp, declared the end of painting. The German Bauhaus addressed the newspaper as well, mainly in the realm of typography.As opposed to typefaces that tried to exemplify an idea or status, they advocated modern sans-serif fonts of ultimate clarity.Works of this type were banned by National Socialists in 1937 and Neo-classical figural works and classical typefaces became the state mandated standard.
“You are tired at last of this old world… You read prospectuses catalogues and posters which shout aloud Here is poetry this morning and for prose there are the newspapers There are volumes for 25 centimes full of detective stories… Announcements and billboards shriek like parrots I love the charm of this industrial street…” -Guillaume Apollinaire, “Zone”
At the turn of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso and the French Cubists inaugurated modernity by incorporating newsprint directly into art. From referential representations in oil paintings to actual clippings in collages, the newspaper became a central element in the compositions of avant-garde artists across Europe. The Italian Futurists not only employed newsprint in art but also published their first manifesto in Le Figaro, a daily newspaper in Paris. This is evidence of the medium's rise in both popularity among and exposure to the public. The newspaper also lent itself well to the ambitions of the Russian Constructivists. They used its format, headlines, and photographs as elements in designing magazine layouts, book covers, and socialist propaganda posters.
Each of the examples included in this gallery use newsprint for both its aesthetic and its functional value. As described in Apollinaire's poem, the newspaper was a representation of new city life. No longer isolated in small towns and villages, people poured into cities and embraced a metropolitan lifestyle, which included everything from dance halls to factories. Because the newspaper could easily and clearly transfer messages across time and space, artists used it as tool for cross-cultural communication in an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society.
By 1996, more than 1,100 newspapers had established a presence on the Internet. The printed news has competed for readership with its online counterpart ever since.As we contemplate the possible absence of newspapers in our circadian routines, let us look back on the paper’s contributions to 20th century art.
Extremely cheap, widely circulated, easily obtainable, and blatantly connoting time and place, the ubiquitous paper presents itself as a potent material for any artist.
(Pablo Picasso, Glass and Bottle of Suze)
Entering the 20th century, Pablo Picasso, Carlo Carra, Vladimir Tatlin, and the artists of the avant-garde, deemed newsprint a material worthy of the canvas. Living in a newly industrialized and urban society, they saw the newspaper as both a product and embodiment of their time and place.
(John Heartfield, Those Who Read Bourgeois Papers Will Become Blind and Deaf)
Artists in Germany, such as the members of the Neue Sachlichkeit, Dada and Bauhaus groups, had a much more negative view of the press.They understood it as a bourgeois commodity that promoted a traditional social hierarchy—so they tore it up and redesigned it to make it their own.
(Andy Warhol, 129 Die in Jet!)
American pop artists working in the 1950s and 1960s used newspapers as both the material and subject of their work, further appropriating the techniques and modes of popular media.
(Group Material, Aids Timeline)
Protesting the assumption of the newspaper as objective truth, international artists of the late 20th and early 21st century placed the paper in their work to provide platforms for mischaracterized and often unreported individuals and events.They employed the newspaper in painting, sculpture, performance, and installation to activate social change.
In Gustav Metzger’s 100,000 Newspapers, one is confronted with the physical mass of yesterday’s printed news, ever decaying. The specter haunting Metzger’s piece reflects our moment, on the cusp of total dematerialization.
Korean artist Sun K. Kwak recently opened her show Enfolding 280 Hours in the Brooklyn Museum's Rotunda. Kwak arranged black masking tape on the walls of the rotunda and then ripped it, allowing her force and the material to have an equal hand in the composition. Kwak says she started using the tape as a means to portray a more direct expression. The work smears across the walls of the rotunda like oil spills on the wind. Her work is not painting nor drawing, but, somehow, it is simultaneously both.
(Tom Moody, Rotating Smile, courtesy of tommoody.us)
New Yorker Tom Moody has made an art out of networking, literally. In a historically unprecedented gesture, Moody exhibited his blog as a performance work onto the gallery walls of ArtMovingProjects in Brooklyn. BLOG is one of the many projects that the "low-tech" artist, dj, musician, and critic has been involved with.
This week I spoke with Moody about new media art and how to be a painter without paint.
What was your first computer? I had a Macintosh SE that I used from 1988 to about 2000.
How/when did you start making "low-tech" art? When I moved back to NY in 1995 my first day job was at a large computer maker. It was a low paid job with a lot of "down time" so I started making work using the Paint program on my PC. I showed that work in NY galleries in the late '90s and got pretty good response. I still consider myself a painter but stopped using actual paint around 1998.
How/when did you start viewing your blog as an art tool?
When I started making original pieces for the blog, such as drawings and animated GIFs.
What does it mean for you to post art on your blog?
It is one of many means artists have for "getting ideas out there." I haven't stopped making objects (such as collages of printed-out digital imagery) and I still show work in gallery and museum spaces.
How do you see new media impacting the art world? the art market?
I did a series of posts on the theme of "New Media vs Artists with Computers." I feel new media is a subculture with its own set of values, players, and assumptions that are separate and apart from the art world subculture. New media is more concerned with art world validation and approval than the art world is anxious about becoming technologically obsolescent. I think new media needs to worry less about the validation and the art world needs to worry more about the obsolescence. For the last five years or so I have been working in the gray or crossover zone between these fields, which has been somewhat awkward but to me is the most interesting place to be working. Computers and networking aren't going away!
Yoshimoto Nara might have avoided a night in prison for tagging the L train the day before his opening at Marianne Boesky if he only had this little guy: the Walls Notebook. The notebook offers the perfect place to sketch ideas and hone your craft. And for those of us less stealthy street artists at heart, we can still tag the best mobile and above and below ground open wall space in New York City. For inspiration check out the Wooster Collective and the Cans Festival in London
Need a site to host a last minute performance piece, installation, pop up shop or even a wedding? Come to Brooklyn.
Williamsburg’s 303 Grand Street will play host to your most outrageous desires for little time and money. Started by Boston “alternative and digital” advertising firm Street Attack, the space opened in March. Whatever your pleasure, you can set up shop for as little as one day. Why not?
Put down your books and spread the word of art through video.
As an Art History Major at New YorkUniversity, I hear a lot of conversations about how expensive and outdated our textbooks are. We welcome the likes of online art educators SmArt History and Art Babble, where you can find art videos, discussion boards and podcasts, with open arms.
Art Babble identifies with our generation’s need for immediacy and interaction. Conceived and launched by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Art Babble contain’s “video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives.
SmArt History was started by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker in 2005 for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Recognizing the multiplicity of art histories, the duo recently launched a public version of the site with hopes of highlighting its capacity for remixing art history and opening dialogue.
Maybe you saw the Jenny Holzer show at the Whitney and didn’t quite get it. You can hop onto Art Babble via your nearest online access point and hear the concept for the exhibit straight from the horses mouth.
Say you are writing a paper on Paul Cezanne’s portraits. SmArt History has videos describing and zooming in on Cezanne’s architectural use of paint and his color planes.
“Art-Bab-ble [ahrt-bab-uhl]
noun; verb (used without object) -bled, -bling
1. free flowing conversation, about art, for anyone.
2. a place where everyone is invited to join an open, ongoing discussion - no art degree required.”
If only Ovation could start a decent website already.
Achievements in film do not read as well on paper as they do on screen. Young, up and coming directors know this, though they often do not have the funds to screen their films anywhere but through online video outlets like YouTube.
Being sandwiched between “Christian the Lion” and “Crying Britney” is not exactly the best means to be taken seriously. That is where the online film festival comes in to play. Babelgum.com and TheHydeTube.com both feature annual and prestigious open online film festivals that are judged by the likes of Spike Lee and London producer Mr. Hyde.
This week I sat down with Interview Magazinejournalist and assistant to the editor-in-chief, Fan Zhong, 23, to talk about what it takes to make it as a young journalist and the importance of being pretty.
How do you come up with your story ideas?
You get a bunch of press releases and you’re like okay, this show is opening, that’s interesting, and this artist hasn’t been featured for a while. If you’re going to put it in print you have to get it a good 3 months ahead of time.
And you get these press releases that early?
No that’s why I have to hound gallerists ahead of time. I literally have been perusing the guy from the Biennale for two weeks calling him every day, “Do you have any artists?” You have to be really on top of it.
What kind of stories do you pitch for print?
For me, because I’m so low on the totem pole I have to pitch something that nobody has ever heard of. Otherwise they’ll be like “oh, well, that’s great but we already have that lined up." It feels really good when an idea sticks because it happens so rarely.
How do you find such obscure pieces?
You have to follow your particular, weird little interests to their very horizons. I’ve been into some really weird literary zines lately. I was online looking through literary blogs and I came across this literary zine called Five Dialsand found all of these great writers who were on this little pdf email. So I called Five Dialsand found out they were under the big Penguin umbrella. It helps that the editor is really young and good looking. It always helps to be good looking.
How do you make yourself a vital part of the magazine?
You kind of just have to be really on top of your shit. They give you a lot of things to do during the day and you kind of just have to do it all and do it very capably and quickly as possible. You’re going to fuck up but you just have to limit those mistakes to the non garish ones.
What’s the worst part about your job?
Everybody is there for 10 hours a day at least, unless we’re closing an issue in which case it’s longer. Staring at your computer for 10 hours a day is not fun.
In case you have not heard, Brian Eno, the father of ambient music, wants you to compose!
Think Eno’s Music for Airports meets music for the subway. The Bloom is at once an instrument, a composer, and source of mesmerizing visual stimulation. Applying the French Composer Eric Satie’s theory of endless composition, the new iPhone application has a touch sensitive screen (of course) that is rigged to sprinkle a series of ominous tones depending on where your fingers come in contact with the screen’s watercolor surface. A delay slider lets you control the density of tones. If the screen goes untouched, the Bloom will create its own everlasting hypnotic compositions. The good news: unlike Eno’s looping Airport tracks the Bloom can end whenever you feel like switching apps. For $3.99 it’s worth getting addicted to.
This week I caught up with gallerist, documentary film maker and artist Marcin Ramocki just before the MoMA premiere of his new film, Brooklyn DIY to talk about DIY, his gallery and the future of new media art.
What interests you about DIY?
When I was a kid in Poland, we could not afford to buy games like Atari so we had to learn how to hack them, how to fix the code, how to open it…circumventing the system that’s based on money. My first documentary, 8BIT, is about circumventing customer electronics, trying to use electronic gear as a tool of culture and music and art making. That’s actually when everything came together for me. I have this obsessive idea of manifesting my freedom through being able to use all of these things that mean to manipulate me in the way that I want to use them.
The latest project, Brooklyn DIY, is a shout out to my neighborhood, which is disappearing right now. I just wanted to capture this very fragile moment in the history of Brooklyn where things were really happening here. To use the metaphor that Sarah Schmerler uses in the film, “Williamsburg is the place where the wood grows for the furniture.” That’s why I started looking at 20 years of its history (1987 to 2007). It’s based on people who are activists of sorts, painters or sculptors that run a gallery, write about art and organize events. Williamsburg was full of people like that. It was DIY. You want to have an art world? Make art, show it, buy it, then write about it because nobody else is going to do it. The ability of a human being to do whatever the hell they want in a situation is really uplifting to me. That’s the essence of DIY. Hell I’m going to do what I want to do, whether I have the money to do it or not. I guess that will be the point of it all. That sentence. That’s the story of my life.
The gallery that you founded, vertexList, is interested in work that “reveals codes of post-capitalist culture”- does your own work do that?
What became particularly important to me was the archaeology of this new media. In 2007, we already had two generations of new media gear behind us. We could go back to Ataris or Mac Plusses and start saying what were they good for? What do they do? How do they change our thinking? How do they change culture? This became the main focus of vertexList until recently, when that archeology simply ended, at least in my perspective. I spent 5 years digging…and bringing it to focus, and now I’m like, okay that’s done. We’re going to find something new.
So what are you doing now?
Well after the archeology is over, you’re ready to play a little bit with the poetics and the aesthetics of this matrix that exists on the internet. We’re entering the era of free for all poetics of Google and Facebook- that’s what I’m fascinated with now. It’s not a direct poetics, but a poetics that requires a little preparation and history to understand it. So the most interesting stuff is happening on the internet now, and whether those things will be able to transfer themselves to gallery spaces I don’t know, it’s too new.
What would you consider to be one of the more important things going on right now?
Okay, there is this wave of blog art. I think surf clubs are the shit right now. That is the most interesting stuff in the art world, flat out. I don’t even look at any other art right now because this is the only thing that wakes me up in the morning.
What are some of your favorite surf clubs?
Nastynets, Spirit Surfers (which I’m a part of), Loshadka, Double Happiness (of course),
Out4Pizza, SuperCentral, and ClubInternet.
How do you think they are affecting change right now?
All of these progressive galleries (the New Museum, Otto, vertexList, Postmasters) are trying to think of a way to shift this material from virtual to real life, to see if it is still possible. I believe it is.
Would you rather show in real life or on the internet?
For me there is no difference because the essence of this whole artistic activity of surf clubs is a symbiotic gesture…You can make that semiotic gesture anywhere because, at this point, the internet is everywhere. It’s changed our thoughts already. If I want to know who you are I’m going to Google you and know everything about you very fast. It’s no longer external to the physical. I think that the physical and the virtual have merged. That’s kind of crazy but very exciting stuff. Kevin Bewersdorf (of Spirit Surfers) talks specifically about driving down the highway in Texas, having the illumination that oh my god. I can make a post right here on the highway without my computer. It’s all real and virtual at the same time.
Is the $15 entrance fee to the Guggenheim feeling a little steep these days? New York-based artist Filip Noterdaeme is with you. His art project, The Homeless Museum of Art (HoMu) 2002, has turned his Brooklyn rental apartment into a live-in museum. Part mockery part sincerity, HoMu is an element in Noterdaeme's activist initiative to overcome the impersonal elitism in the market-driven art world. Noterdaeme states that "HoMu exists in a state of perpetual flux and continues to defy the rules of the established art world."
(image courtesy of last.fm) Put down your game consuls and turn up your headphones. Meet Anamanaguchi, whose 8Bit tunes are not your average Smash Brothers theme song. The band's claim to fame, according to their website, is playing "loud, fast music using hacked hardware," predominantly from the NES (the 1980s Nintendo Entertainment System). Formed by New Yorkers Peter Berkman, James DeVito, Luke Silas, and Ary Warnaar, Anamanaguchi's sound is a red-blooded and curiously melodic mash up of guitars and electronic tones (think the Cure on speed meets Mario and Luigi). Check them out online, on their website or myspace, or at their upcoming show this Saturday in Brooklyn.
“Move back. Move forward,” horizontally beckons the Aux Armes website, echoing the horizontal thinking of the young duo of a design team. Culling their name from both the French Revolution and a Serge Gainsbourg album, Aux Arme creators Sam Wheeler and Dino Siampos are turning New York store fronts into a kind of cultural roulette. “We draw on our experience and understanding of style and culture to conceive of, resource and produce visual environments…,” explains the Aux Armes mission statement. Visual environments indeed- you may recall the Warhol-ian windows at Diane von Furstenberg or the ominous Crow masks adorning the mannequins at Curve. So compelling are their storefronts that they are worth a stroll by, even if the recession will keep you from shopping. Check out future projects here.
Artist Justin Lieberman is into alternate endings.
Peek through the eyeholes cut into the wallpapered space of Zach Feuer Gallery on 24th street and enter a plausible future based on a fictional past. Taking cues from Philip K. Dick's World War II "what if" novel The Man in The High Castle and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown's architectural guide Learning from Las Vegas, Lieberman's coinciding shows The Corrector in the High Castle and The Corrector's Custom PreFab House at Marc Jancou in New York, postulate which current cultural objects would be of value in the future had Germany and Japan won World War II.
Gallery goers are invited to step over the pink carpet and through the resin dripped interior of a character, Nobusuke Tagomi, from The Man in the High Castle's home. You can find Tagomi, the Japanese collector of what Zach Feuer deems "pop cultural artifacts," draped in a Nazi cape, staring at a static television screen, or in the case of the Marc Jancou show, proudly waiting to welcome you into his home. On every surface gather a number of collectables that a bleached, Nazi state fundedsociety would treasure…things you may have secretly set aside in storage instead of offering up to Good Will, ahem, your "investment" of a beanie baby collection, your babysitter's club novels, or some unrecognizable baseball cards (on which Lieberman has taken the liberty of drawing in facial tattoos and peircings). Keep your eye out for the collection of …for Dummies guidebooks, especially Living with Hepatitis C for Dummies, as well as the recreated Charles Manson vest.
In a surprisingly democratic move, Lieberman allows you to take a piece of the exhibit home with you for free, that is, via your computer.
