The Mourning Edition: Newspapers in 20th Century Art

(Robert Gober, Newspapers)

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 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th and early 21^st 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.

to draw and paint: Sun K Kwak

Office Supplies made gorgeous.

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

(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!

The Many Levels of Street Art

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

303 Grand NYC a rotating storefront

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?

PS upcoming Pop-up wedding chapel dates TBA.

Art Babble and SmArt History

Put down your books and spread the word of art through video.

As an Art History Major at New York University, 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.

Online Film Festivals: Babelgum.com and TheHydeTube.com

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.

Red rain boots tap dance alongside anxiety ridden cuckoos in futuristic cuckoo clocks on the HydeTube while two sisters discuss old age and fizzled dreams and others dream of Coney Island on Babelgum.com. Prizes include up to up to $125,000 in cash and signed contracts with eager clients looking to put project pitches into the hands of fresh directors, animators and graphic artists. Win-win.

Winners for the 2009 Babelgum Film Festival will be announced on Monday, April 27th at the Tribeca Film Festival so start watching!

Fan Zhong of Interview Magazine

This week I sat down with Interview Magazine journalist 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 Dials and found all of these great writers who were on this little pdf email. So I called Five Dials and 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.