Registration and Non-Conformist Art

So long has it been that I have written a post, but I have been busy with a new job. I have recently taken the position as Assistant Registrar at Cremona Foundation for the Norton and Nancy Dodge Art Collection. If you have not heard of this fine collection, you should refer to John McPhee's The Ransom of Russian Art.

Curious is Norton Dodge of the underground 'art scene' in the Soviet Union. He goes into basements, attics, small apartment complexes to find extraordinary 'unofficial' art. The term NON-CONFORMIST is defined as a person who does not accept and refuses customs and beliefs of the government/ high authority, defiant. And in terms of art being 'nonconformist' refers to the production of non-Social Realist art in the Soviet Union (1950-1980/90).

The majority of the collection contains paintings (mixed media and oil on canvas) and drawings. I have been given the task of cataloging posters. It is a great challenge to digest and catalog these posters considering they are written in Cyrillic. The most different, yet fascinating, works of art I have seen by far! Some works are a bit risque and other works are intentionally pulsating with sexual references. Some works reach to the point of a dreamscape and other works stay with Academic painting.

It is difficult to pin point a favorite, but I personally love sculptures. I love the three dimensional tactility of art! C'est une chose à voir et une autre à toucher.

Curator Profile: Charles Esche

 Charles Esche is an interesting character and art historical figure. He invests in the ideas of relational art. "Relational Art" focuses on social environments and shared activities through the art. The notion of ‘imagination’ is a way of relating art to life, and imagining the world differently appeals to Esche. Not only am I interested in his emphasis on relational art and imagination, but I am intrigued by his curatorial approach. A flexible curatorial approach, no doubt, where he does not use a template but he does create a model exhibition design for the art that is to be exhibited. Every one of his projects are unique: “I tried to address the conditions I found [in Istanbul], tried to think them through my own experience and tried to provide a structural model for activity that would work there.”

Born in 1962 on England soil, and brought up in Manchester and London.

Education: 
1980-84 BA in Mediaeval Studies, ManchesterUniversity
1988-89 MA in Gallery and Museum Studies, Manchester University 
(Specializes in contemporary art)

Career:
Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Co-founder of Afterall Journal
Theoretical advisor at Rijksakademie
Co-curator
Editor and Writer

Select Exhibition/ Work History:

• 2010: Curated U#, the Slovenian Triennale in Ljubljana
• 2008: Visiting Professor, Ratti Foundation, Milan, Italy
• 2007: Curator, RIWAQ Biennial, Ramallah, Palestine 2007 (with Khalil Rabah)
• 2005: Curator, Istanbul Biennial 2005 (with Vasif Kortun); Curator, CAUCUS, Cork, 2005 (with Annie Fletcher)
• 2004: Made the Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
• 2000-04: Director, Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo, Sweden
• 2002: Curator, Gwangju Biennale 2002, Gwangju, Republic of Korea (with Hou Hanru and Song Wan Kyung)
• 1998-01: Curatorial Adviser, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool, England
• 2000: Co-curator, Amateur: variable research initiatives 1900 & 2000, an international exhibition at Goteborgs Konstmuseum, Konsthall and Hasselblad Center, Sweden (with Mark Kremer and Adam Szymczyk); Co-curator, New British Art 2000: Intelligence, Tate Britain. London, England, (with Virginia Button)
• 1998-00: Co-Director, The Modern Institute, Glasgow 1997-02 Research Fellow, Edinburgh College of Art - developing the proto academy project
• 1998: Founded Afterall with Mark Lewis at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London; Lead Curator, Revolution - International Symposium on Electronic Art 1998, Liverpool and Manchester (over 12 venues)
• 1997: Co-Curator, Escaping Gravity Video Positive '97, Liverpool and Manchester (with Steven Bode)
• 1993-7: Visual Arts Director, Tramway, Glasgow
• 1996: Curator, Instant video project, Film and Video Umbrella, London
• 1990-3: Exhibitions Curator, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge
• 1989-90: Assistant Curator, National Galleries and Museums on Merseyside

Reference:
1. Charles Esche CV

India Art Summit - India's Modern and Contemporary Art Fair

INDIA ART SUMMIT ART FAIR

(January 20-23, 2011 in New Delhi, India)

International art events are reminders or a celebration of recently discovered talents. People from all over the world travel to these events (Art Fairs, Biennales, Armory Show, Whitney, Venice, etc) to see the art and to mingle with the artists, curators, collectors, and other people in the art scene. For more information on international art events and festival refer to www.zeroland.co.nz.

The India Art Summit (IAS) is an international art fair takes place in New Delhi, India. Over 84 galleries from India, China, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, Pakistan, U.A.E., Latvia, United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and The United States bring in a group of curators, directors, artists, and art collectors into the mix to delegate the exhibitions. The organizers from IAS develop a floor plan for the event; this allows organization of space for each individual gallery and the works being shown.


Then the curators work with their alleged space, install the works, and mediate between audience and artists. The mediums range from paintings, drawings, prints, photography, sculptures, mixed media, installations, video art and performances.

Art Fairs and Biennales are found all over the world. The four most prominent locations for art fairs in the United States are located in New York, Washington D.C., California, and Texas. For more information contact your local art gallerist or university museum to speak to an art/ art history professor.

The Cool School - Walter Hopps

(photo: taken from Amazon.com)

The Cool School is first, and foremost, a documentary on the dos and don'ts in the art scene. It is also a biography of Walter Hopps, a legendary American Art director and 'first' curator of Modern Art in Los Angeles region. It focuses on the Ferus Gallery in L.A. around the 40s - 50s, an extremely conservative area, where the art community was completely invisible. *Spoiler Alert* In the end, the Ferus Gallery stops operating in 1966 and the artists that boomed from these exhibitions left their 'brotherhood' behind until recently (2007) when the film The Cool School was released.

Although the Gallery itself had not flourish in sales as it did in visitors, the past teaches one to not make the same mistakes, but make new ones. I personally enjoyed the grandeur of conversation in The Cool School. In a sense the film evoked a care-free, nonchalant emergence of the art scene through constant deliberation of artist and work selection (which artists are chosen for the exhibit), design (how the design of the exhibition was going to look), and audience (who will benefit from the exhibition?). This is something that interests me greatly: the power relationship/interaction between curator and artist; and how they build/ create/ fabricate a piece of history by exhibiting art objects. According to the film, this is also known as 'the art scene.'

I am also interested in the exhibition design that Walter Hopps uses towards the end of the film, where he exhibits Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup prints. The satirical placement of prints on the wall as if they were 'high art' (the kind that are French, Italian, and Spanish) like the "Masters" was the best part in my opinion. Similar to that of other controversial exhibitions such as "Mining the Museum" and "The Enola Gay." Although these exhibitions and Hopp's Andy Warhol Solo Exhibition were saucy and almost disturbing, they were so radically different that it shifted museology paradigm into an interactive and 'think-for-yourself' approach.

(REFER to http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/coolschool/film.html for more information about the film).