Hurrah!

At long last, Art or Idiocy? is pleased to present the TOP TEN. For this installment, arts organizer Britton Bertran was invited to contribute.

and so here is...

theTOP TEN
by Britton Bertran

1. Blood & Fire

Cover of If Deejay Was Your Trade (March 1994), Blood & Fire’s first release

This reggae label finds, initiates, syncopates and distributes the best music on this side of earth. They do royalties, they do research and they do aesthetics. BAF will introduce you to the best sounds while making it worth your while without you feeling inept. It will challenge your pre-conceived notions about why “Redemption Song” is more about redeeming. The website “board” is one of the original music listserves and is ripe with information that is infallible. These people mean it - so check it. And if you are ever anywhere near their live Soundsystem, it’s guaranteed bliss.

2. Planetdan

Image from the post I’m ascared (2 May 2005)

I wanna be Dan’s best friend. This is high school humor in a relevant, but with an irreverent, formula, that makes this blog a daily go to during the drag of the workday. From masturbating cats to musings on the every day things that are as humorous as they are really quite compelling. I think Dan is in Minnesota somewhere but it doesn’t really matter.

3. To Pho

The food is fantastic, the service is shabby but endearing, and the red sauce stuff is a must. I like everything on the menu and the people watching is just as tasty. If your dealing with downtown Wabash St. eateries – and the options are thinner than goeta (thanks Cincinnati) – this is really the place to be. I hear that they actually put out linens for dinner but I can’t confirm this.

4. Dogo

“I left my hound dog in Texas.” This sounds like a country song but I did, and I regret it everyday. However, I recently met the acquaintance of an Austrian Mastiff named Honey, a Dogo. This dog looks like a cross between a hound dog with shorter ears and a huge pitbull. Sweetest thing ever. They only come in white and still I want one. Though it will never replace Charlie… “I left that Lone Star state forever and never wanna go back.”

5. Robert Olsen

I saw this LA –based artist’s work at a huge painting show at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College this past summer. A smallish work, about 7 x 14 inches, Shelter_92, 2003 (illustrated above), stood out for its subtleness, congruency and subject matter: a lonely lit up bus shelter at night glowing for all it’s own self-importance surrounded by a swath of darkness. A public utility working tirelessly takes on a humanity that is sad and grandiose simultaneously. The sculptural emphasis within this painting, and his other work, further solidifies this contrast of emotion. Beautiful.

6. Old Timers

Those of you who work in the Loop know that it’s far and few between as far as being able to meet all your before and after work needs. The best omelets in the city served by the friendliest staff, Old Timers is it. Get a window seat and watch all the good-looking poor schmucks off to their cubicle jobs in the Aon Building. After work, head to the bar where the buxom milf behind the bar serves up lots of “honey’s” and $2.50 Budweiser’s. A caution, though, skip lunch, especially the gyros. Too many suites and too much noise. Go to To Pho instead.

7. Intuit

Sister Gertrude Morgan • New Jerusalem from the Prayer Room • acrylic and/or tempera, felt-tip ink and pencil on cardboard • 22 x 28 in. • Collection of the Jaffe Family

Why aren’t people going here in droves? Is there something scary about all that “crazy” art? The space alone is worth the trip – not to mention their small but extremely well stocked bookstore (perfect for gifts, blah blah blah). Intuit is a gem. Every exhibition has something amazing to offer and I revel in finding it. Currently up is a Sister Gertrude Morgan retrospective traveling from the Taj Mahal of Outsider Art, the American Folk Art Museum in NYC. This is a major show. Go see it! Now!

8. Barkley Hendricks

Blood • 1976 • Acrylic, oil and magna on canvas
ACA Galleries

Holland Cotter recently wrote in a review of an excellent show at Jack Shainman Gallery in NYC, “ why isn’t anyone clamoring to see anymore of this artist’s work?” With a mnemonic panache for black post-identity swagger (huh?), these paintings far out weigh any portraiture-based work I have seen in long time. Like an anti-John Currin, personality, the artist and the subject, float of the canvas and strut into your face without regard for gaze.

9. NCPHS

Northside Prep High School, a public high school in Chicago, just lost one of the most dynamic educators I have ever been privilege to know. Cedric Hampton passed away three months ago. The colloquium program that he ran is more challenging than a lot of college programs. Integrating art and other with a bevy of very talented teachers like Leo Park and Jorge Lucero, the students there consistently rise to the challenge. Not only do they create art works that is on par with most contemporary artists that we admire, they want more. The school and its competency will move on without Cedric, but he will be sorely missed.

10. Russel's BBQ

I have spent the last four Sundays in a row trekking out to Oak Park (North and Thatcher) at 10:30 am for a full slab of baby backs. I have to admit that half the interest is the actual journey straight west through parts of Chicago I would have never seen is part of the attraction. But ultimately, the award is Memphis-style dry-rub heaven. Request non-wet and apply your own sauce. Other pluses are the gorgeous modernist designed booths, the radio and television going full blast at the same time, and the Oak Park folks who think this place is a secret. Not any more.


Britton Bertran is an arts organizer in Chicago

Previous TOP TEN contributors include:

Audrey Peiper, an arts administrator & curator. Ms. Peiper runs Locus Projects with her husband. Locus Projects is, among other things, a camping battery used to run slide projectors in Chicago's parks for impromptu art events.

Terrence Hannum, an artist and writer based in Chicago. Hannum has been directing panel-house.com for over two years, but has recently taken a hiatus from it to focus on his own work. Visit panel-house for an archive of reviews, commentary and discussion.

If You Were A Rich Art Collector You'd Dress Like This Too.

Valerie Monroe Shakespeare & Tery Fugate-Wilcox at the opening of Terry Winters, Matthew Marks Gallery, November 7th 2003

Art or Idiocy? came across this site today. Pop Portraits, among other features sports an extensive archive of openings at hot and not so hot galleries. You might not be in New York, but now you can join the parade of delusion and hobnob with the hobnobs.

TATE PICK

David Tremlett • The Spring Recordings • 1972 • sound cassettes, glass shelf, metal fixtures and tape recorder • 381 x 6096 x 222 mm

Recorded ambient noises in every county in Britain (so that’s England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.) Each cassette is labeled with a green labelmaker label, is fifteen minutes long and features a description by Tremlett. He names the county, the time of day and the weather, etc. The tiny room in which the piece is installed provides a cozy and austere setting to experience The Spring Recordings in. the cassettes are displayed above eye level on a long and narrow glass shelf. They are standing on end like books and are equidistantly spaced. The only irregularity is the gap left by cassette removed from the shelf and playing in the tape deck. Upon first entering the space, one thinks the piece is by Donald Judd; in hearing the sounds, one gets the misperception that the tape boxes are little speakers. The minimalist presentation is marvelous and perfect. The Juddlike shelf is constructed from glass and brackets you could get at a hardware store; so The Spring Recordings, also call to mind Haim Steinbach. The Tate Modern catalogs it as a “relief,” implying the piece is more about the presentation of the cassettes then the actual recordings they contain. Interesting. Indeed, a major component, and one eternally in flux, to recording is the objects the medium manifests itself as: the vinyl LP, the 8-track, the cassette, the DAT, the CD and now any number of computers. The player and the played have merged. In the future will we make Carl Andre style stacks of MP3 players?

ENOUGH!

Victor M. Cassidy’s limp write-ups of the Art Fair weekend are on Artnet. He conspicuously missed NOVA, a place he was sure to find some of the things he longed for. The royal WE of Artnet liked a lot of trash, which is to be expected. Artnet usually has the feel of an internet equivalent of to the tastes of Artnews- sometimes cool, but usually blah, and not too interesting, but you might as well look at it anyway, and the auction results are always handy. Well, WE at Art or Idiocy? are dangerous and all edgy with youth. But WE temper it with a sophisticated sense of history and elitism. So that must mean such publications aren’t aimed at US. The final Art Chicago wrap up is here to give closure to the victims and their families.

Also be sure to visit the updated piece on The TOP NON-ART-FAIR Shows to go See. Click on gallery names &c. for helpful links galore.

Contact via the electronic post? artoridiocy@yahoo.com

From walking up and down the Big Top’s hallowed corridors at Art Chicago:

Unfinished thoughts:

Did the Tribune even cover this weekend other than to say how Donald Young, Rhona Hoffman and Richard Gray where skipping it? (Wow, I didn’t know any galleries from Chicago were cool enough to be at Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, Armory Show & Freize Art Fair) I have noticed them popping up here and there in art magazine ads, but I didn’t know they made the rounds to all the top rung fairs. I guess that’s actually cool that there are some local galleries doing that well and turning their noses up at TBA.

Did anyone to Chicago Contemporary & Classic? After reading the Artletter, I pretty much decided not to bother. Most people I ran into voiced the same apathy and disinterest.

Profiles on some of the many artists Art or Idiocy? liked:

Richard Pettibone

Flowers • Silkscreen on canvas, in a frame made by the artist • Initialed and dated 1971 • 1.75 x 1.75 in.
Stephen Wolf Fine Arts

The image here is one of Pettibone’s Flowers of 1971. Gallerie Sho from Tokyo had on view three of these little beauties as well as two small Marilyns, 1978. Look at the dimensions, the Flowers are less than 2 inches square. Each painting is carefully screen printed, stretched on canvas and framed with wee nails and slates of wood. These miniscule works are reduced to sheer perfection. Oddly, seeing theses tiny Warhols touched me much more than seeing originals. Of course without the original, full-size pieces, Pettibone’s couldn’t exist. And yet seeing these Lilliputian paintings is breathtaking. They become objects, trinkets, toys.

Gallerie Sho describes itself as showing art, “reflecting pop cultures and conceptual minimalism.” What an awesome self synopsis.

Tad Lauritzen Wright

Sugar Coated • 2002 • acrylic & wax on canvas • 38 by 42 inches

David Lusk Gallery out of Memphis had work by Tad Lauritzen Wright. His work comes in three modes. The “Beautiful” series of drawings executed in a DuBuffet-style all-overness features Beautiful Commute, Beautiful Last Stand and the raunchy hilarious Beautiful M.I.L.F. all 2004. The next mode is pure text-based homage to the grid. Half crossword puzzle half Christopher Wool, pieces like Boy Scout, 2003, and Mr. Goodbar, both 2003, are witty and charming as well as aesthetically pleasing. With misplaced line breaks, Boy Scout reads:

BRAVECLE
ANANDREV
ERENTSEE
KSASOULM
ATEWITHE
XTENSIVE
KNOWLEDG
EOFKNOTS

While Mr. Goodbar’s borrowed personal ad copy reads:

LOOKSUNI
MPORTANT
TOTHISSE
XYLILHOO
CHYMAMAS
EEKINABI
TEOUTOFM
RGOODBAR

Finally is Lauritzen Wright’s cartoony, narrative style that calls to mind the work of Kimberly Aubuchon. His overall strongest piece is done in this mode and features a group of unhappy cigarettes entitled Nobody Loves Me, 2004.

Paul Nudd

Striped & Spotted Pests • numbered and signed

Last is Paul Nudd, featured at Dogmatic. It is a smart strategy to feature one artist as sort of a special installation at this science fair style affair. I have long been attracted to the hairy, prickly caterpillar blobs in Nudd’s drawings. Also on view was a series of small monitors screening disgusting and gross videos. It makes you really wonder about our mental programming, watching them. Nothing really disgusting or offensive is happening or being depicted. It only looks like things.

Black Milk, 2005, a strangely visual phrase that is explored graphically in an all text zine is also a video of a black gooey blob tunneling nowhere. So it is Kafkaesque. The blobs almost take on the attributes of cute creatures and are definitely characters pared down to their essential mitochondria. In Wurm Burths, more disgusting mayhem insues. It is almost impossible to laugh at the situation, but just what the hell do you think you’re laughing at? Nothing really, abstraction, implication. Weird connections you draw as the viewer. It’s ridiculous, but one could seriously apply the systems and devices of Buster Keation films to these pieces. Nudd describes them in one way as “the aesthetics of porn without the context.”

What's the Deal with Mr Art Chicago?

So the art fair weekend is over and there are only a few loose ends to wrap up, Art or Idiocy? may get to, or not. There are lot’s of quality pieces for loyal readers waiting in the wings: A profile on artist Nick Lowe, whom recently lectured at SAIC, more TATE PICKS from the Tate Modern, and of course the TOP TEN. Contributors are hard at work on them, and you will not want to miss the results.

But let’s have some fun. Below are the results of the Art or Idiocy? survey

This weekend Art or Idiocy? visited many of the goings-on throughout the jewel on Lake Michigan. But there was one persistent bother; one nagging question that would not go away. Just what is the Art Chicago guy doing? Who is he, what does he represent, what is he doing? So Art or Idiocy? took it to the streets seeking speculation and conjecture. As you can see, many theories surfaced. From the mouths of art going public:

“He wishes he had unpleated khakis. They are too tight and constrictive.”

“He’s peeing into the lake just to hear it splash.”

“He just got done running.”

“He’s got a wicked huge boner and he’s contemplating where to put it.”

“He’s the generic viewer. Arms Akimbo = criticality. Relaxed pose = enjoyment”

“He has lower back pain.”

“He has a grandfatherly pose.”

“He looks like the diagram of a man suffering from gas and bloating in an antacid commercial.”

The most common response was that the Art Chicago Guy is peeing. The second was that he is suffering from lower back pain. The notion that he is the essential viewer is most likely the correct one, but the others are so much more fun.

One of those polled related a story of how she was standing in a gallery, looking at the art and had a moment of weakness. That moment we all get now and again, the moment of doubt and realization as to the absurdity of being interested in art. It struck her, “who looks at art, anyway?” After a weekend like this, we all may be asking that question-“What’s the point?"