Althamer

Paweł Althamer, a Polish, "international" artist, has his first retrospective exhibition in Warsaw, at the prestigious Zachęta (national) gallery. His works are so diverse, it is difficult to sum them up. He is perhaps best known for his ingenious installations/performances, like this one:


You guessed it, it was made in the year 2000. This is a real building, and the photo has not been retouched. Meaning - what you see is what you get. As long as you think about it - because, as often with contemporary art, you might not get much out of it if you don't want to :). For me, it is above all about one guy walking from door to door and convincing his neighbors to do something different, a little strange, crazy and seemingly useless to many of them. The building is the actual building he lives in, in a poor and ugly part of Warsaw. You can read more about the new exhibition, which contains mainly sculptures and films, at NonStarving Artists, a good fine arts site. (For the English version, scroll down or click on..."English":)).
I don't like Althamer's sculptures as much, and don't know his films at all, but I must admit they have something in them:




On the State-owned site culture.pl, you can find a slightly longer Althamer biography.

Avantgarde

"Today's current theatre avant-garde includes reruns of the historical avant-garde as well as the practices of formerly experimental artists whose work is by now 'classical' in terms of its predictability, solidity, and acceptance. (...) The current avant-garde offers no surprises in terms of theatrical techniques, themes, audience interactions, or anything else. (...) The current avant-garde is not only dominated by a group of oldsters (of which I am, for better or worse, one), but it is also quite clearly an established style of performance, one that in many ways is not distinguishable from orthodox theatre and dace. What innovation comes from the current avant-garde, is mostly emanating from performance art, where people are exploring such things as explicit sexual art and the combining of the extremely personal with the political." - Richard Schechner (theatre/performance theorist and practitioner)

Who cares about theatre?

"I've never really been interested in theatre as such." - Robert Lepage (theatre director, of course) (other info about Lepage here and here)

Another Christo alternative!

Now this is really strange... By some total coincidence, I discovered yet another take on The Gates (read previous post for explanation...):


From The Boston Globe:

"Geoff Hargadon -- Hargo, now that he's a star -- is the creator of The Somerville Gates, a micro sendup of the saffron extravaganza now in New York's Central Park. And he has become almost preposterously famous.

After he posted photos on his website of his 13-gate installation -- made from stuff he picked up at Home Depot that he glued together and painted orange -- Hargadon received more than 4 million hits, so many that he had to take it down yesterday because his Internet service was charging him for every visit. He owes thousands, he says.

Museums across the country are after him. Manhattan's Pratt Institute wants a Somerville Gate for its permanent collection. Ditto, the Browne Popular Culture Museum in Bowling Green, Ohio; the Portland Art Museum in Oregon; and Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C. Someone from Tufts University invited him to display the work in a juried art show.

...
The Somerville Gates came into being one night while Hargadon and his wife watched the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on television, discussing the hype around Christo and Jeanne-Claude's $20 million-plus Gates in Central Park. They ran to the store, plunked down a total of $3.50 for supplies, and spent the evening gluing and painting. The photos they took depicted the same 13 gates arranged in settings around their Somerville loft, usually marking paths walked by his cat, Edie."

Oh, don't you just love art? :))

Christo - alternative

I'm sure you know about Christo and Jeanne-Claude's latest work, The Gates:
.

Well, this is an amazing alternative artwork, The Crackers:


You can find more about this masterpiece right over here. Enjoy :)

Conservative Chris Burden?

Chris Burden is one of the most famous performance artists around. Although he hasn't been in the news for a while, a single 1971 performance gave him nearly instant and certainly lasting fame. It was called Shoot. In it, a friend of Burden shot him in the arm.


This picture is included in nearly every important book about the history of peformance art.
Now, this could have been a scandal at the time, but Chris Burden has since become a "serious person", or rather, a professor at the prestigious UCLA. The story would normally end there, but here is what I found (quoted from the L.A. Times, found in volokh's blog):

Internationally known artists Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins have retired abruptly from their longtime professorships at UCLA in part because the university refused to suspend a graduate student who used a gun during a classroom performance art piece, a spokeswoman for the artists said Friday.

"They feel this was sort of domestic terrorism. There should have been more outrage and a firmer response," said Sarah Watson, a director at [the gallery that] represents Burden and Rubins. . . .

The brief performance involved a simulation of Russian roulette, in which the student appeared before the class holding a handgun, put in what appeared to be a bullet, spun the cylinder, then pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger, according to one student's account that was confirmed by law enforcement sources. The weapon didn't fire. The student quickly left the room, then the audience heard a shot from outside. . . .

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office determined Friday that there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal misdemeanor charges . . . .

Lawrence Lokman, UCLA's assistant vice chancellor for communication, said the dean of students' office was continuing to investigate whether university rules against weapon possession were violated, which could lead to disciplinary action. . . .

Burden made his name in the early 1970s with influential and controversial performance art. In his best-known piece, "Shoot," performed in a Santa Ana gallery while he was a graduate student at UC Irvine, Burden had an assistant stand 15 feet away and shoot him in the upper arm with a .22-caliber rifle.

Watson said Burden's work was controlled and that the audiences never felt in jeopardy. The UCLA case is different, she said, because it was a surprise action and "there was genuine fear."

Even before the incident, Watson said, Burden and Rubins were unhappy at UCLA . . . .

Campus police said that in the course of the investigation, [the student] handed over a gun that was not a real firearm. Robison, the district attorney's spokeswoman, said there was "insufficient evidence to show a gun was discharged or any bullet fired." . . .

Barbara Drucker, who chairs the art department, and Ron Athey, a visiting instructor who taught the course and was present during the performance, conducted a meeting at the Warner Building a week after the incident to dispel rumors and allow students to air any concerns, as well as to emphasize rules against possessing weapons on university property . . . . Athey, known for piercing and cutting his body as a form of performance, did not return calls.

A graduate student who attended the meeting said a few students expressed safety concerns but more were alarmed that the university, if it disciplined the artist, would be cracking down on freedom of expression. . . .


Wow. now this is GREAT stuff! Not often do you get such a direct confrontation of an artist with the world he has participated in creating. At first it might seem like Burden is a hypocrite, not allowing others to do what he did himself some years ago. One of these ex-hippie parents trying to keep their children disciplined (not that they shouldn't).
But if you think about it, the situation is slightly different: there is a difference between freedom of expression and freedom of chosing suicide. You are not (legally, socially, some will say - morally) allowed to put your life at risk. Some artists do that - and did that. Burden never actually went that far. And if you look closely at the body art of the 60's and 70's, practically nobody really did. Marina Abramovic, for instance, came pretty close on several occasions, but she never actually insinuated she was going to kill herself. Schwarzkogler, one of the Vienna Actionists, died, but not in an "artistic suicide". His work was not about suicide and taking one's life. There are many other examples.

Francis Alÿs

For a long time Francis Alÿs was one of these artists I couldn't stand. He seemed incredibly pretentious in his "I'm-so-simple-and-so-deep" attitude. You see, the guy walked. That was the only thing he really did. He travelled around the world, in Mexico (which is where the Belgian artist currently lives), Sao Paulo, Stockholm, and - walked. He accompanied it obviously with "add-ons", like leaving a trace of paint or using shoes with magnets, so metal objects that lied on the ground would stick to them. But come on! Is that it? Can't you come up with anything better, stronger?
Well, he did - and proved that I had underestimated him. The work is called "When Faith Moves Mountains" and was made in 2002. Here are some resulting images:


Yes, those are people. More precisely, a group of 500 volunteers somewhere in Peru. They are moving a sand dune. With shovels.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant. More about it - and about the artist - here and here.