In the Studio With Craig Watson

The last we saw of the art of Craig Watson was way back in 2001 with his solo exhibition, Craig Wats,  at Momenta in Williamsburg.  That show featured his enigmatic unspecific objects most prominently his large European Work Bench.  Watson's work requires the kind of viewer which seems in short supply these days--cognizant of history and unseduced by the banalities of the spectacle. 

I remember visiting his studio years ago when it was on Metropolitan Avenue in the heart of the then burgeoning Williamsburg scene.  He lived there for over a decade until his landlord, a prominent New York abstract painter, decided that he wanted an even more obscene profit on his building (one of several he owned in the area).  Watson picked up and moved east--not East Williamsburg or Bushwick but  settled instead in the quiet corner of Ridgewood, Queens--a slice of Eastern Europe right off the M train.

His studio looked much like his previous one--another basement enterprise--and it was filled with some fascinating new work.  The first work that stood out were his hanging sculptures that recalled modernist skyscrapers and a kind of dystopic pall around them.  They are made up of metal (both painted and unpainted), wire and some colored blobby forms meant to recall public sculpture.  This work holds much promise not only for the way it is made and  looks but also because embedded in it is much of the current discourse around the unsustainability of current systems of capital.  The fact that these sculptures are hanging make them even more poignant.   

Also on view was his Double Happiness a new sculpture made of carved wood and painted black that resembles a kind of generic gas pump.  It features a decorative lattice evoking Chinese architectural motifs and here again the formal is subtly expanded to comment on bigger, larger concerns.  

Another work that struck me was a lovely hanging lamp that is made from galvanized electrical boxes that have been painted a luscious powder coated white. This work will be available in an edition directly from the artist's studio in the near future.

Alan Uglow at David Zwirner

It has been over two years since the death of Alan Uglow and as I predicted here

http://maxestenger.blogspot.com/2011/01/death-of-rebel-alan-uglow-dead-at-69.html at that time, the New York art world would soon descend on his posthumous ouevre. When I heard that David Zwirner would be handling his work I knew that Alan would be in good hands considering the excellent shows held at Zwirner for the estate of  Fred Sandback and John McCracken.  

The first show is curated by long-time Uglow champion Robert Nickas who also wrote the catalogue essay. With museum exhibitions in Europe in the past several years  and now this show and an upcoming show at the List Center at MIT curated by Joao Ribas of his Standards and Portraits series, there is a lot of understandable interest in Uglow's work. The Zwirner show contains a little bit of everything mostly from the 2000s and serves as an introduction to younger viewers and reintroduction to others. There are some beautiful works in the show, but it is in no way  indicative of how great a painter Uglow was. The next venue in New York will undoubtedly be a major institution. The New Museum which is a few blocks from Uglow's long-time loft on the Bowery is one possibility as well as the Whitney and MoMA and even perhaps the Dia though they never collected his work.  A complete survey will reveal how crucial Uglow was for the past 4 decades in maintaining the highest level for painting.

Schadenfreude: It Only Gets Better!

It's now been over three weeks since President Barack Obama's decisive victory over Mitt Romney and the army of Right Wing haters.  Never have so many failed so miserably.  And fail they did on Novemeber 6--from the filthy greedy plutocrats,  to the religious right,  to the Tea Party phonies unhinged by a liberal president of color.

The delusion about what happened continues. They think they just have to run a right wing Latino like Marco Rubio and all will be fine.  For the right wing in America, their small minded philosophy of conservatism never fails, it is mortal men that fail it.  Conservatism has always been with us--to oppose freedom for blacks, workers, women, immigrants, gays et al.  It's always there with its boot on the necks of the underclass; its always at the ready to do the bidding of the rich and powerful.  On November 6, 2012 a huge majority for these polarized times told the right wing and its minions to go fuck itself.

Of course, when you are funded by billionaires the threat is always omnipresent especially in off-year elections.  But liberalism triumphed on Novemeber 6 in a way it had not since November 1964 when LBJ destroyed Goldwater.  That is why the wingnuts are devastated.  They know what happened a few weeks ago.  They can blame all the poor people and welfare grabbing moochers all they want--except when its pointed out that the only age group Romney carried contained most of his government dependent  47%--the over 65 crowd.

The wingnuts hate Obama and hate liberal America and want it to fail. That's how they think.  They are tribal, they are insular and they are still in shock.  They are still unskewing Nate Silvers polls.  Right now, they are still counting votes nearly a month afte rthe election. Obama is at 51% of the vote and Romney is slipping at close to 47%., and the votes from California keep coming.   Watching them suffer is as great a pleasure and one can imagine.

Hard Surge

The battering that New York and New Jersey received at the hands of Hurricane Sandy has been devastating.  I live on the far west side near the Javits Center in one of the new towers that has sprung up in the growing Hudson Yards neighborhood over the past few years.  In the crucial hours when the storm pounded the Hudson I could see the water rising and flooding into Hudson River Park in the areas where the Circle Line, World Yacht and the NJ Ferries are docked.  But  just a few blocks south on 31st Street I could see that  Ohm, a tall residential tower that unfortunately has gone dark since Monday night.  I feel very fortunate I'm not one of them.  Con Ed has yet to restore power to hundreds of thousands of residents in lower Manhattan.

Yesterday, I decided after being cooped up inside since Sunday afternoon, I got onto my bike and rode downtown through Battery Park City and then followed the river line past the South Street Seaport and then up through the Lower East Side, the East Village and Murray Hill.  All the areas I rode through were dark.  You could tell people were getting frustrated.  I saw some filling up their large water cooler sized plastic jugs from an open fire hydrant.

One other remarkable site, at least for Manhattan, was what I saw at one of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrances--a truck submerged in water.  Lots of water.

George McGovern: An American Hero

While that paragon of right-wing macho and bravado Ronald Wilson Reagan spent World War II on the backlot of a San Fernando Valley movie studio, George McGovern was killing Nazis while flying risky raids into Germany.  You see, Ronnie was always an actor and always a coward.  That is the essence of contemporary conservatism as evidenced by chicken hawks like Cheney, Limbaugh or Romney.  McGovern a man horrified by war, because he actually experienced it was too modest and too unchauvinistic to make his service in WW II an inoculation against charges of pacifism due to his ardent opposition to the disastrous war in Vietnam. 

Many of my progressive elders cut their teeth in politics in the McGovern campaign of 1972.  He was and is the most liberal/progressive major party candidate in the history of the United States.  I was only 7 at the time, and was not on his side then but I always remember something beguiling about him, his name and the alternate devotion and antipathy he engendered.  One Bright Shining Moment (2005) Stephen Vittorio's magnificent documentary on McGovern captures the highlights of the '72 campaign.  1972 was still the 60s and it wasn't until Nixon's resignation in disgrace in 1974 did that wild ride from 1963 to 1974 end. 

The good Senator standing next to Warhol's brilliant silkscreen for the '72 campaign

Dan Flavin's  untitled (to a man, George McGovern) 

The McGovern campain of 1972 was innovative and novel in so many ways--from reforming the Democratic Party to organizing in the Iowa caucuses, and pioneering a direct mail donor base of small contributors among other things.  But one overlooked aspect of the campaign was the enlistment of the creative community.  It wasn't just Shirley MacLaine, Warren Beatty, Gloria Steinhem and the rest. The leading contemporary artists of the day were onboard from Warhol to Flavin and both created iconic works for the campaign with Warhol's wickedly cutting "Vote McGovern" silkscreen featuring a scary looking Richard Nixon among the finest political works of the past half century.

I had the good fortune of speaking to McGovern in the '90s and I asked him a question he graciously called a great question that not many people had asked him before.  My question was  why he didn't run for president in 1976  after having been vindicated by the debacle of Nixon's second term?  He answered that he considered it and had wanted to do it himself and regrets not having tried, but that he couldn't muster much enthusiasm from his family and close supporters.  Many try to imagine the world if McGovern had won in 1972, but then we probably don't get the full story of Watergate and the disgraceful Indochina exits would have happened on his watch.  But a President McGovern in January 1977 would have been a fascinating prospect indeed.  

Summer 2012 Photos

Summer

Summer is obviously here with record temperatures throughout the entire country. Blog postings will be sporadic. Have a wonderful July!