Why no new posts from Anemic Blog lately?

That’s why.

MIRANDA JULY WEEK PART THREE

A couple months ago, I went to Target Free Friday at MoMA.  Little did I know, I was to be accompanied by swarms of lens-happy tourists who seemed to enjoy having their lens-happy friends take pictures of them in front of the art rather than actually looking at the art.  My rage knew no bounds.

Enter the lovely Miranda July whose piece “Eleven Heavy Things,” a set of eleven (really, wow?) outdoor sculptures,  shown at the Venice Biennal depends upon this very phenomenon: people taking pictures of themselves with the art.

“The cast fiber-glass, steel-lined pieces are designed for interaction: pedestals to stand on, tablets with holes for body parts, and free-standing abstract headdresses. A series of three pedestals in ascending height, The Guilty One, The Guiltier One, The Guiltiest One, ask the viewer to ascribe their guilt relative to the people around them. A large flat shape, hand-painted with Burberry plaid, hovers on a pole, waiting to become someone’s aura. A series of tablets invite heads, arms, legs and one finger: This is not the first hole my finger has been in, nor will it be the last. A wider pedestal for two people to hug on reads, We don!t know each other, we’re just hugging for the picture….

“July assumes and invites the picture — these are eleven photo opportunities, in a city where one is always clutching a camera. Though the work begins as sculpture, it becomes a performance that is only complete when these tourist photos are uploaded onto personal blogs and sent in emails — at which point the audience changes, and the subject clearly becomes the participants, revealing themselves through the work.” (via)

P.S.  To you lens-happy tourists:  just because you are supposed to take pictures of yourselves with this particular piece of art, you should not consider yourselves justified in taking pictures of yourselves with any piece of art.  Especially if I am within a ten foot vicinity. I will break that fancy-schamncy camera, rip your fanny-pack from your over-inflated waist, and unleash my wrath on your New York City guide book.  Consider yourselves warned.

It’s things like this that make me want to quit studying art and become an accountant.

Found in The Art Museum from Boullee to Bilbao

“In 2000 the venerable Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts launched a membership drive aimed at younger viewers called “Friends of Steve” that used an image of the museum’s founder, Stephen Sainsbury III (1835-1905) dressed in sunglasses, a goatee, and a backward-turned baseball cap.” (p 193)

thedailywhat:

TGIAF.

[via.]

This is how I feel today.

According to the LA Times, sports star Shaquille O’Neil will be curating a show entitled “Size DOES Matter” at the Flag Art Foundation in New York.  The 39 artist show will feature works by such art stars as Jeff Koons and Chuck Close.  And, as an added bonus, the catalog will feature an essay by James Frey (of A Million Little Pieces fame and disgrace).

Let me first say that I think it’s great when fine art becomes more accessible to a greater public.  With the combined power of O’Neal’s fame and Frey’s scandal, this show could  attract a broad audience from sports fans to suburban Oprah-watching housewives. If a celebrity can publicly enjoy fine art and participate in the market, maybe average-Joe-who-thought-art-was-just-for-intellectual-snobs will check it out. (Can’t you just see groups of teenage boys in Shaq jerseys tromping through Chelsea to go see galleries!)

What I’m not in favor of, however, is bringing work down a notch to make it accessible.  Call me idealistic, but I would like to think that trained curators who have devoted most of their time to the study of art and display have a certain skill set that say, a basketball player, would not.  As anyone who’s gone to a particularly bad exhition can tell you, poor displays takes its toll on the work.

But in an age when artist curators are increasingly prevalent and successful the boundaries are being broken down.  The word ‘curate’ is tossed around to describe the organization of blogs and shop displays.  Maybe a celebrity is just as fit for the job as anyone else. Maybe what we need is an outsider’s eye.

Yet somehow I’m not convinced.  Though Mr. O’Neal may have a natural gift for curating, it is seems far more likely that his name has been applied like a brand.  I’d be interested to know what exactly Mr. O’Neal’s curating will entail.  This reeks of publicity stunt.

…because reading five pages on the location of Christ’s wound (the left side or the right side) from Early Christian to Nineteenth Century is totally worth my time. Gar.