Monday, August 20, 2012

Fiiiiiiiinally Read: Swann by Carol Shields

The latest installment of Fiiiiiiiiinally Read brings me to Swann by Carol Shields, which I read with much delight this summer.

Though it doesn't concern visual art, Swann does a terrific job of suggesting the various ways that the creative work of a single individual (in this case, a little-known (fictional) poet, Mary Swann) can be appropriated, edited and reshaped by others into something completely different.

It also raised a question for me: even if we alter a creative work just a little bit, or make it shape our own arguments or views just a little bit, does that make the work, in a way, completely different from what the creator intended?

As with anything by Shields, it's not just the overarching intellectual theme that sings here. Shields' capacity to observe and articulate details of so-called everyday life, whether it be in academia, publishing or curatorial work (of which an amateur version is presented), is stellar. The clothes people wear, the food they eat, the partners they choose—Shields had a wonderful gift and talent for enriching readers with a full, round sense of life in her characters and settings.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who studies the lives and works of creative people, whether academically or otherwise. (Though academia does perhaps get the most fun skewering/tributing here. And Shields skewering often tempers the sharp with the gentle, and vice versa, one of the most wonderful things, I find, about reading her work.)

For more about Shields—and the way her work was sometimes overlooked by those who found it too comedic or "domestic" (aka, often, "feminine"), read this tribute Margaret Atwood wrote following Shields' death in 2003. (Though you may rightfully question this version of her life, and many others, as Shields herself does in Swann.)

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Friday, August 10, 2012

In the zone again...



Yep! This is where I'm at. Back on August 20.

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Q&A with Mark Clintberg at Canadianart.ca


 Artist/critic/curator Mark Clintberg is a multitalented guy; he's published research on artist restaurants, installed signage at the Banff Centre, and is working on his PhD at Concordia University.

So I felt lucky to connect with this busy man a few weeks back on the occasion of his installation Behind this lies my true desire for you at at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Building on past works where Clintberg had used signage and text to address ideas of love and relationship, Behind this lies my true desire for you seems to speak of a kind of longing that museums themselves may have. 

A condensed Q&A related to our phone conversation was posted at Canadianart.ca. Here's an excerpt:

LS: Thinking along the lines of passion and desire and your past work, as well as this new project, it came to mind for me that one purpose of an art institution is to encourage admiration or desire or passion for art among viewers. What do you think of that?
 
MC: Well, I think that’s absolutely true for me. The AGA, which used to be Edmonton Art Gallery, was the first place I learned to love art. I grew up in Stony Plain, about a 45-minute drive from the gallery, and my family used to take me there to see shows from an early age. 

I remember seeing a lot of shows there that really fostered a strong love for art. There was a Stan Douglas show that was really meaningful for me as a teenager. I definitely remember an early Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller work there, which, as someone growing up in a small town, really exploded my idea of what art could be on a material level. There was an Attila Richard Lukacs show; it was the first time I had ever heard of an art exhibition with a mature content rating, so that you needed to be a certain age or have a parent’s permission to go. I made sure to see it as soon as I could! 

Since I’m also pursuing a PhD in art history, it’s very easy to fall into a pattern of considering art from an analytic, thoughtful perspective that is built around proving something or demonstrating an argument that’s purely about reason. I really believe that art institutions are places for reason and for thinking, but they are also places for feeling, too—for passionate feeling. 

I think if art institutions are serious about being places that are about inviting publics to engage, then they need to be willing to allow publics to engage on an emotional level, not just on the level of thought or rationality.

Read the full Q&A at Canadianart.ca, and find out more about Mark on his website.  

(View of Mark's installation at an artist talk at the Art Gallery of Alberta; photo by the AGA) 

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Monday, July 30, 2012

Rita Davies leaves City of Toronto Culture Post


Still catching up on news from while I was on vacation... today in the Toronto Star I learned that Rita Davies stepped down from her post as executive director of culture at the City of Toronto, and that her last day was July 20.

I don't know Davies, but I did interview her a couple of times and she struck me as an individual who was defnitely passionate about making the city a better place through the arts, and about making the city a better place for artists and creators. She held the position, reports state, for 13 years.

As the Toronto Arts Council ED Claire Hopkinson noted in a related release, Davies helped make possible the founding of Artscape, and by extension Artscape's studio and living spaces for artists. Hopkinson also notes that Davies made great strides on the equity front in terms of arts funding.

Most recently, Davies might be known for providing great support and leadership to the Creative Capital Gains project, a 2011 consultation and reporting endeavour aimed at safeguarding arts funding in a cuts-seeking environment at Toronto City Hall.

The Star reports that it's unclear whether Davies will be replaced.

(Image of  Toronto City Hall via the City of Toronto)

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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

When Poor Planning Gives Public Art Initiatives a Bad Name


Just back from a vacation in Calgary, and while most of my time was spent with family, I did have some public-arty reflections along the way.

Driving by the Calatrava-designed Peace Bridge on Memorial Drive, I got to see for myself just how close it is to three other existing pedestrian bridges over the Bow River. According to Wikipedia, the distances are just "275m west, 400m west, and 900m east" of the Calatrava bridge location. Having walked and biked those previously existing bridges during the time I did live in Calgary, the Peace Bridge location does seem a bit strange--couldn't it have gone in a location that better needed a pedestrian bridge? Or have replaced an existing one?

My concern about the less-than-stellar planning around this bridge initiative—like, why give people a good reason to hate on public art? Why not put it in a better location where it will be less wasteful of resources from an infrastructure perspective?—intensified when it was pointed out to me that this project included only a bridge over the river, not a safe pedestrian crossing over the adjoining thoroughfare of Memorial Drive.

As a result, many Peace Bridge users have been unsafely jaywalking across the busy Memorial Drive, which, being somewhat twisty, has poor visibility, and which, as a major downtown artery, can be quite busy.  

The Calgary Herald reported in March that the City of Calgary is acting to resolve this problem by adding a crosswalk, but I didn't see any such crosswalk during my visit. In a more recent article in Metro Calgary, aldermen also trumpeted the success of the bridge, saying usage has well exceeded forecasts—I can definitely see the aesthetic appeal of the bridge and its power to create a kind of destination, but I also don't think that completely excuses the infrastructure doubling.

In any case, driving by the bridge did prompt me to consider the ways public art can go wrong, even when the creative is stellar and the overall result is largely positive for many people. 

Drew Anderson at FFWD also recently posted a reflection on the bridge as being a consequence of what I'll call "world-class city" anxieties, resulting in a generic, rather than particular, feel to new art and design projects. (These anxieties aren't just for Toronto, ya'll!)

Basically, I remain a big supporter of public art and related initiatives, but it remains frustrating to see poor planning that gives citizens quite good reasons reasons to be skeptical or unwelcoming of public art in general.

If anyone has other examples of the ways poor planning can hamper promising public art, feel free to post in the comments.  

(Image: Nighttime view of Peace Bridge by Skeezix1000 at Wikimedia)

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Friday, July 13, 2012

Away until July 24

Vacation time! I'll be away from my desk until July 24. No comments will be moderated during until that date. Happy summer!

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Recommended: New Yorker profile of Nicholas Serota


I feel like I'm probably the last person in the world with an interest in museums to have read the Nicholas Serota profile in the July 2 New Yorker. I finally read it today (or in the terminology I like to use here more of late, I fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally read it today) and recommend it.

If you have trouble tracking a copy down, you can find a link to a PDF here at Real Clear Arts.

One thing the story definitely comes back to again and again (as does the Real Clear Arts post) is the spectrum of opinion that exists in the art world about whether museums should be lively, casual, community friendly spaces or not. One of the big arguments against that comes up is that this type of space is not adequately reverential towards the art itself, or doesn't encourage a reverence or deep engagement--that it ultimately distracts from the art.

Personally, I think even in a quiet, reverential environment, many people spend only a few moments looking at most of the art. A reverential environment does not in itself guarantee reverence in the viewer, in my opinion.

Of course, I can be reasonable about this and say that there are limits--that a lot of noise and distraction is not conducive to a very deep art experience either. But if distraction and noise and crowds themselves are verboten to these types of museum critics, why do very respected museums manage to maintain that respect while hosting huge parties, galas and openings? Why do so few critics object to art being a backdrop at those types of experience? Or why is that not such a big deal to them?

I'm going down the rabbit hole of imagined argument a bit here.

To step back and summarize, I have to say I find Serota and Tate's commitment to public access and friendliness inspiring. And I was very impressed to learn in this article that their free collection admission is still maintained with just 40% of its funding coming from the government. By comparison, the National Gallery of Canada has been receiving roughly 80% of its funding from the government, and the permanent collection costs money to see most hours of the week.

I also appreciate that the article/Serota also pointed out that it's not just free admission, but strong exhibitions, that also make a museum popular. And that artists are to be integrated into the process of developing the museum too, or shaping it. 

(Image of Tate Modern by Michael Reeve from Wikimedia)


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