| Abstract |
FEATURES
Size Matters
As Bruce Nauman joins the lengthening list of big-name artists to exhibit in the dauntingly cavernous turbine hall of Tate Modern the critics once again respond by asking how artists can compete when the building that houses their work threatens to steal the show. Dan Smith examines critics’ arguments against ‘the proliferation of oversized installations ever more dramatic in size and form’ and finds that they are often founded on a misuse of Guy Debord’s concept of the ‘spectacle’.
On Sculpture
Mark Prince believes that sculpture has overcome the threat of marginalisation.
‘Painting’s ambivalent relation to new image-making technology ®¢ both emulating it and setting itself up as its self-consciously primitive cousin ®¢ has its counterpart in recent three-dimensional art which flaunts its pre-Duchampian handmade qualities while absorbing modes of contemporary mass production as contraries against which to define itself.’
EDITORIAL
You are so beautiful
On the politics involved when living artists give work to national collections.
‘In the case of artists who donate their work to museums in their own lifetimes: are they invited to do so or do they put themselves forward? In the case of the latter, what happens when an offer is refused when, in effect, an artist is deemed not to be beautiful enough? How, for instance, did Tate approach this delicate matter when it launched its new ‘new initiative’ to secure donations of work by living artists?’
PROFILE
London Fieldworks profiled by Jeni Walwin.
‘Over the last eight years Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson, the two artists behind London Fieldworks projects, have hooked up to urban and remote landscapes in ways that reposition our relationship with the environment. They have established new channels by which the viewer can tune in to nature. By participating in each project’s final manifestation and becoming immersed in its deep interface, the viewer experiences something beyond the work itself.’
EXHIBITION REVIEWS
The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection
Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
Axel Lapp
Martin Kippenberger
Gagosian Gallery, London
Tony Wood
Rosemarie Trockel
Tramway, Glasgow
David Hopkins
Before the End (The Last Painting Show)
Swiss Institute, New York
Michael Corris
Keith Tyson
Haunch of Venison, London
Marcus Verhagen
Gregor Schneider
East End, London
Dave Beech
Gary Webb
Chisenhale Gallery, London
Eliza Williams
Weekending
Globe Gallery, North Shields
Paul Usherwood
Love Story/ Brighid Lowe
Danielle Arnaud / Jerwood Space, London
Sally O’Reilly
The Relaxed Audience or Why We Are So Wise
Jeffrey Charles Gallery, London
David Barrett
John Stezaker
The Approach, London
John Slyce
Rut Blees Luxemburg / Juan Cruz
ICA / Tabernacle, London
Ian Hunt
Time Zones
Tate Modern, London
Mike Sperlinger
The Carnegie International
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Jean Wainwright
BOOKS
Craig Martin dallies over Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s by Pamela M Lee and finds that as EP Thompson said ‘‘Time is now currency; it is not passed but spent.’’
He also finds himself in agreement with Michel Foucault: ‘Alongside an array of other prescient comments, in an interview from 1980 he noted how space was perceived as static and dead, whereas time was seen to be the engine of life and all its vicissitudes. Perhaps not predating the entire debate, but at least signalling the current minefield, Foucault‘s remarks demonstrate the ongoing battle between space and time.’
Winter Reading A round-up of the best books of the season.
NETWORKS
Beyond the visual
Michael Gibbs reviews New Philosophy for New Media by Mark BN Hansen and How images think by Ron Burnett.
REPORTS
Maria Fusco on the state independent publishing in Britain today.
SALEROOMS
Colin Gleadell reports from the London Salerooms and from Frieze Artfair.
‘Looking back at the second Frieze Art Fair, the word that keeps recurring is ‘‘more’’. Compared to last year there was more of everything ®¢ more galleries, more space, more visitors, more collectors, more money and more coffee stands charging more (surely, at least, the water supply should be free). The only thing there were fewer of was UK galleries. Why? Because there were more Americans. ‘‘We felt we had to make room for them’’, said fair co-organiser and frieze magazine publisher Matthew Slotover. So move over Kate McGarry, Andrew Mummery and others, Barbara Gladstone, Andrea Rosen, and Sperone Westwater are coming. The result? Something that looked more like blue chip Art Basel than before. But is this the direction Frieze really wants to go?’ |