moda vivendi — ideas for another possible world

Walking the Lines of Nasreen Mohamedi

by Claudia Dias on February 4, 2010

A few weeks ago I came acrosss the fine-line drawings and b/w photographs of Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990). Infinite precision and sensibility in using multiple variations of lines, be it in thickness, distance and pressure these drawings of multiple horizons are simply magnetic.

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Break
Rest
Break the cycle of seeing
Magic and awareness arrives.*

During her lifetime Nasreen’s work did not get due recognition in India, according to Deepak Talawar, for her abstract modern works, influenced by European Constructivsm and Modernism were too non-Indian within the then Indian art scene. She devoted her work to the anonymous language of geometric clarity, where all is distance: “The drawings lift the body into space and give it a sense of its mathematical positioning,” writes Geeta Kapur in the Drawing Center’s catalog “Lines among Lines” from 2005.

Nasreen studied design in London and in Paris, traveled frequently to the deserts and beaches of Bahrain, Kihim and Kuwait, but lived and taught mainly in Baroda and later on in Bombay and New Delhi. “What seemed to attract her during these travels were not the monumental and the new, but the imperceptible cycles and imperfections of nature, the overlooked infrastructures and detritus of everyday life in the streets”. (Susette Min)

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Alone among all Indian artists, she worked on small-format, strictly ruled drawings in ink, watercolor, and pencil on paper. She took many black and white photographs of seemingly random moments on her travels and daily life, but all were already composed with lines, be it street marking, yarns of a weaving stool or the waves of a dune landscape. She refused to exhibit the photographs and thought them inappropriate for the public eye, but she used them as a starting point for her fine-line drawings.

In the early 1960’s Nasreen started out with delicate tracery of grey-and orchre paintings, moved in the early 70’s to grid pencil drawings and graphic formalism and started in the early 80’s with drawings incorporating diagonals.

Her drawings are often compared with Agnes Martin’s works, however she only learned about the American artist late in her career. Personally, I find Nasreen’s work way more compelling, since they lack the doctrinarian, kind of religious undertone and tend to be more experimental, open and questioning.

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Looking at the drawings is like taking an infinite break, and reveals the devotion, patience and depth of the artist behind the lines.
“For Mohamedi, life was not a matter of time, but of duration; for Mohamedi’s drawings engage with the thick activity of the world around her, they do not represent or render nature, or a particular aspect of the city, so much as they serve as a referent of time.” (Susette Min)

*From Nasreen’s Diary, July 17th1973, Baroda

Nasreen Mohamedi: Notes. - Reflections on Indian Modernism @ Kunsthalle Basel (February 7-April 4, 2010)

Please refer for catalogs and further information about Nasreen Mohamedi’s works to Talwar Gallery , which represents the estate of the artist. Drawings and Photographs are by Nasreen Mohamedi, courtesy of Talwar Gallery.

Talwar Gallery 108 East 16th Street, New York, NY 10003, Tel + 1 212 673 3096

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‘No Longer Empty’ - Making Creative Use of Space

by Ross von Burg on August 20, 2009

No Longer Empty is a public art installation created by Manon Slome. Formerly a curator at the Guggenheim Museum, Ms. Slome constructively and creatively utilizes spaces left empty by the implosion of NY’s Real Estate Market for a continuing program of floating art exhibitions. There was so much interest from artists and ’space providers’ the project took off ahead of schedule with an initial installation earlier this summer next to the Chelsea Hotel and a current show up at a space next in the Caledonia, adjacent to the High Line on West 16th Street.

This project installs interesting artists in high traffic areas designed to attract the viewers because of the volume of passers-by but also because its conceived of as a location that can both involve the public and make them feel comfortable in the space.

As a site-specific public art project, No Longer Empty designs spaces in order to make a transformation in often high vacancy areas that need to be re-involved with both the streetscape and the people that pass by. By often using street-level commercial spaces now largely occupied by ‘For Rent’ signs, the project in its own way draws attention into the often raw or roughly finished interior spaces that provide the setting for its shows.

An upcoming project will create an Oasis in Times Square. A quiet restful place among the noise traffic and tourists that crowd this section of midtown. The idea is informal and comes from both, a commitment to public art and from a rationale that breaks the whitewall gallery or museum methods of both display and curating. No Longer Empty can put a show up in a few weeks or less. Compared to other galleries or museums which prepare shows months or sometimes years in advance.

After having worked their entire careers mostly in Institutions NLE’s creators see their spaces as open and accessible where anyone can walk off the street with a stroller, take a look, leave a dollar and feel that they have both noticed and experienced something that would have been otherwise missing from their day.

Because the locations are high traffic it can make a difference to the casual passerby and brings people into spaces that were either never finished or are now empty. A trend likely to continue on the street level for sometime. ”The ‘For Rent’ signs are part of our look. Often the Real Estate Companies don’t want us to take them all down and we don’t want to either, ” Manon Slome said in a recent conversation. “The situation has gotten so bad many buildings have unfinished areas and some have run out of money and can’t afford to put down the rug and buy a sofa for the lobby.”

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No Longer Empty is not just a storefront model, but will install in other spaces as well and looks to expand its repetoire to include, musicians, bands, dance other kinds of performances as well as instructional talks. Creating a kind of multi-modal environment that reconfigures raw space as necessary for a particular event or installation. In a way encouraging the creation of a mobile nexus of art and interaction linked by the a social network of active participants, interested passersby in an active streetscape all working together to make a creative use of space that otherwise would have remained empty.

Reflecting Transformation @ The Caledonia, 443 W 16th St, New York, NY (July 30 - August 29)

Photographs are courtesy of No Longer Empty.
For any enquiries please contact manon@nolongerempty.com

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Dust Covers To Covet

by Claudia Dias on July 28, 2009

In the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II, time-traveler Marty McFly visits a 2015 antique shop whose saleswoman shows him a book with a dust jacket and explains that it is from before the days of (fictional) dust-repellent paper.

This year, only 6 years away, the most famous example of a dust jacket was on the first edition of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925. With the jacket the collector’s value of that book is 20-30 times higher then without. Only in the early 1920’s the decoration from the book itself had moved to the dust jackets and later on simply to the cover design for hard-cover and paperback (now also for the internet). Today it happens that the cover designer is better known then the author of the book (i.e. Chip Kidd).

Early on the independent literary publisher ‘New Directions‘, established in 1936 in New York, caught up with this idea and commissioned in 1940 Alvin Lustig to design the covers for re-editions for their “Modern Classics” series and for their authors like Tennessee Williams. He was influenced by the European designs of bauhaus and the Dada movement, and the Russian Constructivists books by El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, all with the intention of ‘knocking the eye off-center’.

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Meanwhile, a healthy rivalry started with other designers ‘who could alter the form faster’, one of them being Paul Rand for the magazine “Direction”.
‘By the mid-1940s, when he was designing all the jackets in New Directions’ “New Classics” series (which b.t.w. includes Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’), Lustig had combined modern type with abstract line drawings, or what he called symbolic ‘marks’, which owed more to the work of such artists as Paul Klee, Joan Miró and Mark Rothko than to accepted commercial styles.’

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‘Like jazz improvisations, these non-representational images signaled the progressive nature of his publishing house. During the late 1940s he introduced collage/montage and reticulated photography, evoking surrealistic fantasies. And in the 1950’s he developed a series of paperback covers for Noonday and Meridian Books using only gothic and slab serif typography. Rand and Lustig clearly shared certain traits, since they were both fluent in the language of Modernism - each had a similar preference for contemporary typefaces and child-like scribbles - but each interpreted Modernism in their own ways’. (Quoted from Steven Heller “Paul Rand”)

Today Lustig remains famous for his cover designs but what amazes me that in his short life (1915-1955) next to books and magazines he designed sign systems, textiles, interiors, buildings and a helicopter, always applying his believes in modern abstract design!

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If you are interested in books, but maybe even more in their covers; here comes your chance: New Directions is preparing for a limited edition of some of their ‘Modern Classics’ books with the original cover-designs by Alvin Lustig; printed on dust-collecting paper, affordable and definitely something to covet.

Please refer to the publisher for inquiries and prices.

New Directions Publishing Corp.
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, editorial@ndbook.com

Photographs are courtesy of Alvin Lustig Archive.

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John McCracken’s Space Portals

by Claudia Dias on July 25, 2009

‘Color helps to define form.’ (Sketch Note from John McCracken, 1965)
This note and my memorized images of New Mexico’s landscapes, McCracken’s current residence, have opened my eyes to his work. This work is for me the total abstraction of the direct experience of nature. Counterpointing what I saw as the incomprehensible order of this vast and colorful desert landscape, his work is the physical translation of the nature’s essence condensed to pure color and shape; he crystalizes the hidden harmony and beauty that one can sense, without direct understanding.

At the same time McCracken has stories, absolutely unusual within the circle of the minimalist movement he his mainly identified with. His somewhat awkward tales of space aliens and time travel give a good idea of the independent and radiant quality of his work. I try not to link his work too much many of those more dogmatic minimalist artists (perhaps the reason that ‘Dia:’ still has not included his work in their collection). Also, regarding minimalism: McCracken would probably be the last remaining working artist.

‘By the way, one of the things that interests me about aliens is that they seem to operate in more than one dimension of reality comparatively, we operate in one, but they travel in time, and do weird things with space and matter. They do stuff I like. Think, as a mild example, how it would be to see somebody in a spread of time.
I think “minimalism” work is not always so minimalist, especially when you really see it and think about it - or, say, try to accurately describe it. But my tendency was to make my works more sensuous than most, and more what I thought of as beautiful. I felt that if something was beautiful, one could enjoy looking at it and therefore stand to apprehend the form in a full way - intellectually, emotionally, and experientially.’ (from “Interview/ John McCracken and Matthew Higgs” 2005)

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Being afraid of the possibility that his sculptures would simply look like objects of fetish within the context of a white-box gallery, I thought I would prefer to see his work outdoors .

I first ‘discovered’ McCracken’s work about 10 years ago, a nearly invisible reflective stainless steel column called “Teton” in the sculpture garden of the Caldic Collection, Netherlands. It emerged out of absolutely nowhere, visible just as a vertical distortion in space. This year at ArtBasel40 a similar column, called “Liftoff” was placed, elevated on a pedestal on the main plaza, but since it was extremely crowded I experienced it more like a space-hole among the steadily moving mass of people. Unfortunately, at that time I think hardly anybody noticed the piece. Right now, David Zwirner Gallery is showing a similar sized bronze column in the controlled environment of his gallery. Its simple presence feels eery.

‘My works are minimal and reduced, but also maximal. I try to make them concise, clear statements in three-dimensional form, and also to take them to a breathtaking level of beauty’. (2000)

The “planks”, are probably the most iconic work which started his 40 year career; they connect two worlds: the physical and the mental. The reflective, monochromatic (rarely ‘multi-colored’), rectangular plank of approximately human size, stands on the ground that we walk on, but leans against the wall, that we look at.

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‘The plank is ‘out’ of the world (or on the edge of it), the column or block-form more ‘in’ the world’, McCracken explains.

‘California culture did of itself offer some inspiration for art, too. (..) I wasn’t into surfboards - despite what some people have thought - as much as cars. Not that many of them had great finishes - but the light in Los Angeles does something, too (..)’.

During his early years in Los Angeles McCracken developed his iconic reduced shapes and a technic that allowed him to achieve their perfectly smooth skin. The multiple layers of color and resin over fiberglass covered plywood give the objects their character of weightlessness and reflectiveness that keeps the observer in a distance. Different from minimalist and conceptual artists who handed out their work for fabrication, he sticked to making his work with his own hands, simply to have the final control over the outcome of color and shape, the quality that probably pulls the observer again into his work.

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‘My time-travel experience involved two times and places. First, (..) in Northern California near Mt. Shasta. I’d gotten off the school bus for the last time and was spending a while standing at the edge of the highway gazing around and thinking(..). As I looked toward the sunset over the western mountains, a feeling came over me. I felt I was being watched by someone or something behind me, in the sky. I turned around and looked in that direction. Nothing notable seemed to be there except a few clouds, but the feeling was still there and persisted for some time. It was a strong experience, but, well, that was that.
The about fifteen years later, in 1966-67, in my studio in Venice California, I was thinking and musing one evening, and I happened to remember my earlier experience of being watched. I wondered what it might mean. I visualized that earlier scene. I saw myself standing on the road, I saw the sunset, and so on, and I felt again the odd feeling that I was being watched from the sky.
And then like a brick it hit me: I was seeing that scene from the same point in the sky where I had earlier felt I was being watched. I had spontaneously “come in” right there. It bowled me over. There had been someone watching me then, and it was me, from the future! To the accompaniment of something like bolts of lightning, I banged back forth between my two selves for awhile, seeing everything from one perspective, then the other. It was a very weird and interesting experience.
As to frontiers, that experience hints at one: inner reality. Physical reality is big, but inner reality, though slippery, is bigger - and it permits time travel, as does the mind.’ (quoted from “Interview / John McCracken and Matthew Higgs” 2005)

This summer John McCracken will have his first solo-show in the UK at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, accompanied by a wonderful catalogue with sketches and notes of the artist.

John McCracken @ Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Inverleith House (August 6- October 11, 2009)

6 works, 6 rooms @ David Zwirner (June 27-August 14, 2009)
Please refer to the gallery for inquiries and prices.

David Zwirner
525 W 19th St, New York, NY 10011, Tel +1 212 727 2070
Many thanks to Jessica at David Zwirner for photographs and material.

Photographs: Portrait McCracken; “Teton” (1989), Rotterdam, NL; “Swift”(2007), documenta 12, Kassel; “Liftoff” (2009), Messeplatz at ArtI40I Basel; “Vision” (2004), David Zwirner, New York; “6 McCracken Columns” (2006), David Zwirner, New York; “Aurora” (2008), David Zwirner, New York

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Cosmic Latte

by Claudia Dias on July 22, 2009

In 2001 Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry, astronomers from John Hopkins University determined that the average color of all the light in the universe was calculated to be pale turquoise, but they soon corrected their findings from turquoise to beige, due to a computer bug. “It’s our fault for not taking the color science seriously enough,” admitted Karl Glazebrook. He added that the discovery was actually just meant to be an amusing footnote to a large-scale survey of the spectrum of light emitted by 200,000 galaxies. The newly calculated color, described more formally as III E Gamma, looks like off-white wall paint (in Photoshop the RGB value is #FFF8E7). Glazebrook, however preferred to tag it as “cosmic latte.”

In that sense the Daoist classic text, the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) warns that dividing the world into the five colors (black, white, yellow, red and blue) would “blind the eye” to true perception saying, that we would all think so much more clearly if we didn’t divide the world at all.
Confused? If ‘cosmic latte‘ is now a natural or synthetic color, I remembered that mixing all colors would lead eventually to black, but that black also represented the monochrome (or color-blind) philosophy of the Daoists.
Tracing the history of natural pigments and dyes, Victoria Finlay describes in her travel book “Color” that conceptually, for Daoist artists 1000 years ago, black ink did contain all the colors, just as in Zen philosophy a grain of rice contains the whole world.
So in terms of colors, the greatest artist should be able to make a peacock seem iridescent, or a peach seem pink without using any colored pigments at all. Black was the color for the gentlemen artist, who combined the skills of poetry and painting, and who wanted to portray the landscape of the mind, not of the eye. Su Dongpo, a Chinese scholar from the 11th century, was criticized for painting a picture of a leaf bamboo using red ink. “Not realistic”, his critics said gleefully. “Then what color should I have used?” he asked. “Black, of course”.

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There are no true black dyes. There are black pigments - charcoal is one, soot another - but pigments do not tend to be soluble in water, so it is hard to fix them onto fabric.
Puritans emerged in Europe in the 17th century and for true Protestant symbolism true protestant Black was needed. At that time many people dyed clothes in several vats - blue, red and yellow - until blackness was achieved. However, that was expensive. Just in time ‘Campeachy‘ logwood from the New World was marketed as good ingredient for both red and black dyes. Sooner rather than later this led to a logwood war fought between the British and the Spanish for logwood shipment rights, meanwhile pirates kept the shipments going, being paid with rum and whorehouses in the Caribbean. At the end (now called) Belize went to the British and many Belizeans today are descended from slaves who were forced to cut down this heavy dye wood … for no other reason than to help Europe be more black and pure.

I assumed the cosmic color would be if not black then at least yellow, as it is the color of light, or more accurately according to a Bihar yogi in Monghyr, India: “Yellow is the light in nature. It invites the soul, as black protects the soul; … the thing about yellow is that it has to be purified“. Victoria Finley was on the search for the yellow paint of the gown of the blue-skinned Hindu god Krishna, the playboy incarnation of the Supreme God Vishnu; personally I was on the quest for the natural yellow dye of my last year’s summer dress.

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Monghyr piuri is an Indian yellow animal dye or pigment, but probably only a legend, according to which the dye was collected in a town called Monghyr, where the cows were fed mango-tree leaves and then their urine was supposedly used as color. There was never a confirmation nor any local recollection of that tale according to Victoria Finley.
Another pigment in use was Orpiment that means ‘Gold pigment‘, and contained arsenic, was thus quite poisonous, but this didn’t stop Javanese and Chinese from using it as medicine in small quantities.
Gamboge yellow, still comes mostly from Cambodia and Krishna’s yellow gowns were probably painted with this pigment instead of the more whiffy version from Monghyr. It comes from garcinia hanburyi - a tall tree related to the mangosteen. The paint is the resin, extracted similar to rubber. A gamboge collector makes a deep cut in the trunk, places a bamboo beneath the gash… and returns the next year. Gamboge is also one of the most effective diuretics in nature.
Saffron, the most colorful spice in the world grows as purple crocus fields all over the world. However saffron is not used as a dye, a false assumption contributed by the fact that Buddhist monks wear ’saffron’ colored gowns. Saffron has been grown since 500 BC in Kashmir, which now produces less then a tonne a year. It has been grown all over the planet even in North Wales (Saffron Walden). Iran is probably now the largest producer; 170,000 flowers make one kilo of saffron, which means Iran’s annual production involves 28 billion flowers, 1/2 million people help to pick the flowers. Each kilo can be sold for $700, by the kilogram it is the most expensive spice, but a gram should last most cooks several months. different-yellows-w
After reading all this I can’t help to somewhat feel relieved that we now have synthetic pigments and dyes.

But Glazebrook’s study revealed something more: because the stars (which formed 5 billion years ago) would have been “brighter” in the past, the color of the universe changes over time shifting from blue to red as more blue stars change to yellow and eventually to red giants. These too will eventually change into black holes.
So does that mean cosmic latte will turn into cosmic espresso?

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Thorns For The Bailey House (CSH #21)

by Claudia Dias on July 18, 2009

Honestly, I think the garden of the Bailey House got forgotten by Pierre Koenig and his clients. Several pieces of Architectural Pottery were planted with sedum and the steel-framed reflective pools where decorated for the early photo shoots with additional rushes. This probably was because of the limited budget. Koenig’s sketches don’t indicate much more regarding the landscape.

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Somehow I think that this became the week-spot of CSH #21; different from its successor, the Stahl House (CSH #22) with its spectacular view over LA, this house was built between a sloping neighborhood street and a steep dry mountain-side way up in the West Hollywood Hills. So the focus was kept on the house’s center-patio and its terraces. Over time bushes have overgrown some of the mountain slope and some grass had been planted for presentation purposes and to prevent further erosion. The last owner surrounded himself with a wall of bamboo, which cut the house off the neighborhood in the style of Beverly Hills and a cinder-block retention-wall along the street had been added.

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Essentially the guiding principle for a new garden design was low-maintenace. What came to mind was a desert-like climate, you don’t think so much about that when you see the rainforest-like planted neighborhood streets. But succulents take to the dry grounds (oh surprise!) and the sculptural character of succulents complements the straight angled building shell. The fact that they absorb water during the rainy season and then store it means they can last longer during the dry season. This way irrigation can be kept to a minimum, a necessary consideration helped as we found out later that year to get through the ongoing California drought.

Inspired on the one hand by the wild, desert vegetation of the Joshua Tree Park with its randomly spread Joshua trees accompanied by creoste bushes, ocotillos and teddy-bear cacti; and on the other hand by the well-groomed urban succulent garden in San Marino at Huntington Botanical Gardens which looks more like a dense jungle of cacti and agave. We decided for a wide variety of succulents, planted in clusters, and rare Joshua trees from Texas, since the Californian Joshua tree is close to extinction and also is very difficult to transplant (it has to be replanted exactly at the same angle and orientation to the sun in which it grew).

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The neighborhood association*, founded even before the house was completed in 1959, eventually set up rules to keep the community alive and open, preventing Wonderland Park Avenue from turning into a gated community. Needless to say, the moment that the bamboo went, happy faces arrived by foot or Porsche, commenting that they are glad to have the building again as part of their community.

At the end, the gardens are the interface between home and neighborhood and provoke public interest more then I ever expected, since they provide a viewable amenity and more so, an identity.

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* I was told, the neighborhood association was founded in the mid 1950’s by a diverse selection of working professionals, who got the basic infrastructure built on Wonderland Park Avenue, even working out bank financing at the time. The area was refuge to middle class people who would have been marginalized because of race or ethnicity in the postwar Los Angeles housing market.

Contemporary photographs curtsey of the author.

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CSH #21 Still Breathes Informal Lifestyle

by Claudia Dias on July 17, 2009

Julius Shulman’s world-famous photographs of the Case Study House #21 (1959) try to convince us that nothing must change, that perfection is here to stay.
Shulman (1910-2009) captured this special area of post-war progressive American architecture with his own seductive lens-eye view, and these images will linger with us forever. In a way, his iconic moments of flawlessness are intimidating.

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The Bailey House (CSH #21) has seen several new owners since it was commissioned to Pierre Koenig in 1957 as a single-family house by Walter and Maria Bailey. It is extremely compact (30′ x 40′), designed with an open-plan layout. Flexibility through sliding doors, the CSH #21 reminds me of a traditional Japanese house, where exterior merges with the interior with help of large movable glass-wall panels and a center courtyard that radiates pioneering intelligence and detailed finesse in all its complexity.

Even technical aspects were integrated into style. Originally there was no air conditioning installed. The average temperature was much lower at the time of construction. The cooling system of the house then are surrounding reflective (shallow) pools, a center courtyard with a water fountain and cold water cooling tubes which are run across the roof, emptying from water spouts into the pool and then are pumped-up again as part of a recirculation system. In the late afternoon the Santa Ana winds pick up in the Hollywood Hills, which enables cross- ventilation, blowing the cooler courtyard air into the house through the wide window openings. There are mosquito-screens in front of the window elements. The wall-sized sliding screen panels both protect from insects and sun, adding to the facade a shoji-esque layered light-play.

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CSH #21 was constructed as part of introducing the International Style with steel, large glass elements and the newest appliances into domestic architecture after WWII. Unfortunately it did not catch on beyond the kitchen. Reyner Banham called it ‘the style that nearly‘ was: despite its (and CSH #22’s) fame, it only proved that ‘the ingrained prejudices of the construction industry were difficult to dislodge.’
What makes the house so special are its intelligent solutions from sliding doors for closing-off the private areas; the inner courtyard to which the bathroom door-panels open up and where you can take a shower being hidden and outdoors; the kitchen that offers 3 refrigerators/freezers, but installed on eye level, meaning you never have to bend down to look for your groceries. The integrated pharmacy drawer and hidden closet door behind the kitchen (in Shulman’s photograph just across from where Pierre Koenig is standing at the music credenza) are some examples that contribute to this masterstroke.

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Meanwhile, the house outlived its designer. Shulman’s pictures however remain frozen time capsules: just as we have difficulties watching actors age in real life we want to see this iconic house preserved in its pristine condition forever. 1998 the house got a final facelift by Pierre Koenig, who actually made changes to kitchen appliances and the kitchen color (it is now stainless steel, no longer yellow) and added air-conditioning and Cable TV. Koenig always perceived the kitchen as a place where technology will surpass one day his choices, and designed it for this purpose adjustable for ‘up-grades’.

The original living room furniture where designed by Pierre Koenig and McCabe, was referred to by some as lower-quality furniture (vinyl covered foam sofa, office chair, plastic laminated plywood bureau, i.e.) since the money had been spent on the building’s shell. I found a copy of the original music credenza (see Shulman’s picture again) and also a model of the vinyl sofa for an astronomical price. As much as Shulman’s images tempt to recreate that one perfect moment, I believe the house has to live with its new owners and their personal style, and living habits. When refurnishing the CSH for its new owner I realized that as long as I kept alive the concept of the house - respecting the ‘free flow of space‘, the play with inside-outside, lightness and openness, and its unconventionality of the moment then, - it will keep breathing. Aging with grace is here the challenge.

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I will never forget the moments I spent in this house. When the gaze of a beautiful wild Coyote (coming down from the mountains in search for water) woke me up at sunrise with only the window between us, was proof enough that the concept of this house is still alive and still valid. This was not a Shulman moment. This was unexpected!

Julius Shulman died July 15, 2009.

Contemporary photographs are courtesy of the author. For Julius Shulman photographs please contact R Gallery.

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Red-Shifted

by Claudia Dias on July 15, 2009

Two very large circular structures, one pointing towards the sky and one into the ground look for the visible and invisible Red-Shift. They have two very different starting points but both are in the search for mankind’s place in the Universe.
The Arecibo Observatory on the island of Puerto Rico is the site of the world’s largest single-unit radio telescope, observes radio waves, the part of the electromagnetic spectrum invisible to the human eye. The other is James Turrell’s Roden Crater observatory.

roden-crator-ext After James Turrell bought the 400,000 year-old Roden Crater in 1979 , a 2 mile-wide volcanic crater on the edge of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona, he started to turn it into an observatory with several separate spaces, that will allow the visitor (probably in 2011) to follow celestial phenomena with their naked eye.
‘I also wanted to gather starlight that was from outside, light that’s not only from outside the planetary system which would be from the sun or reflected off of the moon or a planet, but also to emanate light from the galactic planes where you’ve got this older light that’s away from the light even of our galaxy. So that is light that would be at least three and a half billion years old. So you’re gathering light that’s older than our solar system. And it’s possible to gather that light, it takes a good bit of stars to do that, and a good look into older skies, away from the Milky Way. You can gather that light and physically have that in place so that it’s physically present to feel this old light. Now that’s a blended light, of course, but it’s also red-shifted, so it’s a different tone of light than we’re normally used to.’

roden-crator-interior-w In his hour-glass-like crater, Turrell is working with that tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, called light, which comes in many shades.
‘Certainly when people describe near death experiences, they use a vocabulary of light. And also when we have dreams, a lucid dream that’s in this color, that really is I think quite, quite astonishing. (..) We think of color as a thing that we’re receiving. And if you go into one of the sky spaces, you can see that it’s possible to change the color of the sky. Now, I obviously don’t change the color of the sky, but I changed the context of vision. This is very similar to simultaneous contrast, where you see a yellow dot on a blue field, versus the yellow dot on a red field. Same yellow dot will be seen as two different colors. … So there isn’t something out there that we perceive, we are actually creating this vision, and that we are responsible for it is something we’re rather unaware of.’

Built in 1963, the 1000-feet spherical reflector of the Arecibo Observatory performs red-shift surveys. The reflector consists of perforated aluminum panels, focusing incoming radio waves on to movable antenna structures 550-feet above the reflector’s surface.Currently a grand-scale sky survey managed by Cornell University is in search for yet-undiscovered pulsars or ultra-fast spinning neutron stars. Radio pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit a lighthouse-like beam of radio waves that sweeps past the Earth as frequently as 600 times per second.

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Vasto Slipher was the first to discover galactic red-shifts around 1912. In the widely accepted cosmological model based on general relativity, redshift is mainly a result of the expansion of space: this means that the farther away a galaxy is from us, the more the space has expanded in the time since the light left that galaxy, so the more the wavelength of the light has been stretched, the more redshifted the light is, and the faster it appears to be moving away from us. The luminous point-like cores of quasars were the first “high-redshift” objects discovered before the improvement of telescopes allowed for the discovery of the Great Wall, a vast supercluster of galaxies over 500 million light-years wide which provides a dramatic example of a large-scale structure that redshift surveys can detect.
The largest observed redshift, corresponding to the greatest distance and furthest back in time, is that of the cosmic microwave background radiation; and it shows the state of the Universe about 13.7 billion years ago, and 379,000 years after the initial moments of the Big Bang.

‘I also want to say that the senses and gratification through the senses, while it can direct you toward the spiritual, is also something that will hold you from it fully. That’s the limits of art, and so I don’t think that art is terribly spiritual, but it’s something that can be along that way, be a gesture toward that,’ says Turrell about his art-work.
Meanwhile astronomers try to determine if the universe is expanding in an accelerated pace or if it is possible re-collapsing into a Big Crunch. I definitely want to visit both places!

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Tale of Pandora’s Tears

by Claudia Dias on July 14, 2009

Karl Fritsch and his jewelry is layered of tales, tales which are intertwined with history and sagas:

Pandora’s Tears: A sealed copy of the Diamond Sutra was found around 1906 by Sir Aurel Stein in the Magao Cave along the Silk Road near Dunhuang, China. It was a large block-printed roll dated from AD 868 and proved to be the oldest known example of a printed book. This copy of the popular Buddhist work The Diamond Sutra is now in possession of the British Library.

‘From the Diamond Sutra came the prophecy that was called “Diamond of transcendental wisdom”, since its teaching, as sharp-witted as a diamond sword, would cut through all worldly illusions, and as such could enlighten beholders on what was real and everlasting …
As an example of spiritual perfection the Korean Seon monk Gihwa (1376-1433AD) layered a handful of precious stones on a silver ring, held together by his pure force of meditation, mental power and prayers; just as the Diamond Sutra instructed. When he passed away the monks of his cloister glued the stones together with the power of rice dumplings (extracted from lotus roots, cooked with honey and turned into a caramelized pastry). They then kept it in a special wood shrine.’

pandoras-tears Since then this ring, called Pandora’s Tears has had a spell and caused a chain of bad-luck for all its owners. It cast its spell on Karl when he got his hands on the stones and again made a ring out of it, till he too passed it on as a gift to his book publisher. He too was not spared the curse and had to eventually auction it off in Mumbai to pay his medical bills. No one knows who owns it now…. But soon after, Karl won the long awaited, prestigious Françoise van den Bosch Award!

‘Fritsch manages to give a new and original twist to materials, techniques, conventions and ultimately to his own profession. His rings are made of gold, but it is dull; they are studded variously with gemstones or with glitzy pieces of glass; even finger marks serve as a form of decoration, as do what appear to be loose heaps of minuscule clay balls. Fritsch’s trademark is the way he plays with clichés and breaks down stereotypes. The results can be truly spectacular.

rebusta-w ‘The King’s Ring: Once upon a time there was a powerful king, who owned everything his heart could desire. But this King was unsatisfied with his power and all his wealth. He was afflicted with a strange restlessness and unexplainably longed for something which would fulfill following conditions: It should sadden him, when he would be happy - and should placate him when he would be sad. (..) One day the wise men had found the answer, when they stepped in front of the king, he asked them for their efforts’ outcome. They handed him a ring. And this magic ring had following engraving: “This too, will pass”.
13th century Chinese saying
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Not so old Chinese saying:
who wants to be happy for one day, should drink.
who wants to be happy for a week, should slaughter a pig.
who wants to be happy for a year, should get married.
who wants to be happy for ever, should become a gardener.
who wants to be happy once in a while, should wear a ring by Karl Fritsch.

I am one of those latter described but I wear my ring on a daily basis.

Glass Wear @ Museum of Arts & Design, New York (July 15 - Sept. 20, 2009)
Karl Fritsch and Lisa Walker @ Gallery Inform Jewellery in New Zealand (July 14- August 9, 2009);
Karl Fritsch @ Salon 94, New York (April 2010)
Please refer to the galleries for inquiries and prices. Pictures are courtesy of artist and several galleries.

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Collecting ZERO

by Claudia Dias on July 13, 2009

At the end of 2008 I saw at Sperone Westwater, a New York City gallery, a museum-like show called “Zero in New York“. It was a survey of works created between 1957 and 1966 by members of the Zero group, the most famous member being Yves Klein. Zero was a progressive art movement that revolutionized Post-War art and led to the formation of the Post-War Avant-Garde. I am sure that this show was a key-exhibit for New York, since shortly thereafter Gagosian opened another museum-quality retrospective on the Italian member Manzoni. To reach this level of a Zero show, it is hard to avoid to include works from the vast private collection of Gerhard and Anneliese Lenz (Lenz Schönberg Collection).

The Zero movement was initiated around 1958 by two Düsseldorf-based artists, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene and developed a collaborative relationship between groups of artists in Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland. In describing the meaning and significance of the name “Zero”, Otto Piene wrote:
‘From the beginning we looked upon the term [Zero] not as an expression of nihilism – or as a dada-like gag, but as a word indicating a zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning as the count-down when rockets take off – ZERO is the incommensurable zone in which the old state turns into the new.’

As I found out the ‘Lenz Schönberg Collection’ started acquiring works in 1958 and count now 50 artists of mostly Zero in their collection of 600 works. ‘After the war the artists wanted to do something completely new. We found that interesting. (..) ‘ says Anneliese Lenz.

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‘At some point, my husband ended up in an Evening-exhibition by Otto Piene in Düsseldorf and was horrified, devastated. He said that he would not be able to visit a museum again for several years. Then came the first painting by Jef Verheyen. My husband identified himself so much with the painting that he said “this is it”. (..) My husband had never read anything about the period, and simply collected works according to his gut feeling. Even the feeling for quality is completely intuitive. He did not let anyone else tell him what to buy.’

Gerhard and Anneliese Lenz built in Tyrol “Hof Schoenberg” a home for themselves and their collection, where they displayed fire-paintings and blue, red and gold large monochromes by Yves Klein, nail-paintings by Guenter Ueckers, punctured metal sheets and canvases by Lucio Fontana and many others.
‘A private collection that has been shown twelve times in Europe is not a very common, or rather, is a very rare event.(..) We would like to live with our art. Therefore it should not be hung in a museum that we have to visit in order to see our collection. In the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, my husband said that he could imagine setting up his bed and his desk there, and living there. That has happened in the past. Whenever our works have been displayed, we have gone to visit our “children” ‘.

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‘We were not collectors at the beginning. As Yves Klein once said, suddenly you realise that you are a painter. And one day we realised that we were collectors. Today, due to the economic boom, the word “collector” now has negative overtones; today you do not really want to be known as a collector.’

Zero artists aimed to banish any trace of a personal style and instead bring elements of the non-art world into their work. Informed by new materials and technologies, and incorporating elements of light, fire, and water, Zero was characterized by an idealistic spirit of collaboration in pursuit of new concepts of light, movement, and energy. Working in an environment without galleries and contemporary art spaces, these artists came together to exhibit their work in a series of one-evening-only exhibitions, often staged in their studios. Manifestos were often published in association with the shows, such as “Zero 1” (1958), “Zero 2” (1958), and “Zero 3” (1961).

armando_tinguely-w1 German “Zero”: Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Gunther Uecker.
Dutch “Nul”: Henk Peeters, Jan Schoonhoven, Armando and Jan Henderikse.
Italy: Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani and Nanda Vigo.
France: Arman, Francois Morellet and Yves Klein.
Switzerland: Daniel Spoerri, Christian Megert and kinetic sculptures by Jean Tinguely.

“Zero in New York” (1957-1966)
Please refer to the gallery for inquiries, catalog and prices. Photographs courtesy of the gallery.

Sperone Westwater
415 West 13 Street, New York, NY 10014, Tel + 1 212 999 7337

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