Posts: Bay Area

Written while watching the 1 AM broadcast:

Miserable, miserable ever more miserable depiction of the world we live in and not just art. The only one that appears to be above it all is host China Chow who seems to have a particularly good heroin connection. Nao continues to brave it out despite now knowing the true meaning of pearls before swine. She continues to be as lionhearted as she is photogenic but has been reduced to the David Letterman commentator. And Mrs.Howell actually might not win because she looks as if she is going to pass away.

1:15 am - The premise of the episode is that each artist is to create a book cover for a Penguin Publishing book (a rather obscure achievement that I know of no one who would want to conquer). Each artist is given a classic book title. Reading said book is optional.

1:30 am - It all seems to, again, come down to approval by idiots. Yes the work is weak but the “critics” are weaker. And what the fuck is wrong with Jerry Saltz and why is “minimalism and “conceptualism” dirty words all of a sudden? Did the the 70s and the 80s pass the dear boy by?

1:45 am - Mrs Howell is sent to her death panel. Everybody says goodbye with hugs.

Next week may be a bit more provocative: each artist will be challenged to do something shocking. Apply quotation marks where you wish. The guest artist will be Andres Serrano who usually livens up the party.

- Dale Hoyt [Thursday, June 24th, 2010]

“I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it now”
—John Cage

Prediction: Mrs Howell will win
Suggestion: Sararh Jessica Parker should be gelded

love,
Dale

- Dale Hoyt [Friday, June 18th, 2010]

“Reality”, Vladimir Nabokov said “is the one word that is meaningless without quotation marks”.

My friends call me Gary Gilmore because anyone can have my eyes. But I never watch reality TV because, as well as finding it sinister, cynical and sloppy, most of the shows are written by scab writers. Anyone with any pro-union and Writers Guild support should not be seduced by Reality TV’s meager mouth-breather titillations. It kills me even to use the term “Reality TV” and not only because of its obvious shortcomings. But here I go (as I suspect many Stretcher readers will) committing to watching the entire ten episodes of “Work Of Art: The Next Great Artist” and day after blogging about each of those installments, starting now:

The group of contestants are as withering and whimpering as any freshman interdisciplinary class I’ve ever taught. If they were my class I’d kill them. The tight focus of on the power grid is a little blinding. The one thing that they got is attention to the fact WE HARDLY NEED TO be reminded of—a small, powerful (not to be mention arbitrary) group tells us what pictures we’ll look at. The art world is all about approval. Life and art isn’t fair.

But it’s going to be a great show. And not only because Nao Bustamante is the star (or “villain” as Vanity Fair says). It’s television which means it never ends. Tune again next week. Same Bat channel…

- Dale Hoyt [Friday, June 11th, 2010]

I thought the paper Rigo used for his new unmanned aircraft ink drawings was unusual, but I was too involved with the power of the text and imagery to pursue that tip. As always, Rigo’s work in the current show at Gallery Paule Anglim is timely, relevant, and important in that it addresses issues avoided by the mainstream in a manner that is accessible while managing to be fresh. Through May 1, 2010.

Rigo 23
Predator / Avenger / 10,000 Feet, 2010
ink on recycled elephant dung paper
31” x 22”

- Cheryl Meeker [Thursday, April 22nd, 2010]

Artforum’s current San Francisco Critic’s Picks hit the sweet spot with four strong entries. Glen Helfand’s writing on Libby Black at Marx and Zavaterro touches on the shift in Black’s work with her recent move to Berkeley that reflects the neighborhood, and further personal exploration in her work. His piece on the last show at Jack Hanley Gallery fittingly focuses on Hanley’s important contribution to the art world, both here and internationally, with a special focus on Bay Area artists. Helfand’s choice of Ewan Gibbs at SFMOMA is also well placed, as he deconstructs the mysterious drawings played out with our standard tourist locales. Finally, Franklin Melendez writes about Miriam Böhm’s photography at Ratio 3, a lovely show of works that he says "evoke the doldrums of office cubicles…" and are "like Dutch still lifes reimagined in a UPS store." Böhm’s show at Ratio 3 ends April 24.

- Cheryl Meeker [Saturday, April 17th, 2010]

When he met David Lynch after a screening of Eraserhead (in anticipation of producing The Elephant Man), Mel Brooks was shocked to come face to face with the then baby-faced efant terrible. He recalled “I could swear I was going meet some stooped over Bavarian coot with Borsch dribbling from his mouth.” You might expect the same after watching the fiercely misanthropic minimalist animation of Don Hertzfeldt but you’d encounter not only the youngest maker to be given the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award, but an artist whose work has been in commercial distribution since he was he was in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Real pencil drawings (not the pseudo-“squiggle vision” that you see applied as an after effect in many cartoons) distinguish Hertzfeldt from what is likely the last generation of animators to bother to take pencil to paper. The Academy Award nominated short filmmaker uses a cast of characters of near stick figures with a Charles Addams/Edward Gory inspired morbidity, peppered with visual non-sequiturs and screeching, nonsensical dialog to create sucker punch, hit and run one-liners that have been shown all over American cable, International film festivals and beyond.

His onstage interview and screening of his new absurdist film Life, Death and Very Large Utensils will take place at 7:30 pm, Friday, April 23 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.

 

- Dale Hoyt [Tuesday, April 13th, 2010]

From the editors