The Artist's Statement - the Dentistry of the Art World

All of us who work in this crazy art business have had to write an artist's statement from time to time. We all hate having to do it... but often there is no way out. I've just had to write two statements and it was a chore. Not because I dislike writing, I just don't like writing about my work. For a start I don't think anybody reads what I've written and why should they... after all the work is not so much about what I'm trying to say, but about what the reader of the work takes out of it. And that has nothing to do with any tortured statement I was forced to write. At least I managed to avoid talking about memory and desire, two conceptual hooks that seem to crop up in far too many artist's statements. 

The worst artist's statements are not written by artist's at all but by their gallerist. These literary triumphs often enter the realm of stream of consciousness art speak mumbo-jumbo that attempts to elevate some poor daubers decorative rubbish to high art. 

With my head swimming in artist's statement land I came across a piece written by Jennifer Liese on the site PAPER MONUMENT. Here the artist's statement is put under the microscope and it's a good read. You can go there HERE. 

By way of a sample:  Of course, artists’ words have long been met with skepticism, not least by artists themselves. Matisse, despite his own eloquence, famously declared that “a painter ought to have his tongue cut out.” Pollock played dumb. Warhol mastered obfuscation. 

There’s no denying the sorry state of the statement, and we all know it. The ubiquitous request “Please include an artist statement …” inspires cringes and groans among artists. An artist friend of mine called artist statements “the dentistry of the art world,” ... one of several statement satires on YouTube features a pair of animated pig-artists translating pretentious claims of artist statements into the banal truth. Likewise, art professionals are tired of reading these often hyperbolic, embarrassing, or at best monotonous texts. Artist Nina Katchadourian, former curator of the Drawing Center’s Viewing Program, once told me that of the hundreds of artist statements she had read that year, only one really stood out. A gallery owner interviewed in Art/Work emphatically states that he never reads artist statements. What could be more deflating? You slave all week over your nourishing stew and no one even bothers to taste it.

Now if you are really stuck for a compelling artist's statement you can go to artybollocks generator and whip up a statement on demand. Here is one they wrote for me: 
My work explores the relationship between postmodern discourse and counter-terrorism.With influences as diverse as Blake and Andy Warhol, new combinations are synthesised from both mundane and transcendant textures. Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by the theoretical limits of relationships. What starts out as hope soon becomes debased into a manifesto of temptation, leaving only a sense of failing and the dawn of a new beginning. As wavering forms become reconfigured through boundaried and academic practice, the viewer is left with a clue to the inaccuracies of our existence. 

And finally for some real inspiration you can go to YouTube and watch a 4 minute vid by writer, critic and educator Joerg Colberg. He nails it!!! You can go there HERE. 

Now get writing! 

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life at The Morgan Library and Museum NYC

Susan Sontag, 1975,

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life is showing at The Morgan Library and Museum from January 26 until May 20. The exhibition presents one hundred and forty photographs by this enormously important and influential artist. Drawn from the extensive holdings of his work at the Morgan and from nine other collections, the show and its catalog follow Hujar from his beginnings in the mid-1950s to his central role in the East Village art scene three decades later. 

The catalogue features full-page reproductions of all 160 works in the exhibition, essays by curator Joel Smith, Philip Gefter, and Steve Turtell, and the first fully researched chronology, exhibition history, and bibliography to be published on Hujar. 

The life and art of Peter Hujar (1934–1987) were rooted in downtown New York. Private by nature, combative in manner, well-read, and widely connected, Hujar inhabited a world of avant-garde dance, music, art, and drag performance. His mature career paralleled the public unfolding of gay life between the Stonewall uprising in 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. In his loft studio in the East Village, Hujar focused on those who followed their creative instincts and shunned mainstream success. He made, in his words, “uncomplicated, direct photographs of complicated and difficult subjects,” immortalizing moments, individuals, and subcultures passing at the speed of life. 

Boy on Raft, 1978

Susan Meiselas, Meditations, at Jeu de Paume, Paris

Portrait de Susan Meiselas, Monimbo, Nicaragua

Septembre 1978 (detail) © Alain Dejean Sygma

Running until May 20, Jeu de Paume presents a retrospective devoted to the American documentary photographer Susan Meiselas. The exhibition brings together a selection of works from the 1970s to the present day.

 A member of Magnum Photos since 1976, Susan Meiselas questions documentary practice. She became known through her work in conflict zones of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s in particular due to the strength of her colour photographs. Covering many subjects and countries, from war to human rights issues and from cultural identity to the sex industry, Meiselas uses photography, film, video and sometimes archive material, as she relentlessly explores and develops narratives integrating the participation of her subjects in her works. The exhibition highlights Susan Meiselas’ unique personal as well as geopolitical approach, showing how she moves through time and conflict and how she constantly questions the photographic process and her role as witness.

The Guardian's Sean O'Hagan presents a perceptive overview of the exhibition...
When Meiselas became a Magnum photographer in 1976, she was one of five women. Today there are 13. In all its attempts to reinvent itself of late, it remains a predominantly male institution. “I can’t deny that,” she says. “And I’ve seen the comings and goings of women who have been involved. It’s a complicated issue. Do I want to say, ‘I’m a woman photographer and that’s what validates my view on the world?’ Really? Is that it? But, on the other hand, I do speak from a different perspective. I do have a different approach. Part of my role is to be a mediator, someone who brings people together.” She pauses. “People often ask me, ‘Why do you do it?’ Perhaps the more important question is, ‘What are they getting from it?’” You can read O'Hagan's full piece HERE.

You can go to Susan Meiselas's website HERE and Jeu de Paume HERE. 

Muchachos attendant la riposte de la Garde nationale, Matagalpa, Nicaragua

1978 Susan Meiselas © Susan Meiselas/ Magnum Photos

Fouille de toutes les personnes voyageant en voiture, en camion, en bus ou à pied, Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua

1978 Susan Meiselas © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Roger Deakins - Beauty in Simplicity

British cinematographer Roger Deakins is best known for his work on the films of the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve. He is without doubt acknowledged as the pre-eminent cinematographer of our time. 

Roger Deakins was born in Torquay in the English county of Devon. While growing up in Torquay, Deakins spent most of his time focused on painting, his primary interest. He later enrolled in the Bath School of Art and Design where he studied graphic design. While studying in Bath, he discovered his love of photography and this led to his being hired to create a photographic documentary of Torquay his home town. About a year later, Deakins enrolled in the National Film and Television School in Buckinghamshire. He has never looked back...

This short YouTube documentary by Blake Keys explores some of Deakins primary visual language and is will worth a look. Even if you never stray from still photography there is much to learn from Roger Deakins artistry. You can watch the video HERE.

Roger Deakins: All I’ve ever wanted to do is take stills of people, or take documentaries about people, and try to express to an audience how somebody lives next door. You know what I mean? Just how similar we all are as individuals. And...If reviewers don't mention your work, it's probably better than if they do.

Jeff Mermelstein - the extraordinary out of the banal

Barbara Tannenbaum, Curator of Photography, at the Cleveland Museum of Art writes her take on "rule breakers" on the Don't Take Pictures web magazine. Tannenbaum zeros in on her pet hate - street photography. She says - I never want to see another street photograph. Especially one of New York. Yes, street photography captures an ever-changing spectacle, with new fashion trends and hairdos. But human behaviour and emotion, which are at the core of street images, remain stubbornly consistent. After decades of looking at people traversing the streets of New York in person and in photographs, what is there left to surprise me? 

I share Barbara Tannenbaum's dislike of street photography. It's not so much the name but the images that so many street photographers come up with. I've seen the same images time and time again, often silly stupid juxtapositions that are supposed to be funny or ironic. Whatever... these are what I call "one trick pony pictures" they mostly present nothing, say nothing and are like cotton candy at the County Fair one suck and it's gone. Further, so many "street photographers" still think it's 1972 and their photographs look like it too. Boring as fuck! 

When it comes to street photography Tennenbaum sites New Yorker Jeff Mermelstein as her "rule breaker". She says this -  there is plenty to surprise me when New York’s streets and their denizens are seen through the lens of Jeff Mermelstein. His images caught my eye, my heart, and my funnybone when I came across them on Instagram. 

Tennenbaum is right, Mermelstein does it his way, strange, bizarre and somewhat crazy. These are images of today, they reflect the ease and superficiality of social media connection. The rush of the every day, time passing in an instant. Click and like. Many of his instagram pictures are tight shots of iphone screens...private messages are revealed and we wonder at it all. Jeff Mermelstein is one of my favourite photographers, his pictures are a litmus test of today... Jeff's pictures do for the street what Bill Cunninghams's pictures did for fashion. 

You can read Barbara Tannenbaum's complete piece on Don't Take Pictures HERE. And this YouTube clip is well worth a look - Jeff Mermelstein tells it like it is HERE. 

Simon Baker to head the MEP, Paris

British curator Simon Baker, former director of photography at Tate Modern London, has been appointed director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. Baker succeeds Jean-Luc Monterosso, director and founder of the institution, whose mandate finishes on March 31, 2018. Monterosso has run the Maison Européenne de la Photographie since it opened in 1996 and was also the founder in 1978, with Henry Chapier, Francis Balagna and Marcel Landowski, from the Paris Audiovisual Association that foreshadowed the creation of the MEP.

Simon Baker has a Ph.D. in art history, and is a graduate of the University College of London (UCL). In 2009 Baker joined the Tate London Photography and Art Department as a curator. In 2015, he was appointed chief photography curator with the primary mission of developing a strategy of acquisition, conservation and exposure.

Baker has curated numerous Tate exhibitions, with photographers including Boris Mikhailov, Sirkka-Liisa Kontinen, Guy Bourdin, Yutaka Takanashi, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and recently exhibitions such as Salt and Silver (2015), Nick Waplington / Alexander McQueen: Working Progress (2015) or Performing for the camera and The radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection (2016). Simon Baker has also been Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Nottingham (2004-2009). He is the author of numerous publications on the history of art and photography.

You can read the complete story by Jonas Cuenin on The Eye of Photography HERE. 

The MEP Paris

Nan Goldin - artist and activist

Nan Goldin - Self-Portrait 1st Time on Oxy, Berlin 2014

Nan Goldin takes a stand on the scourge of opioid addiction. 

The Guardian reports: Her most recent drug experience was very different to the old days, when she became one of the world’s most famous art photographers, capturing herself and those around her getting high, having sex and hanging out in downtrodden homes in the 70s and 80s.

This second experience began with a doctor in Berlin, where she has a second home. In 2014, Goldin was prescribed the potent narcotic OxyContin for painful tendonitis in her left wrist. She promptly became addicted, despite taking the pills exactly as prescribed.

“The first time I got a ‘scrip it was 40 milligrams and it was too strong for me; they made me nauseated and dulled. By the end, I was on 450mg a day,” she says. Eventually she was crushing and snorting them. When, back in New York, doctors refused to supply her any more, she turned to the black market, and to cheaper hard street drugs whenever she ran out of money.

Emerging from a rehab facility in Massachusetts last March, she began reading about OxyContin and realised the branded medicine was prime suspect in the opioid crisis that has ripped through the US over the past 20 years. The epidemic has killed more than 200,000 people so far. Now she is declaring war against members of the secretive US family behind the invention of OxyContin, and behind the ingenious marketing strategy that was used to convince doctors it was harmless and patients that they needed it.

With charitable foundations on both sides of the Atlantic, the Sacklers, who are based in New York, have donated millions to the arts and sponsored faculties at Yale and many other universities. In each case, the family’s name is displayed prominently as the benefactor. Forbes listed the collective estimated worth of the 20 core family members at $14bn (£10bn) in 2015, partly derived from $35bn in sales revenue from OxyContin between 1995 and 2015. 

But few know their wealth comes from Purdue Pharma, a private Connecticut company the family developed and wholly owns. In 1995, the company revolutionised the prescription painkiller market with the invention of OxyContin, a drug that is a legal, concentrated, chemical version of morphine or heroin. It was designed to be safe; when it first came to market, its slow-release formula was unique. After winning government approval it was hailed as a medical breakthrough, which Goldin now refers to as “magical thinking”.

Goldin is now hurrying through a modern activist learning curve. “First I wanted to go out with signs and picket a Sackler wing of something, because that’s what we did in the Vietnam war and that’s what we did with Act Up in the Aids crisis,” she says. But she recently discovered social media – “I went on Instagram for the first time three weeks ago,” she says – and realised that petitions are online these days, so has set about organising one, which will be presented in due course to those Sackler family members on Purdue Pharma’s board of directors. She is also now on Twitter, so there is a hashtag campaign, #ShameOnSackler, while her campaign overall is called Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (Pain).

You can read the full story in The Guardian HERE and the New York Times HERE.

Nan Goldin - Dope on my rug, New York, 2016. 

Mitch Epstein - Rocks and Clouds

Mitch Epstein's wonderful new bookwork Rocks and Clouds has arrived from Steidl. Following his impressive photobook, New York Arbor published in 2013, Rocks and Clouds further heightens the rewarding experience of close observation. The book celebrates the mystery and wonder that surrounds us all, that is if we can be bothered to look. Potentially this is cliche territory however these quietly intelligent pictures turn the ordinary everyday (rocks, clouds) into the extraordinary and make for a sublime meditative experience.

The viewer is left wondering at our place in the scheme of things. Mankind's insignificance. Notions of impermanence come to mind where the city slips into nothingness against the limitless sky. We are reminded that all of mans feeble constructs will eventually fall to dust and that in our world it's the simple profundities of nature that endure. This work shatters ones sense of certainty. What we take to be familiar becomes the unfamiliar and we are asked to re-evaluate what we take for granted and where is truth.

Rocks and Clouds is published by Steidl and as usual it's a stunning production, an object in it's own right. 160 pages, 70 images,  four colour process,  clothbound in slipcase 29.5 x 36 cm.

Steidl writes: In his new series, Mitch Epstein investigates the meaning of time by photographing rocks that last millions of years and clouds that evaporate before our eyes. These large-format black-and-white pictures examine society’s complex relationship to nature, a theme Epstein has explored in previous work, including his acclaimed tree pictures (New York Arbor, 2013). The way the sky and ground can mirror one another intrigued ancient Chinese painters, as well as modern earthwork artists and the Surrealists, all of whom inspired this project. Epstein draws attention to the sculptural quality of New York City’s clouds, bedrock, and architecture—which, at its most elemental, is made from rock. Cloud wedges engulf a cargo ship, buildings recall constructivist paintings, and erratics are imposing elders in the middle of a park or sidewalk. Rocks and Clouds suggests society’s inability to control time and tame nature. While it seems impossible to make a fresh picture of New York, Epstein gives us a surprising portrait of it.

You can go to Mitch Epstein's website HERE and Steidl HERE.

Pelham Bay Park, Bronx 2014

Clouds #89, New York City 2015

Clouds #94, New York City 2015

Clouds #18, New York City 2014

Clouds #33, New York City 2014

Brian Griffin - adventurous then, adventurous now

Brian Griffin

When in Paris last November for Paris Photo I had the pleasure on a couple of occasions to meet and talk with photographer Brian Griffin. Brian was in town to present his new bookwork POP, an amazing 392 page overview of his years photographing the music industry,

British publisher GOST say this: ‘POP’ is a comprehensive exploration of the music photography of Brian Griffin shot for album covers, single sleeves, posters and press. The 350 pages of this new book are illustrated over 160 record covers from more than 100 bands and musicians including many which are previously unpublished – including Ian Dury, The Clash, Depeche Mode, Echo And The Bunnymen, Iggy Pop, Kate Bush, The Specials, Elvis Costello and many more. 

Brian Griffin first began photographing the music world for STIFF records in the late 1970s and soon became the predominant visual chronicler of New Wave, Post-Punk and the New Romantics. Working from his studio in Rotherhithe, often on low budgets and before the age of photo-shop, Griffin’s technical naivety resulted in major visual invention. How these photographs were executed and the techniques which were employed or invented, is explained in a Q&A between Griffin and the author Terry Rawlings. Punctuating the photographs and album artwork, this conversation provides illuminating and highly-personal behind-the-scenes insights to this distinct creative period in music and visual history. 

Another section of the book contains portraits of important figures in the music industry such as the Beatles producer George Martin, Brian Eno, John Peel and Daniel Miller and portraits of the people that worked alongside Brian including stylists and builders of his light machines. Paul Gorman, author of Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles, has written an additional essay on the close working and personal relationship between graphic artist Barney Bubbles and Griffin. There is also a description of what the area of Rotherhithe in South East London, where Brian had his studio, was like in the 1980s. 

Brian Griffin was born in Birmingham in 1948 and grew up in the Black Country. From the age of 16 he worked in a factory making conveyers, then as a nuclear pipework engineering estimator until the age of 21, when he went to study photography at Manchester Polytechnic. After graduation, Griffin moved to London with the intent of becoming a fashion photographer. It was here that he met Roland Schenk, the charismatic art director on Management Today, with whom Griffin continued working until the mid 1980s. 

Griffin is recognised as one of the most eminent British photographers of the seventies and eighties and as part of the “British Photographers of the Thatcher Years” with Martin Parr, Paul Graham, Graham Smith, Jo Spence and Victor Burgin, with whom he has exhibited in many exhibitions. In 1991, Griffin walked away from photography and began a career as a film-maker in advertising and the music industry. Throughout his career, over 20 monographs of Griffin’s work have been published, his work has been the subject of over 50 international solo exhibitions and is held in collections institutions including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Arts Council of Great Britain, London; the British Council, London; the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Museum Folkwang, Essen; the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; the Art Museum Reykjavik, Iceland; the Mast Foundation, Bologna; and the Museu da Imagem, Braga, Portugal. 

If you are still not convinced check our this 16 minute video, HERE. Produced by Portugesse art channel Canal 180. Brian tells it like is is.

You can go to the GOST books website HERE, where you can buy a copy of POP. And go to Brian Griffin's website HERE. Well worth checking out!

Iggy Pop - soldier 08

Brian May

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Dazzle

Han Solo  02

POP - the book

The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation moves to the Marais

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1972 © Martine Franck/Magnum Photos

In the autumn of 2018, the Foundation created by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martine Franck and their daughter Mélanie Cartier-Bresson will be opening a new space at 79 rue des Archives in the Marais district in Paris. The new premises, a former converted garage, will offer better options for exhibitions and conservation. At street level there will be more than double the floor space and more flexible layout, at street level. This together with improved archive storage and conservation conditions, and better facilities for researchers.

The space designed by architects from the Novo agency will make the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation part of the cultural densification of the Marais, Beaubourg and Les Halles areas, undoubtedly unparalleled in Europe.

The primary mission of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation is preserving the heritage of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck, and hosting and programming exhibitions of other photographers or artists using photography. The Prix Henri Cartier-Bresson, backed by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, is designed to support the creativity so precious to its founders.

With the expanded floor area, it will now be possible to offer a more active insight into contemporary experimentation, while pursuing the exploration of the history of the medium. The values of rigour, curiosity and creative freedom that characterised Henri Cartier-Bresson from his youth will continue to be the driving force behind exhibition choices.

An educational programme and international initiatives to promote the wider distribution of the two Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck funds and quality photography will be developed in the coming years.

To develop this project, François Hébel, former director of Magnum Photos and Les Rencontres d’Arles, founder of Foto/Industria Bologne and Le Mois de la photo du Grand Paris in particular, will be joining the Foundation’s team as managing director from 2 November 2017.

Agnès Sire, who has been responsible for the Foundation’s impressive development since it began, wanted to be released from its daily operation to devote herself to its artistic direction and curating exhibitions.

This duo has already had many opportunities to work together on cultural projects produced at Magnum in the 90s, for the group as well as for photographers individually.

You can go to The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation website HERE.

John Baldessari - making art look like it's not about skill

John Baldessari

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s The Artist Project is a 2015 online series, supported by a Phaidon book, in which the museum gave artists an opportunity to respond to their encyclopedic collection.

I was drawn to John Baldessari's comments on Philip Guston’s 1973 painting, Stationary Figure.

It's macabre humour. It's a laugh that's also overshadowed by the thought of the brevity of life. A poetic mind would think that death is absurd and funny. There are elements of time: the light and the clock and the short duration of the cigarette. There's more light inside the room where he is than there is outside. It's like a prison cell.  He's almost in bondage with the bedclothes. - you might even call it a straightjacket. It's nightmarish, in some ways - being constrained and trapped in time. 

The painting is tough to like. I think that the average viewer is going to say. "Yeh my kid can do that." And that would be dismissive. I think it's brilliant: making art look like it's not about skill. He knew he was going to ruffle feathers and irritate people. I absolutely identify with his courage in doing that. It's one of the things I've always emphasised: don't be a virtuoso, and don't be a show-off.

I'll add to that - get up in the morning, go to your studio, make the work, chop the wood. 

You can see a video of Baldessari's comments HERE and go to The Mets The Artist Project HERE.

Philip Guston - Stationary Figure 1973

the-traveller - Taking the Long View

Löwenburger Hof - posted 31 October 2017

 In my last post I talked about the need for those of us working in art to take the long view, maintaining a practice which like wine in the cellar matures and should get better and build over time. 

Jens Sundheim and Bernhard Reuss are the-traveller and their collaborative practice is now in its 17 year. In every sense this is an art practise that takes the long view. Below is what they say about themselves...

Jens speaks: You can watch me.

For 16 years now I have been following the traces of public webcams: cameras installed in public or private spheres that automatically record images and spread them via internet.

I research where they are located, travel there, and get myself photographed. I was in New York and Moscow, London, Las Vegas and Singapore. I went to more than 700 webcams in 20 countries – so far.
In New York, I was taken in police custody after standing around in front of a traffic webcam, and was later interrogated by the FBI.

Once I arrive at a webcam location, I place myself in front of the camera. As »The Traveller«, I stare back into the cam. Same clothes, same pose, every time. Dark jacket and trousers, bright shirt and a shoulder bag. You can recognize me in every image. You can watch me.

Caught by the camera, I start a second, virtual journey. I travel to every web-connected device around the globe, visible to everyone who browses the corresponding website. I contact a photographer to save the transmitted image, before it is replaced by a newer one, and vanishes.

People notice. Sometimes, at least. They wonder what I am doing. Stare in the same direction as I do, trying to see what I see. Sometimes they ask me about it. Some got angry. But mostly they just seem puzzled for an instant, and carry on.

A lot of questions may arise. Who sets up these automated cameras, and why? What do they show? Are people aware of them? Who looks at their images? Does someone need these images? Does the presence of a camera alters a site? What constitutes a photographic image in terms of authorship or quality?

»The Traveller« project examines borders of private and public grounds, global spread of imagery between irrelevance, information and surveillance, and the aesthetics involved.

Among many other places, The Traveller encountered the legendary coffee machine world's first webcam was pointed at, the ESA European Space Agency main control room, a huge cactus observed by four cameras, numerous front gardens and backyards, and the inside of a New York police station cell - arrested for strange behaviour. 

Jens Sundheim
Born 1970 in Dortmund, Germany. Studied information science, then photography at University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund, University of Plymouth in Exeter, England and HAW Hamburg. Based in Dortmund.  www.jens-sundheim.de 

Bernhard Reuss
Born 1966 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Studied photography at University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Dortmund. Numerous works with the camera obscura. Since 2006 engaged in a photography art space. Lives and works in Wiesbaden, Germany. 

You can go to the-traveller website HERE.

Bauakademie Oberösterreich - posted 29 September 2017