June 27, 2006
This just in
A few magazines that have arrived in the last week:
FRIEZE #100
The anniversary issue is suitably thick, and certainly entertains with its long interviews and surveys. I wish, however, that the magazine had taken the opportunity to flex its editorial muscle and produce a number of long, insightful feature articles—something one can easily find in almost any other issue. The middle of the magazine consists of interviews with Tom Wolfe, Pierre Huyghe, Yvonne Rainer, and David Lamelas; a roundtable on "What criteria do we use to judge art?"; an updated version of Studio International's 1976 survey of art magazines; and, my favorite, a survey of the literary influences of thirty-five artists, writers, and curators that will send me to my bookshelves for weeks to come. Also of note, to me at least, is the first feature I've seen on artist Goshka Macuga.
032C #11
"Europe Endless," the eleventh issue of this terminally hip Berlin-based magazine, features its usual mix of art, style, politics, and fashion, including contributions from artist Matt Saunders (author of Artforum's Berlin "On the Ground" report last December); a huge full-color foldout history of Europe since WWII by Rem Koolhaas's research unit, AMO; a consideration of the Berlin Biennale by Niklas Maak; and a photo portfolio by Matthew Barney. British architect David Adjaye graces the cover. A must-read for fans of Purple.
PARKETT #76
The newest issue of this Zurich- and New York-based magazine is literally just in; I haven't had time to peruse all of its contents. The essays on Chinese filmmaker Yang Fudong look promising, and Johanna Burton's essay on Rachel Harrison usefully posits the artist's sculptures as "lava flows" in a short-but-sweet text. The other featured artists, with three articles apiece, are Julie Mehretu and Lucy McKenzie; Bill Arning and Matthias Haldemann contribute the regular "Cumulus" columns, from America and Europe respectively; and Canadian artist Steven Shearer presents a portfolio insert titled "Guys."
AFTERALL #13
This London- and Los Angeles-based biannual journal could most quickly be desscribed as a more academically inclined Parkett, and features ten essays on five artists, plus two contextualizing essays, in each issue. Lucky number thirteen includes my friend and colleague Michael Ned Holte writing about the Center for Land Use Interpretation, along with nine other writers considering CLUI, Sora Kim, Yayoi Kusama, Aïda Ruilova, and Taro Shinoda. It's rare for publications that do not specialize in Asian art to devote this much editorial space to contemporary Asian artists. Editor Thomas Lawson's forward, which discusses the Centre Pompidou's exhibition "Los Angeles 1955-1985" from the LA point of view, is also worth reading, as it reminds readers that much Los Angeles art from the second half of the twentieth century did not look to the art world's metropolitan centers in New York and Europe for inspiration, but across the Pacific, and that the exhibition, like any city-specific visual-art survey, is necessarily incomplete.
VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW Vol. 82, No. 3
This magazine recently won two National Magazine Awards, and its summer issue features an all-star lineup of writers, including Charles Simic, Alice Munro, David Rieff, Marjane Satrapi, James Ellroy, and Tom Bissell. Simic and Rieff are two of three essayists considering "Serbia After Milosevic," and Munro contributes a short story on the occasion of a symposium about her work featuring ten other writers and a "literary history" of her work by by Marcela Valdes. Always worth reading.
This "magazine," the newest arrival in this roundup, was released on Friday night at a launch party on the Lower East Side. I couldn't make it due to other obligations, but a friend kindly agreed to pick up a copy on my behalf. I didn't want to cut into the blue tape that sealed the box containing this year's multiples and interviews, but when I did I was immediately greeted by three small, foam, cube-shaped SpongeBob SquarePants toys. Also inside are a bar of "Arctic Breeze"-scented soap; a postcard of a photograph by my friend Melanie Schiff; a fragrance sample by Lisa Kirk; posters by Anne Collier, Enrico David, and Jacob Kolding; prints by Lorenzo de Los Angeles III, Matthew Brannon, and Shannon Ebner; a unique print by Patrick Hill; a DVD by Ronnie Bass; and a CD of music by Robot, a band featuring Takuji Kogo and John Miller. All for $35. Need I say more?