October 3, 2006
Two from Texte zur Kunst
The German art magazine Texte zur Kunst has recently increased its English-language content and its web presence. Here are excerpts from two pieces in the September issue.
First, Sam Lewitt reviews "Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne" at the ICA Philadelphia:
[Curator Bennett] Simpson endeavors to locate the spirit of resistance to market forces in Cologne's hey day, but like the ideological ambiguity of Kippenberger's imperative, there is a haziness as to the modality of his search: is the exhibition thematic or about social milieu? If either or some combination of both, then what is the specificity of "Cologne" in relation to the present, and further, what is the specificity of the present to the mythical after-image of Cologne in the 80s and 90s?This ambiguity is codified rather than resolved by the inclusion of works by several artists and artist groups that had no direct contact with Cologne; The "Out" of the exhibition title extends to a space-time precariously constellated between direct influence and a posited spirit of practice. Simpson's sensitivity to the pitfalls of his endeavor is clear in his catalogue essay where he states that "MYOL" was: "predicated on a belief that historical reception is both ongoing and contradictory, a product of desires that are political and intellectual as well as libidinal and economic." As viewers navigate "MYOL"'s four successive rooms, this complex characterization of historical reception at times loses distinctiveness as a specifically historical phenomenon as it is put to the curatorial test.
Second, Rosalind E. Krauss reviews "Los Angeles 1955–1985" at the Centre Pompidou:
What is also invisible is the rivalry between Los Angeles and New York resulting not only in a group of very ambitious galleries such as Ferus, Ace and Dwan, but also of the rival art magazine Artforum, determined to wrest the grip of the historical account of the avant-garde from the East Coast critical establishment. The brilliant editorship of Philip Leider propelled Artforum to the front of critical discourse and reinforced the prescience of the L.A. dealers such as Irving Blum for their choices, which included the exhibition of Warhol's "Campbell Soup Cans" at Ferus in 1962, or of Yves Klein's blue monochromes at Dwan in 1961. The wealth of Los Angeles could also support ambitious museums of advanced art, whose talented curators supported the art scene as well. These were Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum and Maurice Tuchman at the L.A. County Museum of Contemporary Art (the site of the important "Art and Technology" exhibition).New York could boast of none of this. Its art magazines, such as Art News, dealt in belle-lettristic gush, rather than close analysis. Its schools were still in thrall to the effects of Abstract Expressionism. Its only advantages came in the form of the artists' housing and studios available in the spacious downtown lofts of SoHo, and the galleries these spawned. The other was the presence of Clement Greenberg, whose precise, spare prose focused the formal features of the works he discussed and produced the historical groupings that gave those features meaning.
Because the Texte zur Kunst website uses frames, both of the review links take you to pages that only contain the text of the review; to access the magazine's homepage, click the link at the top of the entry.