Comments on: Venetian Red Salutes the Decade

By: Dorsey Boatwright

Dorsey Boatwright — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:55:30 +0000

Congratulations! An excellent Kings’ Day present.

By: Christine Cariati

Christine Cariati — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:34:34 +0000

Mimi
As you know, I completely agree about the Met, you can never spend enough time there. Predictably, after I compiled my list I realized I had left so many things out—and many of them were shows, particularly small shows, that I saw at the Met. Like the 18th century French and English drawings they had up a few years ago. And something that I know blew you away too—the renovated Greek and Roman wing. I wish I were sitting there right now!
Looking forward to your 2010 show of paintings inspired by your week at the Met.
Christine

By: mimi jensen

mimi jensen — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:51:22 +0000

I too wish I had kept a journal of exhibitions and my reactions to them. Reading Venetian Red’s review of the decade is not only a window into your tastes and reactions, Christine and Liz, but it also stimulates my memory. In the last few minutes several shows have appeared in my mind’s eye that I had set aside — the quietude of Ruth Asawa’s weavings in contrast to the sheer volume and sometimes garishness of the Chihuly show. The highlight of my decade was spending a week at the Met in 2008 — every day from 9-5. In addition to satisfying a dream it left me hungering for more. Here at home in San Francisco, Kentridge was new to me — what a revelation! Thank you Venetian Red for your introductions and inspirations.

By: Christine Cariati

Christine Cariati — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:43:01 +0000

Susan
Thanks for joining the conversation on Venetian Red this past year, we’re happy to have your readership and your input.
Thanks also for drawing our attention to the Botero. Here’s to another year of looking at, thinking about and making art.

By: Susan Bostrom-Wong

Susan Bostrom-Wong — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:24:15 +0000

Christine and Liz,
You add an important and valuable voice to the art world with your wonderful writing and unique reviews. I hope you know that your blog is ART! I loved your list for the decade. Several of your picks were also on my top 10, William Kentridge, Gees Bend and the Diane Arbus show. I would add the show of Fernado Botero’s Abu Ghraib paintings at Cal Berkeley, 2007, as a historical note of the dark underbelly of the past decade. You have inspired me to keep an art show/exhibition journal for the next decade, not just trusting it to memory.
Keep up the good work of sharing your vision with those of us who love art in all forms.

By: Liz Hager

Liz Hager — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:36:10 +0000

Tom,
Your wonderful post (http://telos.tv/blog/?p=1036), which applies Barthes principals to the trompe l’oeil show at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (oh if only I could get there before it closes!), opened my eyes to the useful structure you describe above. While not claiming to be any kind of Barthes afficionado, I would agree with you that the Venetian Red “studium” is indeed all of human culture as seen through the lens of art. Pretty broad, yes. But within that field of study, each post tries to pull out the “punctum”—i.e. what about the work pierced our artistic hearts…

Onward into a new decade full of art!

By: Liz Hager

Liz Hager — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:17:32 +0000

Thanks for posting this comment. It occurred to me that a lot of people might have the same question and, for those of you who don’t know, there is a way to get an email in your inbox, every time a new post is published.

First make sure you are on the Blog’s “homepage.” If you are unsure, click on the Venetian Red header, just to make sure the page you are looking at has a column on the right-hand side. (At the top of this column, you should see “Search” box…) Scroll down this column until you see the “Subscribe by” section just below the “Readability Tip.” Click on “Subscribe by email” and follow directions from there. Be sure to check your email inbox (sometimes it ends up in junk mail…) for “activation email” after you have completed above process.

Voila, you should have announcement in your inbox whenever a Venetian Red post is published.

By: Leslie Lowinger

Leslie Lowinger — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:52:39 +0000

I like your blog, and I wish I always got an email notice when a new addition comes out.
Leslie

By: Christine Cariati

Christine Cariati — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:40:05 +0000

Tom
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. It was really interesting to look back and figure out what it was about those shows that made them linger in the mind, what was so important, so vital, that they reached out, in some cases over quite a few years, and still grabbed me. Another whole layer to looking back is that you realize that in some ways what you took away from the work then has changed, grown, been transformed with the passage of time. So looking back is far from an exercise in nostalgia, it brings you right up against where you are now, how all this stuff you see and digest has brought you to where you are this minute. And, of course, we all hope that some of this growth and transformation shows itself in our own work, right?
Christine

By: Thomas Ball

Thomas Ball — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:30:21 +0000

Dear Liz,
Thank you for the wonderful review of your well-informed and so interesting picks of the best in so many different kinds of art in the past decade. I had not seen many of these and am so glad to have them on the radar now thanks to you and Christine and Venetian Red.

Your posts chronicle not only the art of the decade but also your travels. Some of my favorite museums are listed in your review (like the Frick and the V&A). I like the pendulum swing in your choices from old to new. It seems to me looking at one certainly enhances your experience of the other. I’m shocked when I find people stuck in one time frame or the other. It seems to me there is a richer experience when you can enjoy art from any time frame. (All art was contemporary when it was made – wasn’t it?)

I have been reading a bit of the French critic Roland Barthes and he has a marvelous structure which he applies to photography but these ideas, for me, really informed your tour of the decade. Barthes talks about two ideas the “studium” and the “punctum”. In the context of your fascinating post I guess that all the art you saw in the past ten years would be the “studium” in Barthes construct. I don’t know for sure but I think “studium” can be loosely translated from the latin as “field of study.” What you put down are the pieces and ideas which pierced your heart. Barthes calls this the “punctum.” Your descriptions of these works further define the “punctum”. You and Christine talk about how these works changed you! I think this is the most exciting reason to travel to these treasure troves and explore.

Thank you for the highlights from your decade long adventure.

Tom

By: John Field

John Field — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:59:13 +0000

Liz: Thanks for the decade of art experiences —- not so much about what you saw which was interesting but real thanks for what you felt in the seeing.

By: Marya Ursin

Marya Ursin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:55:23 +0000

Greetings, and thanks, for this stretch from Sultan to Sargent, Duer to Arbus, walking along the wall into memory for my Berlin of earliness in which I lived before the wall, and returned, shocked, during the wall, and see now a symbolic double line of stone, as though to keep an edge to our song of being. I look forward to the present and now the year to come! namaste

By: Liz Hager

Liz Hager — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:24:15 +0000

John, This is how rumors get started! Many of the New York entries are Christine's; rest assured that you and the missus will be the first to know whenever we next get to New York. A major artcrawl in order. I have "7 Days" on the reading list; in the meantime, you may also be interested in The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art a behind the scenes economic look at artists and the artworld. Happy twenty ten!

By: John Boone

John Boone — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:09:07 +0000

Liz – Thanks for opening all those windows. You mean you have been slipping in and out of NYC without saying boo. Next time, give a holler, we could see a few things. Meanwhile, you have offered an inspired format for the telling of the art tale. I really enjoyed it. A few minutes ago I finished reading, “Seven Days in the Art World,” you may have fun with it.

By: Margaret Ryall

Margaret Ryall — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:26:36 +0000

oops! It should read the reverse. The real thing of course is always the most spectacular. The only disappointment I ever when I saw the real thing was Georgia O’Keeffe. I just assumed her surfaces were thick and juicy and they are sparse and dry. Just the images themselves are juicy!

By: George Rabasa

George Rabasa — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:27:12 +0000

Thank you for the tour! Your eclectic review of these images kick-started my day. May the new decade hold such treasures in waiting for your discovery.

By: ginna

ginna — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:40:02 +0000

HI LIZ – THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES — SOME ARE MY FAVES TOO –LARRY SULTAN IS ONE OF MY IDOLS BUT I DO LIKE THE SERIES ABOUT HIS FAMILY BETTER–SO INTIMATE & INTENSE & INTRUSIVE WITH BEAUTIFUL SUBTLE COLOR BALANCES- DONE WITH SUCH OBSESSION & LOVE–I WAS STUNNED TO HEAR THAT HE DIED A FEW WEEKS AGO –NPR RAN AN INTERVIEW WITH HIM WHICH I HEARD TWICE–SO WONDERFUL FOR ME TO HEAR HIS THOUGHTS ON PHOTOGRAPHY–HOPE YOU HEARD IT TOO-ALSO IMPRESSED BY YR THOUGHTS OF THE BERLIN WALL & ALSO OF YR TRAVELS–SO MANY TIMES TO THE DRAWING CENTER & THE FRICK-WHY HAVEN’T WE SEEN YOU? AND THE SARGENT –ALWAYS MY FAVORITE WITH HIS LUSCIOUS FABRIC DEPICTION & GORGEOUS COMPOSTIONS WHICH I HAVE ALLUDED TO SHALL WE SAY IN MY PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY — THE DURER SELF PORTRAIT-SO RICH RICH RICH WITH DETAIL AS YOU SAY -I HOPE YOU MAKE A BOOK OUT OF ALL THIS YOU ARE SUCH GOOD WRITERS–PERHAPS YOU SHOULD BE WRITING MORE ABOUT ART? PLEASE MAKE A BOOK OF THIS & THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THESE IMAGES TO ME IN THE NEW YEAR HAPPY 2010 GINNA

By: Christine Cariati

Christine Cariati — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:25:01 +0000

You are absolutely right, Liz, once you start thinking about it, the images keep coming. The Andy Goldsworthy in the Presidio, that wild little 15th century Annunciation at the Legion of Honor with that crazy hit of Carthamus Pink, Cy Twombly at Gagosian, the renovated Greek and Roman wing at the Met, the Mark Rothko at SFMoMA that you’ve seen a million times that one day just stopped you in your tracks, the history of wallpaper show at the Cooper Hewitt. On and on. Here’s to the next decade looking at art!

By: martina

martina — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:53:06 +0000

Truly fascinating, and so interesting to see what you had to say about each of the pieces you portrayed. I especially liked the Mauerweg. I think the tension of the parallel lines, and spatial arrangement of the flagstone blocks– where there used to be a wall– are absolutely arresting. It is interesting that you saw it as art, and it seemed sort of like the way some architectural or big geographical pieces are formed, but more interesting, as it arose organically from the people who lived there, and who had remembered all that the wall meant in their lives and the history of their country. I thought of Frost’s line (“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”) and how amazing it is to see green grass on both sides of its absence! Also, it was wonderful to see the autumn leaf blown into a perfect position on it.
I would like to say that the photo in “Diary of a Filmmaker” blog by Tom Ball is still gripping me as one of the most interesting things I have seen lately. A daughter has inserted herself into old photos from her mother’s life. It is riveting, and worth seeing. I believe her name is Ricci, and it is from a show he saw recently in Florence Italy. Another visually riveting moment for me was seeing Frank Gehry standing on a sailboat between two moving sails, against a blue sky, in the film Tom made. The walls he has built, with their beauty undulating almost like cloth, made perfect sense, after seeing that.
And the posting you had about the big willow-basket woven creations in the formal trees in San Francisco were echoed when I was last at Esalen– there is a big nest next to the main hall, which a person could climb up to and sit in. I didn’t know if the same artist built it, but I got the feeling of being in a space like a deer in a thicket, hidden away and also protected. I enjoyed a little of the same feeling in front of the Mission San Antonio, near Salinas, which is a pristince California mission. In front, there is a wattle-and grass hut such as the native California tribes people lived in. It would be a perfect child’s play house. The feel of play was quite strong in these places! Thanks for a stimulating exhibit!

By: Ann Benett

Ann Benett — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:58:29 +0000

Thanks Liz. I enjoyed the “tour”. Hope you are doing well. Happy New Year! Ann and Sandy