Posted in BLATHER & DRIVEL on 09/29/2011 10:55 pm by admin
One of the ongoing conversations I’ve had with technologists (ie: web 2.? developers), curators, and collectors concerns the increasing value of curation (ie: content filtration.) Google does it. Bing apparently does it. So do my friends, Kevin, Ben, and Noah, who are occasionally kind enough to point me towards music that I should know about, but don’t. I do it, too. (You do it. We all do it. I just did it and I’m ready to do it again.)
Enter: my map of this weekend’s art fairs in Los Angeles. Woo, is there a LOT of art that’s going to be shown. Art Platform, PULSE LA, the Brewery Art Walk, and Beyond Eden. I am going to try to make it to at least two of these events. (I am also going to go to the Edouard and Luvena Vysekal show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.) Reviewing the offering, you can see that further curation may be necessary. Put simply, we live in a world of too much stuff.
Enter: Pinterest. This is a very cool new piece of software that allows you to “pin” things to your virtual “cork board” and share it with an undeserving world. See, for example, my mate’s Pinterest Board. I see huge possibilities in this idea. You could become a freelance curator of Pez Dispensers or vintage Saabs. You could also forgo buying things in favor of putting them into a virtual space where you can stare at them all starry-eyed.
Finally, a little help in becoming a curator of Eames stuff. Remember friends, good curators have both knowledge and taste. You should either educate yourself to where you have both or find a friend who already has them.
Posted in BLATHER & DRIVEL, PROJECTS on 09/29/2011 02:30 am by admin
LATELY, I have been much more involved with the mid to late nineteenth century than I can ever remember being. First, there was my attempt to develop a more thorough understanding of the context in which Lockwood de Forest developed. The Gallery was kind enough to buy The Landscape of Belief, Like Breath on Glass, and A History of American Tonalism 1880-1920, which I must confess that I haven’t yet read. This last oversight owes to a recent gift from designer Linda Chase of The Biedermeir Book, an incredibly engaging number that lets me indulge in my not-that-secret love of furniture.
SOMETIMES, I wonder whether I am anything other than a weather vane for the winds of the coming zeitgeist. Has anyone else noticed that the steampunk aesthetic also fetishizes the period? Moreover, has anyone noticed the new Pip Hop (aka Chap Hop)? Finally, could the Gallery’s recent acquisition of the Estate of Leon Dabo be any more perfectly timed for all of this? Any steampunk people want a lovely painting for your parlor? Just checking…
Finally, there is this whole PACIFIC STANDARD TIME project to go over. Yes, I did just spend nine years mastering the history of modern art in California (and LA, in particular). Yes, I did notice the multi-million dollar, Getty Funded, sixty-plus museum exhibition foofaraw devoted to the subject I have spent much of my career promoting. (See our latest exhibition here.) What can I say? I am ALMOST NEVER happy with my successes. This is pretty much a grand slam, which is why I am now moving on to the nineteenth century. Soon, I plan to find out what that whole Indie music scene thing was about.
Posted in BLATHER & DRIVEL on 08/12/2011 04:50 pm by admin
Last night, the Gallery got a few choice seats at the Music Academy of the West’s annual fundraiser at the Fess Parker Hotel. It was such an exclusive event. We were among the few, the chosen, the four-hundred ninety-seven…
The music was fantastic and the crowd responded enthusiastically with generous gifts to the Academy. (Frank Goss put the Master in Master of Ceremonies as auctioneer of five special items.) It was a grand, grand evening. One party-goer said that it was, “the last great hurrah of the season.” (Won’t Santa Barbarans be interested to find out that we have more than one season?)
Here, we see the effects of wine on hand-held photography. Susan is so glamorous. I am so shiny. We are both so blurry. That’s how you know that people were having fun. There are never any sharp, well-lit pictures at good parties…
Posted in BLATHER & DRIVEL on 08/11/2011 06:46 pm by admin
In September, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art will open Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910–12, and my sources tell me that the exhibition will make use of apps. I can’t remember if they will be using iPads or iPods, but there will be a “digital” component to the didactic part of the exhibition.
At the Tim Burton exhibition, they didn’t even put up very many tags. (How could they? There were 700 plus objects) They handed out customized iPod Touches. Each object had its own app.
To check into Cubism apps, I downloaded Fracture. The image above was made with the app. It features a beautiful 70s car. Cubism? There’s an app for that, too. On the one hand, it is wonderful that people can explore the formal side of Cubism in an intuitive way. On the other hand, yet another wonderous human idea has been commoditized and sold for less than a dollar.
Pertinent to that, have you used the new iPad in the gallery? What do you think? Is it applicable?
Posted in BLATHER & DRIVEL, SG EXHIBITIONS on 08/06/2011 07:34 pm by admin
(Okay, it HAS been a year - or, at all events, ALMOST a year, which is just a year plus or minus some quibbling.)
Bless me reader, for I have sinned. It has been almost a year since my last digression.
I was mortified to learn that there are people who FOLLOW my blog. They were mild-mannered in their complaints, but I took their concerns to heart. I urged them to consider that there HAD been updates (Did they visit this page or this one? This page has been updated since October of 2010.), but dumb excuses fell on deaf years.
SO. A new update. This picture was taken just two days ago. I am the arty-looking type in the black suit standing close to a friend of mine at the opening of my new LA’s RISEN exhibition.
I have so much to add, but I’ll need material for next June. Until then, keep the faith. Keep the lights on. Keep on truckin’. And, if you don’t wanna, keep it to yourself.
