Is Robert Pincus a real person?
On Saturday the U-T San Diego editorialized on the impending removal of a public artwork from the San Diego waterfront. The editorial begins with a full paragraph quoting former U-T art critic Robert Pincus on his response to the artwork in question. It then states the following: “These criticisms discount the undeniable reality that, from...
A Painting by Anita Storck
John Baldessari, Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Anita Storck (1969) If a sign painter could paint my texts, why not ask somebody to paint a picture according to my indications? Every year my father and I used to visit county fairs. Despite the fact that he loved looking at tractors and farm equipment and I...
Épater La Jeunesse
Like other art museums The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles hosts an annual gala event, with the goal of extracting surplus wealth from donors. The time-honored quid pro quo in this transaction is entertainment, and MOCA’s newly-acquired director Jeffrey Deitch has proven himself a master of pushing the notion toward the poles of art...
Occupy San Diego Tomorrow!
I recently came across the below excerpt from a talk given by Noam Chomsky in which he mentions the current state of affairs of the UC system and its’ systematic dismantling through deliberate policy decisions from once being the best public higher education system in the world into a system that more closely resembles Ivy League...
Into the Temple of Art
OF TIME AND SPACE, ART’S ASSUMPTION INTO THE MARKETPLACE AND WERNER HERZOG’S CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS It is the Monday night after the close of Art San Diego 2011 contemporary art fair and time to reflect on my pilgrimage to the ad hoc temple of art at the Hilton Bay Front. Four days of initiation...
The Designated Voyeur
The following images are commercial advertisements from mainstream publications (both print and online). The three exceptions — a 16th-century painting, vintage comic strip panel, and contemporary pornograph — are from art/performance web sites and John Berger’s classic Ways of Seeing. The images share a common image schema, and the schema itself begs several questions...
Artists’ Drugs
A good hearty meal, all in one pill that can be carried in a vest pocket, is the dream of scientists of today, according to Hugh S. Cummings, surgeon general of the public health service. (Rock Valley Bee, August 17, 1923) Whereas the visual arts of the past were strictly material (stone, canvas, paper, pigment),...
Defining what a city needs
What does a city need? That is the question the curators of the Summer Salon Series at the San Diego Museum of Art are asking this season. Fundamentally a city needs a sense of place and a population able to harmonize with the characteristics that are imposed by geography, culture and politics. However, from these...
Where’s the Dignity in Labor?
In the sense that I have continued to dwell on the “Dignity of Labor,” I would say that it was a success. Featuring work by artists Brian Zimmerman and John Dillemuth installed amongst SDMA’s collections and spaces, a screening of the documentary Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class and a live performance by...
Social Sculpture
Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate is arguably the most successful public artwork in the United States today. It draws the same number of annual visitors as the Statue of Liberty and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, yet derives its appeal solely through aesthetic pleasure not historical content. In short, it’s a people magnet. Accounts of the work...
Art, Buddhism and X-Ray Vision
Two monks sat meditating in the woods. Suddenly one called out to the other with a laugh, “They call that a tree!” Since first reading Emerson’s essay on Transcendentalism in high school, I have been interested in Eastern philosophy and meditation. Back then I thought the object of meditation was to make my body float,...
Trolley Dancing
Trolley Dances is authentic homegrown San Diego culture: an annual event of site-specific dances linked together by the city’s light rail system. Like San Diego’s other indigenous art forms — surfing, sailing, scuba — Trolley Dances is site-specific in a larger sense by happening mostly outdoors, and in environments far less organized and more dynamic...