At the Mary Boone Gallery (Chelsea) Francesco Clemente Portraits exhibit on Saturday, Francesco Clemente’s son Andrea Clemente (who is 23 and is an Adrian Grenier lookalike) said: ?€?I went to St. Anne?€™s and I played small forward on their basketball team. I always played really bad against Trinity. I got hit in the head a couple of times. I got hit in the mouth. I got my lip busted. Trinity was an evil little team. They weren?€™t tough. They were just aggressive. There were other players hurt and there were scuffles. Trinity was not a nice group of kids.?€?

The MOCA Fresh Auction is looking like a very cool event. I went to the preview – which is all this week at the Geffen Contemporary. A section of the museum is filled to the gills with art donated by artists and gallerists. The Saturday night auction will raise a bazillion dollars for the institution for sure. I have never attended this event before but my girlfriend’s gallery convinced her to donate a piece (which took some convincing as MOCA keeps 100% of the proceeds) and we are therefore getting comped, but I thought we oughtta go to the preview to see how things looked.

Her artwork looks great and the whole thing looks set to be a big-time art world bash. I saw a few collectors there, scoping things out, taking notes, walking so slowly they would stand in front of an artwork and talk about it and take copious notes. We breezed thru the thing in about forty minutes, a superficial look, but I got the feel for it and she got the satisfaction of knowing her work was on par or better, quality-wise, with the art on display.

We go out to Suehiro, have a nice lunch, and on the way back to the car I implore her to take another look. So this is closing in on a two hour window, now, and some of those collectors are STILL there, still taking note after note.

Like my father always said, don’t underestimate what some people will do to avoid paying retail.

F YOU’RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST (and you must be if you’re seeing this!), I want to know 28 things about you. I don’t care if we’ve never talked, never liked each other, or if we already know everything about each other. I really don’t. You are obviously on my f-list, so let me know with whom I’m friends!

1. Your Middle Name:
2. Age:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favourite Movie:
5. Favourite Song or Album:
6. Favourite Band/Artist:
7. Dirty or Clean:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:
9. Do we know each other outside of LJ?:
10. What’s your philosophy on life?:
11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?:
12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?:
13. What is your favourite memory of us?:
14. What is your favourite guilty pleasure?:
15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so forget all the ‘world peace etc’ malarky) - what are they?:
17. Can we get together and make a cake?:
18. Which country is your spiritual home?:
19. What is your big weakness?:
20. Do you think I’m a good person?:
21. What was your best/favourite subject at school?:
22. Describe your accent:
23. If you could change anything about me, would you?:
24. What do you wear to sleep?:
25. Trousers or skirts?:
26. Cigarettes or alcohol?:
27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?:
28. Will you repost this so i can fill it out for you?:

I went to the Beverly Hills Affaire in the Garden today. I was the judge for the Painting exhibits. The event is held twice a year in the Beverly Gardens Park in Downtown Beverly Hills, four blocks strong of artists in booths and food vendors.

The art is not exactly “cutting edge” by any stretch, but they make an effort to not allow cheesy things like giclee prints, so you get only stuff that someone works at. Quite a bit of it is craft in my estimation, not art, but maybe I am an art snob, right?

So anyway, there were fifty or so painting booths and I got there early and got the paperwork, the ballot and went about looking. It was easy to mark off the artists whose work held no appeal to me on an aesthetic level. There is a screening process to get into the event so I felt that I did not need to be open-minded to painting styles that I do not like. I looked, but it was a fait accompli for many painting displays. Every once in a while I would find something that was at least some combination of an approach to painting that I liked and a well-done artwork. Okay, those got a return trip. I had to pick a best-of-show, a 2nd, 3rd place and two Honorable mentions. There were some cash prizes for the artists, too.

Hopefully the prominent award ribbons assist the artists I liked in selling their paintings. Fortunately, a few of my friends were exhibiting, but in different categories, so there was no conflict there. My neighbor James Hill was setting up his sculpture booth early and I walked by and offered to get him a coffee. When I returned ten minutes later he had already sold a steel modernist piece. A four-figure art sale before the first sip of coffee is a pretty good way to start the day!

So yeah, during the day a few times I thought of the old punk song Beverly Hills/Century City/Everyone is nice and pretty/All the people look the same/don’t they know they’re so damn lame, but other than people having matching dogs (very weird trend, and prevalent among event-goers in an almost science fiction manner) it was kind of an ecelctic crowd. Rich, but eclectic.

from Issue #85
The Feminist Tide Has Come In. Let’s Go For a Swim
BY S.A. Du Tan

In 1983 the Temporary Contemporary opened with ?€?The First Show.?€? It featured only 7 women artists. When MOCA Grand Avenue opened, ?€?Individuals?€? was raided by the Guerilla Girls asking why Louise Bourgeois was one of the few female artists in that show. Nearly 25 years later, here is feminist art at the Geffen. L.A., the kick-off locale for this show, has a strong and continuous feminist art practice and history as evidenced by the Woman?€™s Building, the Feminist Art Program at CalArts and the work of many female California artists and the work Judy Chicago did here. WACK is a show to embrace and be inspired by. This real, died in the wool (some of it literally) feminism is so fun, intelligent, well made, daring, big, broad, poetic, violent, imaginative, sexy, irreverent, stunning, beautiful, (and more, as they say) you will wonder why anyone, was, (worse: is!), so afraid of the word. The perspective confirms the fact: it is great art. Be proud, postpostmodern fashion and market driven weakling! You are about to feel good, better, bigger and empowered. And you had forgotten how all of those feelings felt. Now walk in peace and remember which daddy is in power today in America, that there?€™s global warming outside, that corporate America is oversexualizing little girls, that many battles need to be fought continuously or all over again. Are you going to stand and be counted? Meaning, anyone? Learn of few lessons from your rocking, ass-kicking sisters, aunts, mothers and grandmothers. (Many of these artists have solid careers and are working today).

Warning: IT?€™S ART THAT MATTERS!
WACK! (a play on various women?€™s groups acronyms including Women?€™s Action Coalition) and onomatopoeically echoing the crack of whip in the air or the slamming of a rod on a flat surface is a courageous and ambitious exhibition curated by Connie Butler who spent 8 years researching art made by women artists in the 60s and 70s and pondering on its content, import and portent. It is an historical and documentary survey whose thesis is that feminist art practice constitutes the most important art historical happening in the second half of the 20th century and that many of its practices, attitudes and techniques (such as performance and the use of the artists/one?€™s own body) were seminal of many of today?€™s art practices. (Matthew Barney is cited as an example ?€” a donation to the museum or his purchase of any one of these works for donation to a museum would be an acceptable gesture).

Does the exhibition prove this thesis? Perhaps not entirely on its own. To be certain, many visits are necessary as well as a full read of the hefty catalog which features images of the entire show and additional visual documentation, 111 pages of individual artists?€™ bios (with selected bibliographies and exhibitions ?€“ brave research work though many artists were not consulted), and 11 essays by so many contributors. There is no separate bibliography. An index is also lacking, which makes referencing problematic. The jacket featuring a collage by Martha Rosler of 65 Playboy odalisques is the object of controversy among participating artists (including Rosler) and viewers. This illustrates the ever problematic issue of context (also is a feminist issue, of course) and issues of appropriation of images and appropriation of the body and its use(s), and modes of representation of the female body and sexuality (whose sex is it and who defines that?) and, of course, recuperation. Plenty to debate. There is a WACK subsite on the MOCA site with blog and links and audio, and a well stocked, comfortable reading room. Several visits to the Geffen have found it full of all kinds of people of all ages, many spontaneously engaging in conversation. Faith Wilding?€™s recreation of a performance ?€?Waiting With?€? (a poetic discussion of the nature of waiting dedicated to Beckett) filled the room all day long. Clearly, the exhibition seems to be hitting a nerve and is freeing up a need for expression and exchange.

The show is further amplified by and in concurrent lectures and seminars (at MOCA, the Getty, CalArts, UCLA and more) featuring curator Butler, artists and art historians and theorists (such as Lucy Lippard, Griselda Pollock, Amelia Jones) who will investigate its contents and propositions. Sadly, the opportunity for a symposium of artists was lost at the time of the opening which was attended by many artists from Europe, South America, and various U.S. loci, often coming together for the first time. Katharina Sieverding (Germany) noted that they could have exchanged views, talked about the past and their present work. Instead, there were two noisy walk throughs giving a number of the artists a few minutes to talk about theirs or another?€™s work. It was crazy fun with a mixed excited crowd.

LACK OF HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The exhibition documents with intelligence and care the fact that a feminist art revolution irrepressibly happened. This art movement and its productions are now on the gleaming pedestal of art history. However, surprisingly, there is a lack of historical context, general and feminist. Perhaps a timeline could have been drawn on a wall with historical events and feminist events. The 60?€™s were hot, explosive times of social and political upheaval and expression. The feminist movement was born in this atmosphere and it led its many battles for autonomy and equality and other causes. Remember Gloria Steinem, one of a number of new feminist writers, who went to work as a Playboy bunny and wrote about it? Contraception and abortion. Rebellion against patriarchy and its forms and modes of expression, the status quo. This was the battleground upon which art was made. I found only one work directly referencing this social turmoil: ?€?Vietnam Madonna?€? (1975) by Ann Newmarch with B&W photographs of Vietamese women and children.

MANY FEMINISMS
As the exhibition makes clear, there were different feminisms, battles and strategies. They occurred spontaneously through art making, or in collectives (see work by Kirsten Dufour), or in demonstrations or in solitude, often without knowledge of each other. Woman and women had become subject: subjects of being, subjects of making, subjects thinking, subjects creating, in their own subjectivity, and they looked at themselves from this viewpoint, and at art and the whole world. ?€?I?€? ?€“ such as ?€?how do I define myself?€? and ?€?I explore definitions of my female/feminine self, my femaleness/feminineness?€? and ?€?I explore the content and the act of defining my self, distancing my self from the male gaze and the entire (mostly Western) art historical tradition of art making in [appropriate] content and [acceptable] form(s).?€?

The quality of the works packs a punchy visuality. They run the gamut of modes of representation including sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, collage, performance (remainders of), theater, video, film, assemblage, installation. While they are grouped in 17 thematic sections: Gender Performance, Gendered Space, Body as Medium, Knowledge as Power, Collective Impulse, Social Sculpture, Silence and Noise, Speaking in Public, Making Art History, Taped and Measured, Autophotography, Female Sensibility, Pattern and Assemblage, Goddess, Body Trauma, Family Stories, Labor, many works belong to several groups and their ?€?classification?€? is not necessarily evident. The display across the floor is spacious and offers multiple and concurrent views of very different art practices. Magdalena Abakanowics?€™ sumptuous red twine labia (?€?Abakan?€? 1965, 15 ft x10ft) confront like an emblem and a shield. The artist then lived in a tiny apartment on the 10th floor and had no studio or money. She would stroll through the shipyards at night to collect discarded bits of twine. She wove and died the piece in sections. Abakanowicz is a heroic figure who has produced heroic art. She has a steel handshake and candid eyes and ?€?always has time to make art slowly.?€?

There are many anti-Penelopes. Black string regularly tied in tight knots was used by a bewildered but furiously focused Mimi Smith to map all architectural elements and appliances of her house where she was an artist-in-exile away from NY with two small children. Her ?€?Stairs?€? and ?€?Closed Door?€? (74/75) lead, transparently, nowhere. Black thread, an extension of the process of engraving, gradually ?€?scars?€? and smothers the fair face of German Annegret Soltau (76) into silence and powerlessness. Thinning black cord beats a rhythm between wooden needles of diminishing sizes on a wall, ending in a disjointed geometrical patchwork of household cloths by German Mary Bauermeister, obviously a charged selection of materials. She commented to the walkthrough audience that she her experience of several past lives as a men and women gave her a keen understanding of ?€?the difference between being a hunter and caring for others.?€? Both German artists also alluded to the climate in postwar Germany where they were fatherless and women rebuilt the cities, where poverty and self-reliance brought great meaning to daily life?€¦ Feminist art of the 60s and 70s is mostly based on experience, politics and feelings, convictions, and craft and skill, not conceptual art and theory which followed it. Even Mary Kelly notoriously famous Post Partum piece, so elegantly ordered with beautifully written and organized lines of text featured baby shit on diapers. Oh, the scandal that was, she says, it was totally unacceptable (in contrast, think: Manzoni, Merda d?€™Artista, 1961).

On the South American side of ?€?ordinary life,?€? Lygia Clark?€™s (Brazil) woven sculptures are all about encountering sensuality and play. Then there is Argentine Marta Minujin, who sports the stunning looks of a model (platinum bangs and leather pants), who recreates her ?€?73 installation of square room made of mattresses, a ?€?soft space?€? to change one?€™s perception.

RISKY, UNCERTAIN OUTCOMES
In many instances artists showed great personal and/or aesthetic courage, as they opposed and transgressed the canons of acceptable art forms and content, with risky and uncertain outcomes. In Cut Piece (?€™64) Yoko Ono allows men to cut her clothes to pieces, which ends in a near frenzy. Carolee Schneeman in ?€?Fuses?€? (?€™64) stands in the street bearing a box with arm holes allowing her breasts to be felt by anyone. In L.A. Suzan Lacy investigates prostitution by wandering around the city in disguise. English Cosey Fanni Tutti chooses to reclaim sexuality as represented in erotic and porn magazines. (In looking at her completely explicit magazine spreads of gaping cunts, I am not sure who won the battle.) There can be awkward viewing moments such as looking at Barbara Hammer lyrical video ?€?Multiple Orgasm?€? showing a finger caressing a clitoris over the backdrop of Southwestern landscape, just as a young male MOCA guard walks by.

Ana Mendieta?€™s moving photographs of her naked body flattened by a pane of glass (as ?€?live photographs?€?) and the ?€?remnant photographs?€? of a Joan Jonas performance where women hold full length mirrors in front of their body and mirror the audience in them, are also provocative. There are poetic moments to be found in the work of Belgian Lilly Dujourie (photos) and her better known compatriot Chantal Ackerman (film). (Some of French Agnes Varda?€™s films could have perhaps been included).

The depiction of penises usually was greeted with opposition by males and the art establishment: Sylvia Sleigh?€™s ?€?The Turkish Bath?€? painting of a group of male nudes (artists and critics, 1973) was greeted with shock. She simply wanted men to ?€?open their eyes to the way they were used to treating us.?€? In a series of photo-collages, Mary Beth Edelson attacked the patriarchy and sought to glorify women artists. Her ?€?Last Supper?€? is a remake of the Da Vinci with headshots of women artists replacing the apostles?€™ and a border of with pictures of as many female working artists as she knew and whose picture she could get a hold of (sometimes after arduous research and letter writing as many could not be found in the press of the time). It was shown at an art school and forcibly taken down because ?€?It is like putting a pig head on Christ.?€? (Georgia O?€™Keefe?€™s head, incidentally).

In London, the movement began at the Artists Union artist and Margaret Harrison was a founding member. The group soon attracted art historians (such as Griselda Pollock) and theoreticians but after?€™77, there was a de facto split between artists and academics. Ms. Harrison fully trusts the process of art making as generative of change in aeshetics, object making and content. For her, content comes from within the work and there is no need to try to accommodate theory which can and does follow its own trajectory. On view are several of her ?€™71 drawings of comic book-style female and male characters with enhanced sexual characteristic and mixed metaphors. At the time, her portrait of Hugh Hefner as a Playboy bunny with rabbit ears was in a London exhibit. Staff from the London Playboy office came to see the show. When it was taken down, curiously, the Hefner portrait was missing. (Note: the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation is one of the supporters of the WACK show.) Feisty Alexis Hunter arrived in London from New Zealand in the early 70s. From a working class background, she was interested in the rituals of male adornment. She produced a series of photographs of tattooed men which were poorly received. Undaunted, she took a further step in objectifying the male body and taking active control of the gaze and created a series of B&W paintings based on the photographs, mainly focused on groins and torsos with heavy belt buckles and tattooed arms.

Women?€™s exploration of their own sexuality on their own terms was a recurrent theme in the shows, events and performances taking place at the Woman?€™s Building in L.A. This fertile environment allowed for a ?€?prise de conscience?€? (becoming actively aware) of sexual difference and its possible modes of expression, including lesbian ones.

And that?­s just some of it: 119 artists are represented.?  Most of the works have lost none of their power, so many look ?¬new?® and exciting, their message clear and challenging.?  Feminist art is always about the environment we live in, all of us, as persons and members of society.?  It is the femine condition that reflects society?€™s hierarchies and values, its intelligence and compassion, or lack thereof.?  The feminist revolution was and is for all of us.? 

So if you have Five Minutes to spare, here is a Link to Me on TeeVee recently, a very fun project about artists in Los Angeles.