More from NYC: MoMA

Got back from another stint in New York but haven't had a chance to process the photos 'til now. Since I was there earlier this year, I had the luxury of spending a little more time in fewer places. I spent 2 days at MoMA and could have spent much more – it's literally awesome.

The knock-out show was, of course, the Cindy Sherman retrospective. She's spent a lifetime re-creating in loving detail our most ambitious creations, ourselves, transforming herself into half of humanity while calling into question every means by which we prop up our sense of reality as well as our own identities – while selectively leavening her tableaux with flaws that point toward the eerie whatever-it-is that lies beneath. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed; but MoMA has lots of visuals on their website.

I also enjoyed a series of vintage video classics by Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Richard Serra & Nancy Holt, et al., across from the main elevators on the ground floor; videos by Noam Toran, also near the elevators, I think maybe on the second floor?; an exhibition called The Shaping of New Visions, which included wonderful videos by Paul Strand & Charles Sheeler (hokily captioned but gorgeously shot) and Man Ray, as well as three series of politically-conscious photographic works, by Harrell Fletcher, Martha Rosler, and Lee Friedlander, among other things; the Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language exhibition (where photography was unfortunately again not allowed; but the "catalogue" was cheap). And I liked the premise of the Foreclosed, Rehousing the American Dream show – that the real estate collapse could be regarded as an opportunity to re-think housing, rather than leaving it to be exploited by disaster capitalists – tho' I found the show slightly disappointing in other ways.

My own photos of some of these works are here; apologies for moiré on tv screens and other defects; these photos help me as a record, at least, and can perhaps serve others in the same way.

Excavated Ant Megalopolis

Can't resist re-blogging this.



Via Boing Boing (thanks, Ben!)

The Dymaxion

First built in 1934, Buckminster Fuller's aerodynamically efficient vehicle could transport 11 passengers at 36 mpg.

Norman Foster, who worked with Fuller before the latter's death and recently rebuilt the car, writes, “ . . . Fuller drew attention to the ecological issues of today when he referred to ‘spaceship earth’ and the fragility of the planet; as such, his work and observations are even more important now than they were in his lifetime.”

More photos and info at gizmag here and here (thanks, Ben!)

Dallas's Death Star

Er, I mean the new Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House - AT&T Performing Arts Center. (Not that I don't like it.) (Phone photos by Ben.)

Conflux (NYC)

NYC's psychogeographic answer to Burning Man. From the 2009 festival:



More at Conflux.

The Maxxi Roma

Inside the new Italian museum of 21st century art, designed by architect Zaha Hadid. More at The New York Times.

The Architecture of the Rachofsky House

This last weekend, I attended two lectures on architecture at the Rachofsky House. The house was between exhibitions, with no art installed inside; so the house itself was the "star."

The first lecture, by Director Allan Schwartzman, was on how architects for art institutions sometimes seem to be trying, perhaps unconsciously, to upstage the art. The second lecture was by Thomas Phifer, who designed the Rachofsky House while with Richard Meier's group, concerning the house and some projects he's worked on since. (Unfortunately, I had to miss Charissa Terranova's talk on "The Utopian Drives of Conceptual Architecture: Avant-Garde Architecture in the 1960s and Architectural Theory.")

I enjoyed the talks I saw very much. Schwartzman discussed various aspects of the house and collecting for it, such as the fact that there are no large interior walls for larger art works with views from an adequate distance that aren't impinged upon by various disjunctions, pillars, ceilings, railings, etc., and he also discussed other art institutional buildings that "don't want" art.

There's no shortage of large walls outside, however.

Once you get past the initial wall that greets you as you pull into the driveway, you're confronted with the nearly-solid wall of the front of the house. Phifer compared it to the facade of a Venetian palace and made reference to a separation between public and private space. I'll grant that; it's also shaped like an elongated ping-pong paddle, with rather few, relatively small chinks. It does not invite me in – indeed, without a greeter, one might have trouble finding the door. Rather, it bounces me back across an unusually large, flat, green lawn, divided into quadrants by Robert Irwin's brilliant land art installation. (No one mentioned the resemblance of the property to a game of table tennis.)

In back of the house, another prominent wall abuts a long staircase from the second floor to the back yard garden. If you're on the staircase, the wall segregates you from both the garden and the largest gathering space within the house, grouping you instead with not much besides the tallest hedge I've ever seen (another wall).

I understand Mr. Rachofsky originally planned to reside in the house even while it also served as a public building; the concern Phifer mentioned to separate public and private spaces may well have given rise to these walls.

One part of the house that feels surprisingly welcoming for both art and people is the glass-encased, north-side landing half-way between the first and second floor. Interestingly, although the visual chosen for the Rachofsky House info page on the house itself shows the ping-pong table view, the visual for the House as an art institution foregrounds this northern landing (here).

UPDATE: Additional details and thoughts about these talks are set out in the comments to this post.

Contour 2009: Historiographic Art in Architecturally Historic Locations

"Vincent Meessen’s new film ‘Vita Nova’ takes as its point of departure a cover of the French magazine Paris-Match, from 1955. . . . The artist subsequently embarks on a search for Diouf, the child soldier, weaving an elaborate narrative that brings together phantoms from the colonial past, the writings of Roland Barthes – who wrote about this particular image – and issues that centre on the representation and re-writing of history, its repressed narratives, as well as the spectral nature of photography."

The video is being shown as part of Contour 2009, the 4th Biennial of the Moving Image in Mechelen, Belgium, which "presents artists working with film, video and installation in special locations in the historical inner city . . . ."

The show, called "Hidden in Remembrance is the Silent Memory of Our Future," is curated by Katerina Gregos and includes commissioned works by 18 artists; the website's extremely helpful.

Honeycomb Skyscraper Has No Internal Support

To open in Beijing in 2012. Cool interiors, too; see Gizmodo (thanks, Ben!)

Ghosts of Failed Investments: Half-Built Resort Hotels in the Sinai

More cool ghost-resort pics and info at BLDGBLOG. (Thanks, Ben!)

We dream of Jeannie (nice slide show).