Summer 2006 in Artforum
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In Chans practice, a pop aesthetic at once winsome and brutal is brought to bear on the peculiar urgencies of our time. The point, then, is not to delimit the aesthetic and the political but rather to relish the productive possibilities of their mutual contamination.–Scott Rothkopf on Paul Chan
Plus: Allan Kaprow: Life Like Art. The death of this un-artist last spring is all the more impropitious given the powerful resonance of his work within todays vital considerations of performance and spectatorship, aesthetics and politics, and private experience in an age of spectacularized commerce. Art historians Judith Rodenbeck and Jeff Kelley, as well as artists Lucas Samaras, Suzanne Lacy, and Paul McCarthy assess the legacy of this towering cultural figure.
By its very nature, Allans work was about not being confined by the need to make an object and then put it in a cubicle. This opens up possibilities. Out beyond the cubicle is an endless range.–Paul McCarthy on Allan Kaprow
And: Chris Marker: The Revenge of the Eye. Curator and critic Bill Horrigan introduces a never-before-published selection of photographs by the iconic filmmaker, made using video frame grabs from his documentation of last months May Day marches and demonstrations against the French government.
Marker has with fidelity immersed himself in the riverrun of human interaction, even if only to conclude, as he observes in Le joli mai and here confirms, that if we dissect this many-faced crowd, we find that it is made up of the sum of solitudes.–Bill Horrigan on Chris Markers The Revenge of the Eye.
Also: Terry Eagleton discusses Slavoj Zizeks magnum opus, The Parallax View, discovering the perfect postmodern philosopher in his self-ironizing and personal flamboyance; Gary Indiana watches A Scanner Darkly by Richard Linklater, the Dostoyevsky of movie dialogue; Hannah Feldman visits artist Mai-Thu Perrets faux commune, The Crystal Frontier; and Julia Bryan-Wilson praises the critical promiscuity of the New Yorkbased group LTTR (Lesbians to the Rescue).
Plus: Michael Fried raps his knuckles on David Smiths retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Richard Shiff visits Frank Stella 1958 at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum; Aaron Betsky sees new situationisms with Tokyo-based collective Atelier Bow-Wow; Lisa Pasquariello examines the radically reductive art of Sergej Jensen; Bruce Sterling contemplates Green politics, the new color in American magazines; and Jordan Kantor speaks with David Salle about a painting that brings together Hurricane Katrina and the Sistine Chapel.
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