"To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay." George Orwell...
vs
"Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again." - Donald Judd
vs
"I wanted you to feel the same" - Radio Dept, and again here..






images:

1. Pushkin Palaces and Parks: "A study of the Russian Baroque style found in Pushkin, complete with full-page color photographs throughout."... buy this book here... via Royal Books...

2. Ilya Kabakov at Chinati Foundation.. more here... " The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati is a contemporary art museum based upon the ideas of its founder, Donald Judd. The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public permanent large-scale installations by a limited number of artists. The emphasis is on works in which art and the surrounding landscape are inextricably linked.

As Donald Judd wrote in the foundation's catalogue: " It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place."

3. images 1 + 2 combined.... "i wanted you to feel the same"



thanks Jason Irla for images from the Pushkin book....

"The town of Pushkin (formerly Tsarskoye Selo), just outside St Petersburg, has a marvelous ensemble of palaces and parks. It is particularly famous for its impressive baroque Catherine Palace where Catherine the Great lived and died. The palace was almost totally destroyed during World War II, but has risen like a phoenix from the ashes due to the unparalleled restoration effort undertaken since the war."







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Has the ARTIST become the DECORATOR?

Jerry Saltz 2011
vs
Richard Hell 1975

"Our culture now wonderfully, ­alchemically transforms images and history into artistic material.
The possibilities seem endless and wide open." - Jerry Saltz

one lighting fixture by Jean Perzel, 1970

"I belong to the blank generation and I can take it or leave it each time
I belong to the ______ generation but I can take it or leave it each time"

-Richard Hell, "the blank generation"




In Jerry Saltz's recent article "Generation Blank" he reflects on the youth artists of this generation, and reflects upon their work at Venice 2011. He states, "Their art turns in on itself, becoming nothing more than coded language. It empties their work of content, becoming a way to avoid interior chaos. It’s also a kind of addiction and, by now, a new orthodoxy, one supported by institutions and loved by curators who also can’t let go of the same glory days. "

"Neo-Structuralist film with overlapping geometric colors, photographs about photographs, projectors screening loops of grainy black-and-white archival footage, abstraction that’s supposed to be referencing other abstraction -- it was all there, all straight out of the 1970s, all dead in the ­water. It’s work stuck in a cul-de-sac of esthetic regress, where everyone is deconstructing the same elements.... but such obsessive devotion to a previous generation’s ideals and ideas is very wrong." (read entire article here...) I'm still digesting this article... but...

I wonder, has the artist become the decorator, become the blogger become the critic? The internet allows for instant sources of unlimited information, but also speeds the expiration of ideas. We chase our tails only to collapse in exhaustion. We need the new, right, or do we? We are new only to become instantly old. Are artists merely decorating the curators' walls? Must the artist / designer / interior architect / human express their work someway/somehow? Is a passion for aesthetic pleasure an empty quest? Do we cling to what we know, what we feel, or do we erase, and begin again?

Time for some afternoon coffee.

-David John




"Jean Perzel b. 1892, Germany: Jean Perzel was the first designer of distinctly modern lighting and the first to concern himself particularly with electricity - it's nature, potential, intensity, methods of use (semi direct or indirect lighting) - and to design logical, rational and harmonious fittings; he was the first to exploit the potential design of glass while using it to diffuse light. Since 1930 Perzel concentrates on studying the laws of optics and their practical consequences: changing the appearance of objects and faces using the intensity and color of light - amber, light pink or champagne; he attaches a particular importance to the soothing or unpleasant effects on the eye of these different types of light, which's were generally used without principle or restraint."

Roger Vanhevel coffee table 1970 via City Furniture

"when tables become sculpture become a lifestyle brand"

“Yes and in that sense the difference Donald Judd sought to construe between his work and traditional painting is misconceived. It is true that perspective creates the illusion of depth, whereas in Judd’s work there is actual depth, but both create a sense of space in the observer.”

“I must confess that I enjoyed the final rooms of the exhibition. Still to me those boxes and stacks seem little more than decoration, I mean, have you ever been to Calvin Klein’s flagship store on Madison Avenue or to The Hempel in London?”

“I know what you’re getting at, MINIMALISM AS LIFESTYLE. The fact that Judd also designed furniture may not speak in his favor. I do think there is a difference between his furniture designs and his art. In his furniture he explored his ideas in relation to a given object’s function, a bed or a chair, in the works he created as art he didn’t have to worry about function.” (taken from here)

Above, altered images of Jean Perzel Sconce via Pavillon Antiques Chicago,
Jerry Saltz article here...Generation Blank



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Donald Judd

.....
a space conditioned the way you looked at it.
it conditioned the way you felt about it.

"so he became increasingly absorbed with the way in which his work was installed in spaces and most particularly in museums and in exhibitions and he was very critical of the way in which many museums handled and looked after works of art..."

taken from David Zwirner Press Release
Installation view, Donald Judd, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden,
Germany, 1989.

DONALD JUDD
May 5 – June 25, 2011, upcoming show at David Zwirner, NY

"an exhibition of works by Donald Judd drawn from the artist’s seminal 1989 exhibition held at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany. Brought together from international public and private collections, this will be the first time these particular works have been exhibited together in a group of this size since Judd’s 1989 installation."







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below taken from the Tate Modern site, that has boxes of Donald Judd information:

Nicholas Serota on Donald Judd:


"I met Judd several times in the 1980s by which time he was spending a lot of time in Europe, where in some ways his work has always been more appreciated than it has been in America, and I would meet him at exhibition openings occasionally or once or twice at his own exhibitions…. he was, could be, extremely amusing though obviously, as one knows from his writings, quite caustic and dry, he had a sense of his own value but then he had every reason to….he was making important art that was probably at that time not recognised for having the quality that we now see in it and that’s enough to make anyone feel slightly at odds with the world.


From the early ‘60s when Judd began to explore the notion of a sculpture which moved across the wall or up the wall, or was placed at eye level, he was very conscious that placing a sculpture in a space conditioned the way you looked at it, it conditioned the way you felt about it, it conditioned literally the way your own body responded to it, and so he became increasingly absorbed with the way in which his work was installed in spaces and most particularly in museums and in exhibitions and he was very critical of the way in which many museums handled and looked after works of art in that sense, so as soon as he was able to he began to install his own work in spaces that he himself controlled, whether it was this building which he bought and converted, transformed, rather than converted in Spring Street in SoHo in New York or whether it was that complex of buildings which he took over in Marfa in Texas, in each case he made very very simple decisions about the way in which the spaces were organised and then progressively installed his own works in forms that were satisfying to him, sometimes it took years to get the right combination.....


read more here.. at Tate Modern

also go to David Zwirner here...












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I see the mountain side The trees and sky go by....
I'm out here on my own I might not come back home.
aka
"when concrete becomes mythical."





























G E R M A N DEL SOL from Santiago, Chile, is a designer and architect that has built three eco-hotels in extreme regions of ice and desert. In reverse of Singer, del Sol intervenes into almost mythic Nature with human constructions. The work responds to human excesses of dominating the Earth by demonstrating ways to follow nature or flow with it - and still be human. Never dissolving into nature. Always celebrating raw nature through a gentle contrast of color or texture or long edges.

The forms separate the earth from sky, steaming water from forest canopy, inside from out and human path from untouched nature. Both the separation and thing separating co-exist equal. In the time of saving the planet, humans can still be humans and nature, nature.



taken from here..





















E M B A I X A D A was established in 2001 with the aim to produce works capable of answering to the exquisite requisites of contemporary life by innovative ways. The work developed encloses areas such as Urbanism, Architecture and Design...

"The Project is a conversion of a former rundown factory infrastructure that plays a relevant role in the urban context of the city of Tomar, although without any particular architectural interest. Located at the beginning of the city historical centre, the building has been subjected to several attachments and changes over the years, finding itself threatened by some decadence and inadequate for the intended use. " (taken from here.)












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"And we go outside
When the morning's dark"

images:
1. German del Sol Arquitectco, Saunas y estanques, Atacama
2. E M B A I X A D A, architects





(lyrics by the incredible beach fossils!)






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"art only need be interesting".....

Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or tradition in contrast to, for example, rationalism which relies upon reason and can incorporate innate knowledge.























I'm thinking of Donald Judd today. And the idea of factory made forms, bean bags and pillows. The below text is taken from Judd's NY times obituary, written by Roberta Smith, in 1994. The above images are not Donald Judd's works but are by Martin Creed, and Elad Lassry. I'm sure there is a connection somewhere.




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"Mr. Judd disliked the word Minimalist, calling himself "an empiricist" when pressed, and refused to call his work sculpture because he thought that implied carving. Like the efforts of other Minimalists, including Dan Flavin, Frank Stella, Carl Andre and Robert Morris, his simple, factory-made forms were seen as "radically depersonalized" (in the words of one critic, Hilton Kramer), devoid of emotion and signaling a dead end for art.

Much was made of the fact that Mr. Judd's work was fabricated by others and that mathematical progressions sometimes determined his compositions. One of his most famous, and most misconstrued, pronouncements was "Art need only be interesting."

text taken from here...





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chinati at sunset.
(i'm seriously considering making the voyage.)

November 26, 2010 : Sunset










The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati is a contemporary art museum based upon the ideas of its founder, Donald Judd. The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public permanent large-scale installations by a limited number of artists. The emphasis is on works in which art and the surrounding landscape are inextricably linked. As Judd wrote in the foundation's catalogue:

It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place.

The Chinati Foundation is located on 340 acres of land on the site of former Fort D.A. Russell in Marfa, Texas. Construction and installation at the site began in 1979 with initial assistance from the Dia Art Foundation in New York. The Chinati Foundation opened to the public in 1986 as an independent, non-profit, publicly funded institution. Chinati was originally conceived to exhibit the work of Donald Judd, John Chamberlain and Dan Flavin.

The collection was expanded and now includes 15 outdoor concrete works by Donald Judd, 100 aluminum works by Judd housed in two converted artillery sheds, 25 sculptures by John Chamberlain, an installation by Dan Flavin occupying six former army barracks, and works by Carl Andre, Ingólfur Arnarsson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, David Rabinowitch, and John Wesley. Each artist's work is installed in a separate building on the museum's grounds.





go here for more info...

"...Well made furniture in solid wood was made for my building in New York and then in small numbers to sell, as it still is. In '84, I designed some chairs, benches, a table and some beds in sheet metal, which were painted one color to a piece. There were also a couple chairs and a table made of copper. This was for myself, but was also the first furniture to begin as furniture to sell..."

Donald Judd, 1993

"I am often asked if the furniture is art, since almost ten years ago some artists made art that was also furniture. The furniture is furniture and is only art in that architecture, ceramics, textiles and many things are art. We try to keep the furniture out of art galleries to avoid this confusion, which is far from my thinking. And also to avoid the consequent inflation of the price. I am often told that the furniture is not comfortable, and in that not functional. The source of the question is in the overstuffed bourgeois Victorian furniture, which as I said, never ceased. The furniture is comfortable to me. Rather than making a chair to sleep in or a machine to live it, it is better to make a bed. A straight chair is best for eating or writing. The third position is standing."

donald judd.