Monday 25 June 2007

painting reading versioning ...

Dmitry Gutov is a Russian artist, making his second Venice Biennale showing, in the second half of Robert Storr's keynote exhibition, in the Corderie (rope-shed?) of the Arsenale. (I hadn't heard of nearly any of the names here, whereas the first half of Storr's show, in the Padaglione Italia in the Giardini with the other national pavilions, features many better-known artists). Two weeks later my memory of the work is shamefully vague, but it was a set of paintings of, as I recall, texts and front covers of books by Marx & Hegel. I thought images would be easily come by, but I can only find this, which shows perhaps more sketchy versions of similar work. The labels explained that in his Moscow studio Gutov hosts a reading group, the 'Karl Marx School of the English Language', which has the double purpose of developing the members' English and studying canonical Marxist texts, a minority interest, to say the least, in today's Russia. The English 'instructor' in the group describes it here.
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An over-riding impression from the whole of Storr's assembly was that much of today's art consists of documentation, sometimes of personal crises (cf in their very different ways, Tracey Emin and France's Sophie Calle) but more especially of political ones. Gutov's engagement seemed both less sensationalist and more complex and intellectual, than the visual narratives in war-torn cities, etc.
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Sophie Calle's main installation is a huge collection of responses and versionings, by over 100 different people (women) of an email apparently received by Calle from a boyfriend, breaking off their relationship. It was hugely enjoyable to go round, but not (imo) massively profound art. An obvious precursor -- though limited to the page -- would be Raymond Queneau's Oulippian Exercises du Style (1947), which tells the same small narrative in dozens of different ways.
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Funnily enough I was in John Calder's bookshop in Waterloo (London) this afternoon, at a discussion on Stefan Themerson, and there are still a couple of copies of Barbara Wright's translation of the Queneau, published by the Themersons' Gaberbocchus Press, with Stefan's illustrative initials, in 1958! Tempting at £30, and Barbara Wright was actually present ... but I do have a copy of the pbk reprint by Calder ...

Sunday 24 June 2007

manuscripts

The Mechitarist monastery on San Lazzaro is viewable by guided tour. This is a bit taxing on a very hot day with a very large group, but worth it. It contains a miscellaneous collection of art and objects, of which, aside from the religious artefacts, the most important are the collection of 4,000 Armenian manuscripts, stored and displayed now in a new rotunda room.
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There are also Armenian gospel manuscripts, among many others, in a fantastic exhibition currently on at the British Library. 'Sacred' (not a record by Madonna) is an extensive comparative display of beautiful and curious religious texts and other artefacts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The diplomacy required to bring this off at this time is hard to imagine, likewise the cost: a considerable amount of material is loaned, there are art commissions, plenty of IT, and a high level of design and a a free gallery guide, and yet there is no charge for entrance. Great website too, with 'turning the pages' access for 16 items.

Sunday 17 June 2007

neon, etc.


Aldus Manutius, Rio TerrĂ  Secondo, San Polo 2311, Venezia.
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The letter Z has a high frequency in the Venetian dialect. So, you catch a vaporetto no. 20 from the eastern-most of the stops at San Zaccaria, and chug across the Lagoon to the tiny walled monastery island of San Lazzaro to the south-east, and as the boat approaches you notice a yellow fuzz along the whole length of the sea wall, and over the sides of two visible square buildings, and perhaps in a narrow band too on the bell tower, and this is a beautiful neon installation by Joseph Kosuth, one of many events is association with this year's art Biennale. The texts are in Armenian (it is an Armenian monastery), Italian and English (the latter in an italic style), and seem to consist of, or be based on, dictionary definitions relating to water, and then stages of association away from them. Ideally, you would have your own boat, or hire one, and be able to sail slowly along the sea wall, the only way you could read it all. But the texts on the buildings are legible from the island itself. There is an image and some information here A catalogue will be published later in the year. Here is a not-very-good closer-up picture

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Tracey Emin is in the British pavilion of the Biennale proper this year, as everyone knows. (It's on till November.) She has some neons too, including a nice wordy one in pink. The associations of the medium with tawdry adverts, emergency directions, cheap cafe shopfronts glow around the fixation of these cris de coeur in her inconsistent handwriting and spelling. The one I thought strongest is 'I KNOW I KNOW [erased], I KNOW', with the erasure in blue. Here's a picture of it, thanks to one Beat_Nik.
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A couple of months ago there was an exhibition of neons by Ian Hamilton Finlay, at Victoria Miro's gallery in London. They were attractive, in different colours and scripts. The calligrapher who executed the designs from Finlay's ideas, Julie Farthing, said that she adapted her hand intuitively by meditating on the texts. Sometimes Finlay indicated a preference. Many are versions of works done also in other media, and might be considered glamourisations; however the very glossy catalogue has an essay by Stephen Bann, arguing the centrality of the neons in Finlay'e oeuvre. A few specifically allude to aspects of light: the twinkly orange 'Diamond-studded fish-nets', and the more obscure white 'parheliacal marble', the subject of a fine interpretative essay by Harry Gilonis, in Angelaki magazine, vol. 5, April 2000 (which seems to be available online to institutions with a subscription). Some text and images are here. Many of them were displayed in a dark room, which seemed too obvious: neon in daylight is a / great pleasure, at the hub of a city, or across green water on a hot June afternoon.