Mar
11
Barbara Kruger: A Room With a View
March 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment
by Peter Zimmerman
The act of looking at art is usually a fairly peaceful exercise. Rarely is it the sort of mental anguish that has been espoused by often-fanatical art historians of the early 20th Century who believed that disharmonious paintings could provide the catalyst for disease, insanity, or physical harm (abortions, etc). In the 21st [...]
Jan
27
Review: Cindy Sherman, Metro Pictures 2008
January 27, 2009 | 1 Comment
So, we’re finally entering into the last few months before the thesis is due. We’re shooting to have a rough draft by March 7 (the beginning of spring break). That should give a good amount of time for revision, and then hopefully some time to reflect and look back on what we’ve theorized and proposed. [...]
Jan
24
Sherrie Levine: So What?
January 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment
by Peter Zimmerman
“This in turn suggests that art practices predicated on the production of signature styles rather than constantly modified interventions may be especially vulnerable to neutralization of their purported critique. The history of postmodernist photography overall would appear to confirm this analysis. As various theorists have argued, a position of resistance can never be [...]
Jan
9
Looking Forward and Back: Exhibitions in 2009 and 2008
January 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment
2009 Upcoming Exhibitions:
Sherrie Levine, New Work 2009
Simon Lee Gallery
June 2009
The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984
(Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY
April 12 – August 2, 2009
2008 Previous Exhibitions:
Cindy Sherman, New Work
Metro Pictures Gallery, New York, NY
November 15 – December 23, 2008
Review: The New Yorker, Vince Aletti
Review: Village Voice
Review: New York Magazine, Jerry [...]
Nov
24
Barbara Kruger’s Words of Prey
November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
by Peter Zimmerman
Art does not exist and is not created in a vacuum; rather, it is constantly in negotiation with ideological shifts, cultural re-mappings, and historical motions. Rosalind Krauss, in her essay (humorously) titled “Cindy Sherman: Untitled” describes the two purported Universal Truths of the artist, as proposed by Emile Zola: that X is an [...]
Nov
12
Response #3: Here. In Her Head: Cindy’s Disasters
November 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
-Joan Bowlen
Perhaps a reframing of my definition would be helpful in this discussion of Cindy and the portrait. Beginning last time as I did with such a limiting definition restricted the universal sense of the portrait which I want to engender. Though the media for which the term “portrait” is most often applied exhibit two-dimensionality, [...]
Nov
9
Response #2: “Disasters” as The Breaking Point
November 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
- Peter Zimmerman
You write, “I see the portrait as the framing of the human face within a 2-D plane, using the artist’s own emotive reading of the face in order to create a sense of the sitter.” I feel this coding of the portrait verges on the archaic, thereby not allowing for more plastic conceptions [...]
Nov
4
Response
November 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment
– Joan Bowlen
I think the ability to read these images as portraits stems from a more wide spread idea of the role that the portrait plays. I see the portrait as the framing of the human face within a 2-D plane, using the artist’s own emotive reading of the face in order to create a [...]