FROM THE DESKTOP
OF THE EDITOR
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MISS CHELSEA: Amidst
the hundreds of invites for art shows, one popped into the inbox
last week for a show of a different kind: fashion designer Yeohlee's
new collection, launched during Fashion Week at the Dylan Hotel.
Instead of a runway of ubiquitous skinny, bored-looking professional
models Yeohlee, who has a reputation as the thinking-person's
designer, dispensed with the catwalk altogether, opting for a
mix and mingle presentation. "Mannequins" were all accomplished
actors, writers, sportspeople and artists, several with links
to the artworld. Apparently, garments were made in collaboration
with the distinguished wearers, though I'm told the latter didn't
get to keep these individualised creations. Collaborators included
Moma design curator Paola Antonelli, sculptor Michele
Oka Doner, singer Lucy Woodward, filmmaker Rainer
Judd (daughter of Donald Judd) and author Karen Robinovitz.
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Pictured here are (left) Chelsea gallerist Elizabeth Dee,
sporting a sparkling black nylon/viscose halter and black nylon
two square skirt, and keeping company with actress, AIDS activist
and former (1998) Miss America Kate Shindle who wears an
iridescent silk taffeta notch collar jacket and iridescent silk
taffeta square skirt over circle skirt. If only artwords could
be as no-nonsense and specific as fashion terminology!
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Rodney McMillian
chair 2003, 33" x 38" x 33", courtesy Susanne Vielmetter
Los Angeles Projects
2800 CLAMS: Dave Barry,
Humorist of the Miami Herald, paid artcritical a visit recently, bringing
several thousands readers of his nationally syndicated column with him.
Accompanied by his three year old daughter, Barry attended Art Basel
in its Florida incarnation. Actually, though he is not specific on this
detail, the galleries he describe were not part of the art fair proper
but rather a fringe event for off-beat and emerging art, staged in shipping
containers on the beach-a "salon des refuses", it turns out,
in more senses than one.
"Anyway," writes
Barry, "In the corner of one container there was a ratty old collapsed
armchair - worn, dirty, leaking stuffing, possibly housing active vermin
colonies, I asked the gallery person if the chair was art, and she said
yes, it was a work titled, 'Chair.' I asked her what role the artist
had played in creating 'Chair.' She said: 'He found it.' She noted that
'Chair' had been professionally crated and shipped to the art show.
'Chair' is for sale. The price is $2,800. Really. I looked up 'Chair'
on a Serious Art Internet site, artcritical.com, which said: 'The chair
offers not a weedy patina of desuetude but an apotheosis of its former
occupant.' See, I missed that altogether, about the desuetude and the
apotheosis. I thought it was just a crappy old junk chair some guy took
off a trash pile and was now trying to sell for 2,800 clams."
The work that so exercised
Dave Barry's indignation was Rodney McMillian's "chair"
[lower case] at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, and the artcritical
blurb to which he directed his mirth was a review of an earlier show
by our Los Angeles writer, James
Scarborough.
Scarborough's take on "chair"
within the context of its first showing reads thus: "
It's not much to look at, yet it has a particular sanctity of place,
like an icon, a familiar location where it would be set, like Archie
Bunker's armchair from the television series "All in the Family"
which has since been enshrined in the Smithsonian. As a repository and
sum of former posteriors that have dented its cushions, of previous
elbows that have grazed the armrests, the chair offers not a weedy patina
of desuetude but an apotheosis of its former occupant."
***
BILE: Thanks to Dave Barry,
Rodney McMillian briefly displaced John Currin at the top of
the hit list in artcritical's visitor stats. The attention brought a
flurry of readers' comments. Just today, an e-mailer identified as "peter"
writes "That's what "modern" art is all about - - using
large and unfamiliar words to describe fantastically inventive concepts
about what a pile of junk this thing really is." Typical among
e-mailers was this from Frank Gerrietts: "Speak in simple English
and call a spade a spade...this is crap, not art." Correspondents
were thanked for sharing their insights, which were duly forwarded to
James Scarborough, but when a certain Mr. Bihl wrote: "how absolutely full
of shit you are," arcritical couldn't resist the reply: "Better
that, sir, than full of bile."
