Charles Schumer, quoted in Newsday
“We will have to review his record very carefully, but I can tell you already he’s a better candidate than John Ashcroft,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, which will consider Gonzalez’ nomination. Still, Gonzalez has his own civil liberties baggage. He wrote a controversial February 2002 memo in which President George W. Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties designed to protect prisoners of war.
Note that Gonzalez called the Geneva Convention “quaint” in that memo.
Schumer also voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the Defense of Marriage Act (as a congressman).
I haven’t been diligent about updating the openings calendar lately, as I was getting ready to launch my new and improved version, with information on recommended shows, not just openings. I present:
I apologize that there are no iCal or RSS feeds yet. Those are coming soon.
American Fine Arts closes its doors for good tonight. There is a closing party from 5-8 with performances. Be there.
530 West 22nd Street
Zach Feuer of LFL Gallery has bought out his partners and changed the name of the gallery to Zach Feuer Gallery. Note the page title at that link.
P.S. The Dana Schutz show up now is great. I think it’s the best work I’ve seen from her.
P.P.S. We went to MoMA today for the members’ preview. Expect posts on that subject from James and me later.
It’s the talented young painter Dan Levenson. I saw the photo here on From the Floor, and then I looked up who owns the domain name. I think that’s Orly Cogan standing next to him! We love her too.
I was looking at Casey Kaplan web site just now. It’s new. It’s flash. It’s awful.
Comments are off. Eventually I might have the patience to monitor them for wingnuts and spam, but at the moment I get too many of those to bother.
Sorry.
Derek Jarman’s manuscripts are featured in an exhibit titled The Writer in the Garden at the British Library. I read about it in The Guardian.
Some of his late manuscripts and notebooks – covers beautifully personalised with gold or black impasto, full of poems, jottings and memories – will be revealed this week at an exhibition at the British Library in London.
Jarman kept 16 volumes of diaries recounting the making of his garden at Prospect Cottage, on the Kent coastline, where he moved in 1988. Here he created a curious Eden in the most hostile, salt-caked, windswept environment imaginable, a strange garden full of twisted metal and driftwood, in the shadow of the Dungeness nuclear power station.
Much of the material from the notebooks was incorporated into his published diaries, Modern Nature, but the exquisite objects themselves, two of which the British Library has borrowed from Jarman’s estate, have never before been seen in public.
Speaking of visual/film artists with a talent for the written word, last night we attended an event at PPOW featuring writers and artists inspired by the works (written and otherwise) of David Wojnarowicz. The main reason we attended was to see Matt Wolf slide show on Wojnarowicz’s “magic box” in his archives at NYU. It’s amazing to realize that Matt is only 22. We have already seen several works by him, and even “invested” a small amount into his latest film project. It’s titled I Feel Love — Matt titles his latest films after Communards/Bronski Beat songs — and has Andrew Cunanan as its subject.
DAVID WOJNAROWICZ Untitled (One day this kid . . .) 1990
photostat edition of 10 60 × 48 inches
No, this isn’t a political post. Democracy Forever is the name of the current exhibit at Plum Blossoms, a gallery specializing in Asian art on 25th Street. We visited it for the first time last night, for a reception related to Asian Contemporary Art Week. The people at the gallery had used their connections well: there was a huge crowd of people from all around the New York art world and elsewhere.
It’s a strong show, and there are more images on the web site, but I wanted to point out a couple of artists whose work I really liked. The first is Ji Dachun, who creates acrylic works on canvas of communist icons such as Mao and Stalin.
JI DACHUN
Zhong Nan-hai 0.8
Acrylic on canvas, 2004
43 × 43 inches (110 × 110 cm)
Zhong Nan-hai is the “Chinese Kremlin,” a set of buildings once part of the Imperial Court that now serves as the headquarters of the Communist Party.
The other work is by an amazing collective called UNMASK, which creates domed sculptures featuring items of war and industrial devastation. I was told by Andrew Maerkle at the gallery that their “day jobs” are working on sculptures for public monuments. The image below is one of four globes. It appears to be mounted on a wall in the photograph, but they are on separate pedestals at the gallery.
UNMASK
The Shadowless
Installation of Four Units
plastic, stainless steel, fluorescent lights, 2004
4 pcs. each 26 × 26 × 53 inches
(4 pcs. each 65 × 65 × 135 cm)
The show is up through November 27.
On a related note, The Guardian has an interesting article on the state of contemporary art in China, particularly in Shanghai. We know a gallerist, Lothar Albrecht, who has a gallery in Beijing, but we haven’t had a chance to talk to him about his adventures there.