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2004-03-14 - 10:31 p.m.
this afternoon the chess champion and i attempted the annual art marathon known as the armory show. one hundred seventy five galleries from around the world pay thousands of dollars each for the privilege of a booth at the show, held on two piers on the west side of manhattan. although its basically a trade show for the galleries, it can also be a terrific cross-section of what's-hot-what's-not in the art world.
some trends i noticed this year:
- embroidery, beads, and fabric. arte povera and things generally considered crafts or women's work seemed to influence many pieces this year. i was especially impressed by the use of embroidery as painting. most of these works were created by men.
- sloganeering. in general, i noticed a lot of poster and graphic design influence. most had enigmatic rather than overt meaning. written words were very prevalent.
- maps and grids. i can't tell if it's because i myself have become more involved in psychogeography, but i noticed a lot of maps this year, from world maps to local maps and abstracted maplike gridded images.
- hard-edged abstract acrylic painting. there seemed to be an abundance of extremely sleek acrylic paintings composed of brightly colored simple polygons.
- things that needed to be plugged in. especially works using electric light. one especially beautiful piece was a silvered painting with a filigreed surface that had a violet light projected onto it.
- portraits. the death of figurative painting gets proclaimed on a fairly regular basis, especially as photography does more and more of the heavy lifting in this area. but i noticed quite a lot of painting and drawing about the human face, many very formal portraits.
- video installations. video didn't seem as prevalent this year as in previous years. but the video i did see was clever and seemed more mature. most video was incorporated into an installation or sculpture of some kind, so that it was a component of a piece rather than the whole gesture. a favorite was a tony oursler green humanoid head with just a single small video screen showing a blinking eye.
favorite pieces at the show
- a fantastic photorealistic painting of an eye with glitter, done in enamel on aluminum.
- a video of george w giving a tour of his oval office, with specific attention to art that he and laura have chosen for his tenure in that office.
- an atari-style shooting gallery video game called 'i shot andy warhol'. i played this game for a few minutes and found it a little too easy. but the hipsters that took the plastic orange gun after me had much more trouble nailing the dead artist.
- an incredible mobile of pieces of broken glass hung in the shape of a three-dimensional gown. so beautiful i'm not sure my description can do it justice.
the show is so damned vast that attempting the whole thing in one day is foolhardy. the champion and i managed to conquer pier 90 pretty thoroughly, but halfway through pier 92 we were both experiencing severe art overload. i actually began to feel a bit lightheaded. we joked that the plastic in the ladies' room was an installation, a few spilled colored stones on the pavement became a painting. giddy from the visuals, hell's kitchen seemed a gritty delight. i took the train to my studio.
some photos from the armory show on my fotolog
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