ConsecutiveMatters (a.k.a. jonathantdneil.com)

Video of Danica Phelps’ presentation at The Drawing Center:

‘Information Architectures’ just finished last night at The Drawing Center.  Here’s the official write up that went out:

The Drawing Center is pleased to present Information Architectures, a series of talks and discussions in which leading philosophers, architects, designers, editors, and artists consider how information is diagrammed, modeled, structured and otherwise disseminated in the expanded field of drawing.

As artists, designers, and intellectuals are increasingly regarded as “content providers” within the broader spectrum of our cultural interests, it seems increasingly necessary to consider not simply how certain forms-or “formats”-give this content shape, but how the entire form/content divide may be rendered irrelevant, or obsolete, by the mutability of information itself. From this perspective, drawing is not seen as an ancillary medium but rather as a privileged theoretical and practical tool with which to work out the tricky business of in-form-ing.

The series was organized by myself and Brett Littman, and over the course of the last three nights, six very talented and interesting people gave presentations on their work.

On Tuesday we had artist Danica Phelps and philosopher Alva Noë; on Wednesday, artist Nathan Carter and editor/designer/architect Jeffrey Inaba presented; and last night, my friend Peter Macapia and the formidable Alice Aycock spoke.

Instead of offering any kind of afterthoughts on the three evenings (except to note that I think they went very well), I’m going to post the videos of the talks.  (Unfortunately, our camera died at the beginning of last night’s talks, so I’m going to have to cook something up for Peter and Alice’s presentations.  We have the podcasts, so perhaps with their permission I’ll lay that over their slide shows and capture it in Flash.  We’ll see.)

Check out my catalog essay, “Rosson Crow’s History Painting: Setting and Speculation,” for Crow’s show at White Cube, Texas Crude.  The show is excellent, and the catalog has great reproductions of the work, along with an excellent and honest essay by Crow herself; it far exceeds anything I have to say about the work.

Ryan’s new monograph has just been published by Rizzoli (Feb, 2009) and includes an interview with Peter Halley, an essay by Ryan’s former studio assistant, Greg Lindquist, a conversation between David Byrne and Ryan and my essay, “The Look of Looks, or Ryan McGinness’s Ontology of Color.”  Content aside, the book is really nicely done and offers a great view of Ryan’s studio practice(s).

Find more videos like this on artreview.com

Telegraph Magazine just ran an interesting article on the way Lucien Freud worked on his most recent figurative portrait, Rita, Naked Portrait (2007). We might call this a process profile, given that it details the intimate and somewhat grueling labor–on the part of both artist and model–that went in to creating the painting.

The reason why I bring this up is that some find it difficult to understand why painting remains the pinnacle of art world fetish item that it is, and this look into the way that Freud works with his models offers the uninitiated an very rare glimpse of the kinds of time and effort that many painters (though, of course, not all) require to produce their work. Yes, it is a 19th Century method, but there is something of the archaic in it, which is why collectors are always willing to spend great deals of money on painting. Photography, video and installation are still far too contemporary in their reflections and exploitations of current production techniques to attain the kinds of alchemy that paintings regularly evoke.

Of course this is not meant as a defense of the fetish; it is only meant to point out how painters paint, and why there is much wrapped up in that activity that few viewers or collectors of art ever understand.