MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry. Image: moma.org

This morning, VoCA attended an intimate gathering around one of the AGO’s board room tables with Glenn Lowry, director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Matthew Teitelbaum, director of the Art Gallery of Ontario and members of the press.

Mr. Lowry was in town as part of his international tour to promote MoMA’s future programming and past successes.

Doug Aitken’s Sleepwalkers, projected onto MoMA. Image: hustlerofculture.com

As well as discussing upcoming programming and recent acquisitions, he offered some insightful comments that Canadian museums might learn from:

-The use of a museum’s architecture as woven into the fabric of the city.

-The use of the building itself as a ‘canvas’ for public art projects, including Doug Aitken’s Sleepwalkers projections earlier this year and upcoming work by Pipillotti Rist next year.

-The importance of building the museum collection.

-The relinquishing of control that allows for programming by younger staff members that reaches younger audiences.

Frank Gehry’s plans for a new addition to the AGO. Image: idonline.com

Every *SECOND FRIDAY* VoCA will introduce our ‘TOP FIVE’ – five Canadian artists whose exceptionally well-made, well-conceived and original work we’ve recently featured, and recommend to art collectors.

In honour of Magenta Publishing announcing the list of painters who will be featured in their next tome, VoCA chooses five of our favorite Canadian painters:

-Jessica Stockholder – Click HERE

-Elizabeth Mcintosh – Click HERE

-Ben Reeves – Click HERE

-Monica Tap – Click HERE

-Etienne Zack – Click HERE

Read the full list HERE.

Scott McFarland, Orchard View, Early Spring; Rubus discolour, Prunus nigra, Prunus serrulata, 2004.
Image: monteclarkgallery.com

In her review of the New Photography 2007 exhibition at New York’s MoMA, the New York Times‘ Martha Schwendener had this to say about Vancouver artist Scott MacFarland’s work:

Mr. McFarland’s picture of a young family watching a keeper feed porcupines at the Berlin Zoo could be a (Jeff) Wall from around 1989 or a student facsimile. (It’s no surprise, then, to discover that Mr. McFarland once worked as Mr. Wall’s assistant.)

Mr. McFarland’s photographs of nature controlled by human beings — an orchard digitally manipulated to present all four seasons at once or a series merging different areas in a botanical garden — recall Thomas Struth.

Mr. McFarland’s aesthetic and techniques feel overly familiar and dated.

Continue reading →

Raphael, The Alba Madonna, c. 1510, Andrew W. Mellon Collection. Image: nga.gov

Some picks of this year’s Christmassy art books, chosen by the Telegraph.

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Shaan Syed, And When You’re (Really) High No. 6, 2007. Image: browngallery.co.uk

1. Shaan Syed in London

Shaan Syed: Arena

November 24, 2007 – 12 January, 2008

Brown Gallery. For gallery website, please click HERE

New work by this London-based Toronto painter, who is also represented by Birch Libralato Gallery, Toronto.

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VoCA went on a tour of some Toronto galleries this weekend.

Much of what we saw was forgettable, but the show Dead! Dead! Dead!, currently on at Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, was excellent as usual. While we preferred Predators and Prey downstairs with its Nazi porcelain and Gucci heels, Ms. Hendeles did create a few masterstrokes in the Punch and Judy-themed show, including Joan Crawford’s fascinating charm bracelets and the potent Thomas Schutte sculpture spotlit in the back room.

Punch and Judy. Image: asymptotia.com

For more info on Punch and Judy, please click HERE.

LOVED: Monica Tap: New Paintings Wynick Tuck Gallery

November 24 – December 22, 2007 and January 8-12, 2008

It was refreshing to see such well considered Canadian painting. Landscape meets new media and good use of colour in a series of 15 paintings of a single second of video taken from a train passing through upstate New York. The work sits in a tradition of new media in painting whose precedents include Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans and Peter Doig among others.

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Vancouver artist Ken Lum and Montreal curator Louise Dery have won the second annual Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Awards.

Lum received the $25,000 prize for outstanding achievement by a Canadian artist, while Dery took the $15,000 award for curatorial excellence in contemporary art.

Ken Lum, Hum hum hummm, 1994. Image: cmcp.gallery.ca

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Tom Thomson, Winter Thaw, 1917. Image: joyner.ca

The pre-sale estimate for this lovely piece was $300,000-400,000…it sold for $1,463,500.

Read the details HERE.

Governor General Award winners Gathie Falk (2003) and Aganetha Dyck (2007) at the Michael Gibson Gallery

November 30 – December 29, 2007

Aganetha Dyck, work from the honeyflow season, 2007. Image: members.shaw.ca/aganetha

Gathie Falk, 30 Grapefruit. Image: collectionscanada.ca

Perhaps best known for her collaborative work with live honeybees, Dyck’s most recent practice focuses on the Queen Bee, by placing ordinary household objects – figurines, diamond tiaras – in beehives.

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Barnett Newman, Onement VI, 1953. Image: picassotopop.com

Of course, art can be anything…etc etc. But what is great art? Having been to see the Louise Bourgeois show at the Tate Modern in London – great art, indeed – has forced us to re-assess what we consider to be great art. We see and recommend the work of lots of young Canadian artists every week, and we believe in their work, but how much of it is truly great? And how do we define greatness? And is it something that an artist has any control over?

We have long believed that great art stems from an investigation, by the artist, into those deep and universally experienced emotions for which there are no words. The visual artist, effectively, creates through imagery what is impossible to express another way.

Picasso, Self-portrait, 1907. Image: blogs.princeton.edu

There are many, many examples of this, from Van Gogh to Picasso to Andy Warhol to Barnett Newman to James Turrell…to Cindy Sherman to Matthew Barney to Louise Bourgeois, to name a few.

James Turrell, Light Reign, 2006. Image: seattlepi.nswource.com

But what about the conceptualists? Sol Lewitt, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin…?

What about some of VoCA’s favorite artists like Rodney Graham, Thomas Schutte, Wolfgang Laib and Bruce Nauman?

If great art is about emotion, why are so few contemporary artists exploring emotion in their work? You could argue that the very best of them are. Gregor Schneider, for example, whose installations can be truly horrifying.

Gregor Schneider, Die Familie Schneider, 2004 – An Artangel production.
Image: state-of-art.org

Has the rise of art schools transformed from a ‘calling’ into a viable career? Look at the popularity of programs at Yale, Goldsmiths and other schools where gallerists pluck artists for their stables from grad shows.

Since Duchamp, who declared that art could be anything an artist deemed it to be, artists have set about making art from anything and about anything. Post-conceptual art has developed into relational aesthetics and ‘conceptualism-lite’, where art is often little more than a witty one-liner.

Simon Starling, Installation view, Turner Prize 2005 exhibition. Image: tate.org.uk

Art history no longer follows one (white, male) trajectory. There are as many forms of art as there are histories, each equally viable. Gay art, Feminist art, African American art, Outsider art…

Art wasn’t always seen as something that you could decide to do and become successful at. It used to be something that you did, and suffered the rest of your life for.

For more on this, please click HERE.