News

The effective rate of change in glacier thickness, also known as the glaciological mass balance, is a measure of the average change in a glacier's thickness after correcting for changes in density associated with the compaction of snow and conversion to ice. The map shows the average annual rate of thinning since 1970 for the 173 glaciers that have been measured at least 5 times between 1970 and 2004. Larger changes are plotted as larger circles and towards the back.

All survey regions except Scandinavia show a net thinning. This widespread glacier retreat is generally regarded as a sign of global warming.

During this period, 83% of surveyed glaciers showed thinning with an average loss across all glaciers of 0.31 m/yr. The most rapidly growing glacier in the sample is Engabreen glacier in Norway with a thickening of 0.64 m/yr. The most rapidly shrinking was Ivory glacier in New Zealand which was thinning at 2.4 m/yr. Ivory glacier had totally disintegrated by circa 1988

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Global_warming

Following Pitchfork's Friday night unofficial CMJ showcase at the Brooklyn warehouse Villain, on Saturday we teamed with MoMA PS1 to host an afternoon show in their VW Performance Dome with Montreal's Doldrums, Chairlift, and Manchester producer Andy Stott. Each artist played to their own projections, including some made specifically by Chairlift for the event by Alejandros Calaverius and A.M.J. Crawford. 

Photos by Samantha Marble. Check out some shots after the jump, then head over to our slideshow and Facebook page for even more photos.

http://pitchfork.com/news/48300-photos-pitchfork-moma-ps1-with-chairlift-doldrums-and-andy-stott/

Cultural Capital

Pop goes the easel: sharp encounters with contemporary artists                     

Are artists solitary individuals, or do they emerge from a workshop, family or other communities? In other words, are all works of art collective creations? Is an artist obliged to engage with politics or is it enough just to make good stuff?

Quids in: Jeff Koons poses for cameras at a preview for his retrospective at the Whitney in New York. Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images     33 Artists in 3 Acts  Sarah Thornton Granta Books, 430pp, £20

Many years ago, while interviewing Iris Murdoch, I made an incautious remark. Of something or other – I cannot now remember exactly what – I exclaimed, “That’s just not art!” “Remind me,” Dame Iris gently replied in philosophical rather than fictional mode, “just what art is exactly?”

The feelings of embarrassment and confusion I experienced as a result give me some sympathy for the numerous artists interrogated in this new book by Sarah Thornton. The question that drives what she calls her “research” as she travels the world is not “What is art?” but a closely allied inquiry: “What is an artist?”

This is a very good question, especially in this post-Duchamp world in which a work of art may be anything an artist decides to nominate as such. But that does not make it any easier to answer. One can relate to the response of Martha Rosler – an American video, performance and installation artist – when Thornton “abruptly” presents her with this poser: “How the hell would I know?” (She, like most of her fellow interviewees, eventually does come up with a thought or two.)

The quarry here is much more elusive than in Thornton’s earlier, well-received book Seven Days in the Art World (2008), which dealt more with the institutional apparatus of art, such as auctions, fairs and prizes. She has degrees in both art history and sociology and wrote for the Economist during the years when this book was gestating. When Thornton was introduced to the artist and prankster Maurizio Cattelan as “an ethnographer”, he replied with what sounds like a deliberate misunderstanding: “You’re a pornographer!” Money and power are the dirty secrets of the art world and she is interested in exposing them.

However, the scope of the book is wider than this suggests, encompassing what artists do and how they behave. Woven into the texture are certain intriguing lines of inquiry: how important is “art”, as opposed to “craft” (that is, actually making things)? Are artists really solitary individuals, or do they emerge from a workshop, family or other communities? In other words, are all works of art collective creations? Is an artist obliged to engage with politics or is it enough just to make good stuff?

The answers vary from creative person to creative person and so Thornton does not come to any definitive conclusions. But the journey – as she jets between New York, Venice, Beijing and the Persian Gulf in pursuit of artists to ask – is an engaging one. The book is divided into three “acts”, entitled “Politics”, “Kinship” and “Craft”. These acts are further subdivided into numerous scenes, some of which are conversations, others set-piece events such as exhibition openings or public appearances. Various artists appear, some famous and some much less so. The ingenious structural device that helps bind all this together is that a few figures turn up again and again in different contexts.

The first act is dominated by a comparison between Jeff Koons – presented as a market-driven, billionaire-pleasing smoothy – and Ai Weiwei, an outspoken antagonist of the Chinese government. Thornton’s interview with the latter after his imprisonment is one of the book’s most absorbing scenes. Curiously, the interrogator who questioned Ai 50 times over 80 days also had a Duchampian take on the big question. “Artist!” he would shout, hammering his fist on the table. “Anyone can call himself an artist!” In the end, Ai settled for describing himself as an “art worker”.

Ai comes across as a hero and Thornton does not disguise her irritation with Koons – either from the reader or from the artist. On the other hand, she slips contrary opinions into the text, so we discover, say, that other Chinese artists are ambivalent about Ai Weiwei. The curator Francesco Bonami, apparently in accord with that Chinese state interrogator, regards him as “the epitome of a bad fake artist”.

The late David Sylvester, for many years the doyen of British art critics, used to advise that one should only interview artists with whom one had some sympathy. Thornton’s interest is in the artist’s “persona” more than the work but she does not get particularly good results from Koons or Damien Hirst, the two characters in her drama to whom she seems most hostile.

Mind you, some of the exchanges with these two are entertaining. To Koons, she quotes the view of the critic Calvin Tomkins that he is either “amazingly naive” or “slyly performative”. Koons’s initial reaction – “Who said that?” – is not very illuminating. Yet what he says while evading the question is intriguing: “I like to feel a connection to Lichtenstein, Picabia, Dalí, Duchamp, Courbet and [the rococo artist] Fragonard.” Duchamp and Fragonard? I suspect Sylvester would have probed that further. The Mexican Gabriel Orozco gets bowled the ball in a much more friendly manner: “Why do people think you are an authentic artist?” His response after an preliminary purr – “I do like this question!” – seems to boil down to: because he’s not like Jeff Koons.

Thornton’s book is scattered with memorable and sometimes witty thoughts from Maurizio Cattelan, the art duo Elmgreen and Dragset and many more. None of these, however, comes up with a one-liner quite as droll as Andy Warhol’s response to the question posed to me by Iris Murdoch (“What is art?”): “Isn’t that a guy’s name?” 

Martin Gayford is the author of books about Van Gogh, Hockney and Lucian Freud

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/10/pop-goes-easel-sharp-encounters-contemporary-artists

artnet News,          Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Who are the Henry Clay Fricks, J.P. Morgans, or Andrew Carnegies of our era? While many of the top contemporary art collectors in the US are gifting their works to major museums, another, smaller group of wealthy individuals are building their own museums. These small (but not that small) institutions, whose collections and buildings are idiosyncratic reflections of their owners’ interests and personalities, have proliferated over the last two decades. So fuel up your private jet: Here are artnet News’s 10 standout private museums around the US.

THE BRANT FOUNDATION ART STUDY CENTER Location: Greenwich, Connecticut Founder: Peter Brant Year founded: 2009

The Brant Foundation has primarily an educational focus, but features long-term exhibitions from the foundation’s collection as well, including a recent survey show of Julian Schnabel—the artist’s first in this country since 2002—and an ongoing Dan Colen exhibition.

DE LA CRUZ COLLECTION Location: Miami, Florida Founders: Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz Year founded: 2009

The de la Cruz Collection, which focuses on contemporary art as well as art education, has been open to the public since 2009—though its director, Ibett Yanez, points out that people had been able to privately ask to see the collection for the previous 25 years. The collection is housed in a distinctive building that is also an extension of Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz’s home. Built in the middle of the Miami Design District, the Collection has been a seminal attraction for art world migrants attending Art Basel in Miami Beach since the fair launched in 2002.

EL SEGUNDO MUSEUM OF ART Location: El Segundo, California Founders: Eva and Brian Sweeney Year founded: 2013

An offshoot of the ARTLAB 21 Foundation, the El Segundo Museum of Art was founded by architect Eva Sweeney and real estate developer Brian Sweeney. Described as a “laboratory,” the museum shows the Sweeneys’ impressive and eclectic collection, which includes a range of modern and contemporary artists including Gustav Klimt, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and Claude Monet.

FISHER LANDAU CENTER FOR ART Location: Queens, New York Founder: Emily Fisher Landau Year founded: 1991 (open to the public since 2002)

The Fisher Landau Center for Art was originally built in 1991 as a private storage facility for much of Emily Fisher Landau’s collection, and in 2002 it opened to the public. The center boasts 1,500 works, most of which date from “1960 to the present.” The Fisher collection includes works by Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Matthew Barney, Jasper Johns, and Ed Ruscha, among many others. Landau is a trustee of the Whitney Museum, to which she has donated works by Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Carl Andre, and Kiki Smith, to name just a few.

GLENSTONE Location: Potomac, Maryland Founders: Mitchell and Emily Rales Year founded: 2006

Though Glenstone has held only four exhibitions at its 200 acre Potomac, Maryland, estate since 2006, the depth and strength of its collection can be seen in larger public museums on the east coast and in Europe this year alone. One of the Rales’s holdings featured prominently in the New York Jewish Museum’s recent Mel Bochner retrospective (see “Mel Bochner’s ‘Strong Language’ at The Jewish Museum“), and two others are on view in MoMA’s “Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness” exhibition (see “Christopher Williams at MoMA: The Aesthetics of Smartypants“).

GOSS-MICHAEL FOUNDATION Location: Dallas, Texas Founders: George Michael and Kenny Goss Year founded: 2007

Founded by singer George Michael and his partner Kenny Goss, the foundation is based in Dallas, Texas, and showcases their personal collection of British contemporary art, including works like Damien Hirst’s Saint Sebastian Exquisite Pain. The foundation, whose first show was curated by Hirst, also provides exhibitions for emerging British artists who may not have gained much exposure in the US.

HALL ART FOUNDATION Location: Reading, Vermont Founders: Andrew and Christine Hall Year founded: 2007

The Hall Art Foundation was created by Andrew J. Hall, a former Citigroup trader who also dabbles in organic farming, and his wife, Christine. They have also partnered with Mass MoCA for a long-term installation devoted to the works of Anselm Kiefer from the Halls’ collection. In addition to Kiefer, the Halls’ collection of over 5,000 pieces of postwar and contemporary art includes works by Joseph Beuys, Eric Fischl, Andy Warhol, and Malcolm Morley, among others.

LINDA PACE FOUNDATION Location: San Antonio, Texas Founder: Linda Pace Year founded: 2003

The Linda Pace Foundation was founded by its namesake in 2003. Linda Pace, an artist and collector, died in 2007. Her foundation manages and exhibits a collection of about 500 works, which is mostly focused on contemporary art from US artists, and includes works by Marilyn Minter, Wangechi Mutu, Dario Robleto, Isa Genzken, and others.

PIER 24 Location: San Francisco, California Founder: Andy Pilara Year founded: 2010

Billing itself as a “place to view and think about photography,” Pier 24 is a 28,000-square-foot warehouse space that serves as a home for the Pilara Foundation Collection. Its free admission (with appointment) offers the public a chance to see what is probably the largest dedicated space for photography on the West Coast, if not the entire country. In addition to exhibiting works from the Foundation’s collection—which includes virtually every major figure in contemporary photography, from Richard Avedon and Lee Friedlander to Catherine Opie and Jeff Wall—Pier 24 also mounts special exhibitions.

RUBELL FAMILY COLLECTION Location: Miami, Florida Founders: Donald and Mera Rubell Year founded: 1964 in New York (in Miami since 1993)

Housed in a 45,000-square-foot former DEA facility, the Rubells’ museum counts artworks by Andy Warhol, Kara Walker, Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman, and Jeff Koons in its collection. While it is considered to be one of the founding “Miami Model” private collecting institutions that helped spawn Art Basel in Miami Beach, several of the RFC’s recent exhibitions have traveled to public institutions including the Brooklyn Museum and the North Carolina Museum of Art.

There's still time to become a Guggenheim member for a ticket for two to attend tonight's ZERO members' party. Not currently a member? Join now and save $10 on a one-year membership: http://gu.gg/CzmdK