Last week the Paris Review published this piece by Kyle Chayka about his time at The Aldrich Museum.  He was a guard for an installation by Anselm Kiefer.  The article is entitled Ruins in Advance and is part of the series Revisited where writers look back at works of art that were influential to them.  I have tried this type of reminiscence a few times myself (Sol LeWitt and Mark Rothko) and enjoy writing about my relationship to art work in the long term.

You can visit the Kiefer at MASS MoCA or enjoy Chayka’s take on it without having seen this work.

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I had the good fortune of seeing John Armleder and Christian Marclay perform at The Kitchen this past Saturday.  The program focused on “Simultaneous Duo Versions” of works by Brecht, Cage, La Monte Young and both artists, Armleder and Marclay.  The show, just under an hour, was a start to finish laugh fest.  The pieces they chose were conceptual but amusing.  They started fires (compositions by La Monte Young and Armleder), sat silently (Cage and Armleder), moved their instruments back and forth across the stage and threw a record player to one another while it played (Armleder and Marclay) and plenty more.  There was nothing stiff about the show.  You had the sense these artists enjoyed being a part of this as much as the audience did.

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I have had no interest in weighing in on the Dana Schutz controversy over her painting in the Whitney Biennial.  Even choosing to bring it up makes me feel like I am joining a conversation I am not prepared to have.  That said, I applaud the Whitney for having the tough conversations.

I enjoyed this Guardian piece which highlights a talk at the Whitney this past weekend and specifically Claudia Rankine’s thoughts.  There is a video of the event it refers to, held at the Whitney, on the Whitney’s Facebook page.

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-Jeff Bergman
April 2017