Ikea Embraces Chintz While Italian Culture Minister Disses Modernism

Rumblings of (yet another) backlash against modernism? Yesterday the Times’ Berlin correspondent on design, Nick Currie, filed a report on Ikea’s embrace of Chintz in a blue and yellow location in Deutchland. What that means for Red Hook and Elizabeth, NJ, and the many Ikea-furnished digs across the city, only time will tell. … Meanwhile, a Wednesday Guardian story quotes Italy’s culture minister, Andro Bondi, as telling Grazia magazine:

“I struggle to find evidence of beauty in contemporary art. If I go to an exhibition I pretend to understand, like many others. But, honestly, I don’t understand.”

The article continues, “The comments follow a number of attacks on modern architecture by ministers including Bondi and the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that has left the arts world aghast.”

How now, modernist cow?

culture bashing (round 1)

This is where I Fight Club myself. It’s the things I missed (UPPER CUT!) vs. the things I actually made it to recently (JAB! JAB!)

CUT: Darwin’s Garden at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. Damnit. Why have I not been there yet?
JAB JAB: Saw four Olafur Eliasson waterfalls on the opening weekend, weekend only ferry ride to Governor’s Island, on my way to Figment, that Burning Man-esque cultural fest.
DING: I win.

CUT: Missed out on an exploratory adventure to the alleged “Little Tokyo” area in Manhattan, somewhere nearish to the United Nations, because I was going to double team Shibata Zeshin at the Japan Society — they call him the genius of Japanese lacquer — with a Japanese-esque lunch. Mmm… All before work. Alas, the exhibit closed a week earlier than i thought.
JAB: However, I did make it out to Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum. And bought my ticket online in advance which totally cut off the line I didn’t know that otherwise I would have to wait in.
CUT: Damn, I’m late on this shit.
DING: Draw.

CUT: I can’t believe “Paul Chan: The 7 Lights” closed at the New Museum when reviews were only coming out, like, a few weeks ago. It’s been open since April 9.
JAB: “Balloon Dog” by Jeff Koons, on the roof of the MET + “Lots of Things Like This,” Apexart, curated by Dave Eggers (closed).
DING: Oh snap! Oh wait, what do any of the items of the above last round have to do with each other? Everything! Humanistic, organic forms (trees, pets, people, scenes); stark contrast of lines / shapes silhouetted against a juxtaposing background; bold simple lines (cutouts); ability to draw flocks of New Yorkers; should serve beer. Oh snap, for real!.

who knew what thread and a needle could do?

I hardly know how to sew on a button. But I do know how to drink a beer. Which is why, with two hours to kill in midtown, I found myself wandering into the Museum of Art and Design — an oh so modest space that, in a stranger’s hurried glance, it may well seem like yet another extension of MoMA, which is across the street (and next door).
MAD had an exhibit of goblets, drinking vessels of varying degrees of practicality, which piqued my interest. The intersection of craftsmanship and functionality is always impressive.
Boy, was I clotheslined. Hook, line and sinker.
The thread of said line: “Pricked: Extreme Embroidery,” the eye-opening, mind-bending, “I guarantee you’ve never seen threads like this” exhibit of some 40-odd works of which the only through line is, literally, thread.
Arm sleeves (tattoos) sewn onto dummy arms; the outline of tablecloth stains immortalized; drawn figurative sketches, with all the air of quick, penciled forms done in thread; messages in morse code; works of such high form you have to look for threads in the glint of light to determine that what you are examining is, in fact, sewn.
Somewhere in the literature a synopsis is put forth that the pieces in “Pricked” are not examples of craft, of embroidery, but instances of artists adopting these tools to make works that are steeped in ideas, works that are thoughtful and beautiful and strange, as the best contemporary art is.
As different the works on display are from the embroidery I know best, my grandmother’s needlepoint, the pieces here do not try to detach from the modest craft from which they came. There is no distain. “Pricked” an homage to that form, a celebration of the virtuosity of the humble needle and thread.

these eyes ain’t ever seen a party like this

Yes, I made it inside Salon Aleman, Eduardo Sarabia’s tequila bar at the Park Avenue Armory, on the 14th. Yes, the same night of “The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.” And yes, that shit was hoppin’.
If I could, I would have lived at the armory these last few weeks, dance-danceathoning with Gang Gang Dance, modeling for Ellen Harvey (“100 Biennial Visitors Immortalized”), asking astute questions about Scarface (which I still have never seen) during Mario Ybarra Jr.’s tour of “The Scarface Museum,” flitting about the looped braids and prayers of Mk Guth’s “Ties of Protection and Safekeeping,” umm sleeping over at Walead Beshty’s 24-hour sleepover in the hugest space in manhattan just because… and so on, and so forth.
Essentially, the installations at the armory—an annex of the Whitney Biennial only open March 6-23— just blew my mind.
Why? Because of the creative unknown of each of these pieces. Much (most?) of what was on display at the armory was incomplete. A call, in solicitation of a response. The tentative putting of oneself out there, an act of hope, the nudging of the meatball. The x-factor being whoever the hell shows up.
The success of many of the pieces at the armory was derivative of the response of people. Which turned out en masse. Which made me very, very happy.
So free tequila, si! Voluptuous horrific stage show, latex body paint, pretty shiny things (devious smiley faces bouncing off all interior surfaces of an airport hangar in the middle of Manhattan). Easy sells, right.

Yet, the Park Avenue Armory is such a place that one cannot make it a destination unless it is part of the adventure—at least, that was the spirit that haunted these old halls on the night I was there.
The Field and Staff Room (the last room to the right, if you hang a left down the grand central corridor of the ground floor of the Armory)—was temporarily redubbed “Salon Alena,” an oasis serving cerveza and “Tequila Sarabia,” or so promised a pair of pink neon signs bracketing Sarabia’s tiled Babylon Bar.
Folding aluminum tables topped with a checkerboard aplique, short stools in the shape of elephant feet, loud brassa, tequila, the cast of the neon glow, gave that room a warmth, that glow of life, in utter juxtaposition to the stoic, solid nature of the heavy, dark wood, the glassy-eyed trophies (a moose, two deer, an eagle, a buffalo) and the meticulously-painted oil portraits of wars, men and pride.
To hear these stately halls echo with the brassy tapestry of Latin culture—a DJ set mixed by sir Sarabia himself—it was the site of two great prides meeting.