Writing 2016

Isa Genzken Plays with the Artworld’s Insides in “I Love Michael Asher”

Catherine G. Wagley, December 8, 2016

“And why is this dedicated to Michael Jackson?” journalist Randy Kennedy asked Isa Genzken last February as both sat on a stage at the New School. The screen behind them displayed a mock-up of a public artwork Genzken never realized: a clothesline running between two buildings in a quaint public square, holding garments with Jackson’s picture on them. It was called Clothesline (dedicated to Michael Jackson) (2010). “I love Michael Jackson,” Genzken answered, her voice typically slow. Kennedy pushed no further.

Ten years ago, in 1996, Genzken made a messy-on-purpose book titled “I love New York,” full of scraps, souvenirs, and photographs constructed while she stayed in various Manhattan hotels. “My city,” she called New York in a rare interview, in 2014 — less “uptight and conventional” than Berlin, her home.

The Female Cool School

Catherine Wagley, November 16, 2016

Usually, art movements or “schools,” acquire names for reasons of expedience. Critic Irving Sandler named Color Field Painting, because he needed a title for the chapter on Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko in his book The Triumph of American Painting. Critic Jules Langser and his friend Peter Selz coined Hard-Edge Abstraction because they needed a name for a show linking Lorser Feitelson, John McClaughlin, and Karl Benjamin—all California artists with a preference for sharpness and clarity. The term Light and Space emerged similarly from a group exhibition’s title. Many of these schools consisted mostly of men (Selz and Langser notably left female hard-edger Helen Lundeberg out of their exhibition); the catch-all Feminist Art Movement being the exception.

Moon, laub, and Love

Catherine Wagley, April 3, 2016

It was early afternoon on the last Saturday in January when artists Jennifer Moon and laub, newly lovers and collaborators, maneuvered an odd contraption across the porch of a fake old-Western house. Never meant for real inhabitants, the house belongs to Paramount Ranch, a town built as a movie set. The artists’ contraption consisted of, among other things, green and yellow glass tubes, a hamster cage, a wooden stand and a hand-drawn sign that read: “Donate $1 to the Revolution.” Moon has been planning the Revolution, with various degrees of dedication, for years. laub (who always writes his name in lowercase letters) has been involved since the two artists met in July 2015 (“I’m in the Revolution,” laub apparently told Moon—a perfect pick-up line).[1] Once situated on the porch, laub would take out a banjo. Moon would lecture, wearing the same black, sleeveless dress and shiny fanny pack she’s worn in other recent performances.