Glenn Ligon at Thomas Dane

Typically for me and disappointingly for you I went to see the excellent Glenn Ligon show at Thomas Dane the day before it finishes. It's a small show consisting of one room with a film-transferred-to-video projection; a larger room with a single large scale neon light and a corridor space with two small neons and three drawings made of oil stick, coaldust and gesso on paper. The central piece and the one that offers the most clues is 'The Death of Tom', the 24 minute long video set to a jazz piano soundtrack. It's based on the final scene from Uncle Tom's Cabin, Edwin S. Porter's 14 minute silent made for the Thomas A. Edison studio in 1903. Ligon had set out to recreate Tom's death scene where Tom lies on the floor of the woodshed while visions of the future pass over his head. However, after the film was processed the images were both blurred and degraded but Ligon, liking the chance effect pressed on and transferred the 16mm film to video and added a commissioned score by pianist Jason Moran based on the vaudeville song 'Nobody'. The video is very dark, an all-black screen interspersed with flashes of light, so dark in fact that there's a real likelihood of falling over the viewing bench in the middle of the floor. What could be pure visual abstraction is held together by Jason Moran's plaintive soundtrack and the darkness of the room becomes a place for contemplation of what the gallery notes, quite correctly, call 'unfinished business'.

Arriving in New York..

Arriving in America properly was delayed by the zealousness of the US Immigration service who decided to send me into a small over crowded room to await review. From out flight there was only a black man with dreadlocks, a white guy who turned out to be an actuary and me. Most of the people in the room seemed to be older ladies from Eastern Europe who shared hairstyles and taste in clothes with my mother-in-law. My wife who retained the right to wait with me while I was reviewed said it was probably because in my passport photo I look a) very dark-skinned and b) more importantly, like a serious jihadist. I can kinda see what she means by the photo but I suspect it was the fumes from the unlikely cocktail of beer, wines red and white, bloody mary, beer and brandy that I unwittingly breathed all over the immigration lady while I was being electronically finger-printed that set the alarm bells ringing. The room reminded me most of the dole office in Birmingham where I used to sign on as a teenager. But here they had guns and were more smartly turned out. They seemed to really buy into the idea that they're protecting the homeland. Anyway, once they'd reviewed my case I was allowed to leave without questioning so I never found out what the problem was.
The thing that I noticed first is that Yellow taxis don't look like they used to - but it is 18 years since I last came to New York. Instead of the menacing death machines of Travis Bickle they look like a cab would in a Disney film.

Things done so far: ate in the diner round the corner (twice); hung out in Central Park (twice); Frick collection (twice - once to see in they had cafe only); tea from place on corner (twice); Bloomingdales; Pylones; walked around a lot.
I kept seeing the Frick in NY's best kept secret-type lists so it obviously isn't that much of a secret. It is an amazing collection amassed at the start of the 20th century by old man Frick (aka "The most hated man in America"). For your money ($15) you get an amazing Bellini, an amazing Duccio, Cimabue, a couple of very good El Grecos, two excellent Holbeins, a couple of Titians, a very nice Ingres, a great Velazquez and others I've forgotten.

Richard Prince at the Serpentine

In keeping with tradition we go to see a show that's been on for months on the final weekend. I love Richard Prince but the show is disappointing. There isn't enough work for a start and what's in there is pretty patchy and tries to explain the Prince phenomena within the traditional language of art production, namely a selection of different pieces from different bodies of work. I saw some of the nurse paintings at Sadie Coles in 2003 as well as the earlier Publicities and one of the things that struck me is Prince isn't simply about appropriation but about serial appropriation. He doesn't just borrow something the once, he borrows it over and over again which makes the impact all the greater. Publicities in particular is for me an archetypal Prince show - he does almost nothing that sits in the realm of what we still think an artist does: he chooses some pictures from his own stash, has them framed and in a few cases embellishes them with (almost certainly faked) celebrity autographs. This isn't to say that there isn't an acceptable face to Richard Prince - he paints as well as anyone and there's a reassuring intelligence at work - it's just that this isn't the most interesting one.

You dig the tunnel I'll hide the soil: White Cube

You dig the tunnel I'll hide the soil: White Cube
Originally uploaded by Catfunt

I always imagine I'll write long lyrical posts like Andrew or Steve. In joyful anticipation I put the words, page and images together while riding the big bus from home down to Bethnal Green or Hackney, foolishly imagining I'll have the time at work to put these imaginings together. The reality is this, a picture by Harland Miller from the show he co-curated at White Cube and instead of poetry a series of bullet points:

The show's based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe

It's in the basement of Shoredtich Town Hall as well as White Cube.

The Town Hall stuff is better.

At first I thought having Poe in a dusty disused basement was too twee for Poe's work. Actually it gets the humour pretty well.

The best work in the show is funny. The worst overly gothic.

I once got a taxi in the 'seventies back to Chantry Point where I lived when I was very drunk. The taxi driver, a bitter bitter man, whose wife left him while he was in hospital had memorised the complete work of Poe while he lay there, wifeless and recovering. He said "It's what kept me sane" as he gripped my hand through the small money hole in the glass partition. He patently wasn't sane and had lost the plot a long time ago. He insisted on reciting the poems as proof of his feat. I remember he did The Raven and Lenore. He recited them at high-speed in a flat monotone like someone reciting the times tables. I've always imagined setting up an audio book label where cab drivers read the world's greatest literary works in a gruff "If I had that Ken Livingstone in here I'd give him a piece of my mind" monotone.

What do you do in the Studio?

 I was hanging around the studio the other day and decided to photograph the most recent work. I'm not sure even if this is that recent - I just haven't been there that much this year. I'll post some more on Flickr when I get round to it.

Louise Bourgeois: Le Suicide Threat

Louise Bourgeois: Le Suicide Threat
Originally uploaded by Catfunt

Louise Bourgeois at Tate Modern, October 2007. This one's called "Le Suicide Threat" and it's one of my favourite pieces in what is an excellent show. The show covers Bourgeois's painting, drawing, sculpture and installations in a career that covers most of the 20th century. Bourgeois's like Picasso but more relevant and less celebrated.

RCA show in the park

RCA show in the park
Originally uploaded by Catfunt

Went to see the Royal College Show on Wednesday which was largely excellent and in both the college buildings and a giant tent they'd constructed across the road in the park. Security wasn't up to the high sartorial standards of the Gagosian earlier in the week and was quite frankly casual at best. More like off duty coppers than Prada shop assistants. Lots of interesting things in product design (a stove top tandoor oven, multi-function door handles); car design (wooden structured car with low carbon footprint) and some decent painting and photography. Two things that stand out are Bianca Brunner's photos of a wooden structure in the forest which won some award that Tom Hunter adjudicated and Michiko Nitta's Extreme Green Guerillas Messaging which postulated using migrating RFID-tagged animals (birds and fish mostly) as a covert messaging system between Green Guerilla cells and also as an alternative to the postal service. Cost is detemined by speed (big fish are more expensive than slow small fish) and reliability (sardines are very cheap to use but very unreliable apparently).

Popeye: Jeff Koons at the Gagosian, Davies Street

Jeff Koons at the Gagosian, Davies Street
Originally uploaded by Catfunt

Friday: I figured as I was going into town to meet Yol anyway (combined with the guilt of having a weekly travelcard that hadn't been used enough) I went down Davies Street (by Bond Street) to the Gagosian's central London haunt to see one half of the current Jeff Koons show. I used to really like the old site, just round the corner from Sadie Coles HQ. It was a great space, big upstairs with a smaller more intimate space in the basement, the whole thing tucked away off Regent Street.

Davies Street is completely different, not so much a gallery as a shop window, albeit a very swanky Bond Street affair with a black suited bouncer and no signs of the usual gallery paraphernalia: posh bird dressed in a black cocktail dress IMing her mates on last years iMac, answering phone with posh voice (that's what she's there for) and shuffling expensive catalogues around while owner patronises some weirdly dressed Eurotrash millionaire in pointy shoes. Here, the office is hidden behind a concealed door and from what I could see not much happens back there.

I liked it, I like the idea of being able to see the whole show without entering the gallery, I particularly like the idea of spotting the piece you need for your Paris/London/New York/LA home while heading up to Claridges for cocktails (of course you'll be in your chauffered Lexus/Merc/Beemer so the work had better be BIG so you can see it at speed through tinted glass - somehow I find it more honest.

But onto the work...

I really liked the work. I've always liked Jeff Koons, or at least the idea of Koons. There's always been something relentlessly anti-art in his work and the modes of production. These are pieces untouched by the artist or any kind of gestural idea of art that dominates the western tradition. It's like Duchamp without the irony or the cleverness, art stripped of its artiness but packed full of artifice. Looking at the work becomes a game of wondering what they're made of (aluminium in this case) which is much more interesting than looking at a Damien Hirst and wondering why he bothered. They're very tactile pieces - you want to touch them to see what they're made off (as I mentioned) but also to see if they're heavy or hollow, hard or soft and how they're coloured so convincingly (they do look like inflatable rubber). Strangely it's not that different to looking at a Bonnard or Monet, Manet or Velasquez in that there is a sense of seeing something that has been pulled out of nothing, an image in their case (and an idea in Koons;) that is vibrant and engaging but decidedly not real.


Lobster pic here.