Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation

The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati is a contemporary art museum based upon the ideas of its founder, Donald Judd. The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public permanent large-scale installations by a limited number of artists located in Marfa, Texas. The emphasis is on works in which art and the surrounding landscape are inextricably linked. As Judd wrote in the foundation’s catalogue:

It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum­iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place.

The Chinati Foundation is located on 340 acres of land on the site of former Fort D.A. Russell in Marfa, Texas. Construction and installation at the site began in 1979 with initial assistance from the Dia Art Foundation in New York. The Chinati Foundation opened to the public in 1986 as an independent, non–profit, publicly funded institution. Chinati was originally conceived to exhibit the work of Donald Judd, John Chamberlain and Dan Flavin. The collection has since been expanded to include work by a limited number of other artists. Today the collection on permanent view consists of 15 outdoor concrete works by Donald Judd, 100 aluminum works by Judd housed in two converted artillery sheds, 25 sculptures by John Chamberlain, and an installation by Dan Flavin occupying six former army barracks. Also on view are pieces by Carl Andre, Ingólfur Arnarsson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, David Rabinowitch, and John Wesley. Each artist’s work is installed in a separate building on the museum’s grounds. Temporary exhibitions feature modern and contemporary art of diverse media.

The Chinati Foundation Online
Artnet.com – Donald Judd

Nov 29, 2005

Ingo Maurer's Snowflake

Ingo Maurer is well-known in the world for his unmistakable lighting fixtures: designs with strong emotional resonances and a seemingly universal appeal. Maurer, trained as a typographer and graphic designer, has long been fascinated by the bare light bulb. In 1966 he designed his first lighting fixture, titled "Bulb", which was, in fact, a bulb within a bulb. The bulb remains a recurrent theme in Maurer's work, as does paper, which Maurer considers the most becoming of all materials.

This year Ingo Maurer designed a Unicef Crystal Snowflake with Baccarat crystal.

Upon arrival in New York City on the weekend of November 19, the fixture will be suspended above the intersection of 5th Avenue and 57th Street and anchored by four of New York's most prestigious retailers: Tiffany & Co.; LVMH & Louis Vuitton; Bergdorf Goodman; and The Crown Building. It will be lit on November 28 during an outdoor ceremony open to the general public.

Ingo-maurer.com
Unicef Article

Nov 28, 2005

Issey Miyake

Miyake was born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1938. He established the Miyake Design Studio in 1970 and started to show his line at the Paris Collections in 1973. Miyake's basic tenets for making clothes has always been the idea of creating a garment from 'one piece of cloth', and the exploration of the space between the human body and the cloth that covers it. His approach to design has always been to strike a consistent balance between tradition and innovation, handcrafts and new technology.

PLEATS PLEASE, which was born in 1993, is a radical but eminently practical and universal form of contemporary clothing that combines technology, functionality and beauty. PLEATS PLEASE is exhibited at the Pompidou Center, Paris as the firstexample of clothing design, currently on view as part of an exhibitionentitled: BIG BANG: Destruction et Creation dans l'art du XX Siecle show.

In 1998, Miyake embarked upon a new project called A-POC (A Piece of Cloth) with Dai Fujiwara and a team of young designers. He is challenging the way in which clothing is made using new process that harnesses computer technology to industrial knitting or weaving machines to create clothing beginning with a single piece of thread. Miyake established the Miyake Issey Foundation with the authorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, in February of 2004.

Issey Miyake
Pleats Please Collection

Nov 27, 2005

Egon Schiele at Neue

On view Oct 21, 2005 through Feb 20, 2006
Egon Schiele was born June 12, 1890, in Tulln, Austria. After attending school in Krems and Klosterneuburg, he enrolled in the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna in 1906. Here he studied painting and drawing but was frustrated by the school’s conservatism. In 1907, he met Gustav Klimt, who encouraged him and influenced his work. Schiele left the Akademie in 1909 and founded the Neukunstgruppe with other dissatisfied students. Upon Klimt’s invitation, Schiele exhibited at the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau, where he encountered the work of Edvard Munch, Jan Toroop, Vincent van Gogh, and others. On the occasion of the first exhibition of the Neukunstgruppe in 1909 at the Piska Salon, Vienna, Schiele met the art critic and writer Arthur Roessler, who befriended him and wrote admiringly of his work. In 1910, he began a long friendship with the collector Heinrich Benesch. By this time, Schiele had developed a personal expressionist portrait and landscape style and was receiving a number of portrait commissions from the Viennese intelligentsia.

Seeking isolation, Schiele left Vienna in 1911 to live in several small villages; he concentrated increasingly on self-portraits and allegories of life, death, and sex and produced erotic watercolors. In 1912, he was arrested for “immortality” and “seduction”; during his 24-day imprisonment, he executed a number of poignant watercolors and drawings. Schiele participated in various group exhibitions, including those of the Neukunstgruppe in Prague in 1910 and Budapest in 1912; the Sonderbund, Cologne, in 1912; and several Secession shows in Munich, beginning in 1911. In 1913, the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich, mounted Schiele’s first solo show. A solo exhibition of his work took place in Paris in 1914. The following year, Schiele married Edith Harms and was drafted into the Austrian army. He painted prolifically and continued to exhibit during his military service. His solo show at the Vienna Secession of 1918 brought him critical acclaim and financial success. He died several months later in Vienna, at age 28, on October 31, 1918, a victim of influenza, which had claimed his wife three days earlier.

Neue Galerie

Nov 26, 2005

Fernando and Humberto Campana

05 Degrees of Separation
Presented by Moss Gallery, in conjunction with design.05 Miami
On view December 1-5, 2005

Establishing within the 16,000 foot space 5 distinct "theatrical zones", each containing numerous "stages" of varying dimension, Moss will present the work of 5 design artists/studios: "XXXL, Monumental work" by Gaetano Pesce (USA/Italy), special studio pieces from the "Sushi" and "Banquette" series by Fernando and Humberto Campana (Brazil), Tord Boontje's (France) one-off studio pieces and "couture" pieces created with fashion designer Alexander McQueen, the limited-edition, prototypical stereolithography "C2" chair by Patrick Jouin (France), and 14 one-off "burned" iconic classics from Carlo Molino, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Renee MacIntosh, Charles and Ray Eames, and Achille Castiglioni, from the evolving work entitled "Where There's Smoke", created by Dutch artist Maarten Baas.

The exhibition will be open for the duration of design.05 & Art Basel Miami Beach and all pieces are made available for sale.

Design.05 Miami
Sponsored by Moss
Campana Interview
Campana official website

Nov 25, 2005

SAFE: MoMA

On view October 16, 2005 through January 2, 2006 at the Moma in New York City
SAFE: Design Takes On Risk, the first major design exhibition at MoMA since its reopening in November 2004, presents more than 300 contemporary products and prototypes designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances, respond to emergencies, ensure clarity of information, and provide a sense of comfort and security. These objects address the spectrum of human fears and worries, from the most mundane to the most exceptional, from the dread of darkness and loneliness to the threat of earthquakes and terrorist attacks.

The exhibition covers all forms of design, from manufactured products to information architecture. Featured products include refugee shelters, demining equipment, baby strollers, and protective sports gear. Designers are trained to balance risk with protection and to mediate between disruptive change and normalcy; good design goes hand in hand with personal needs, providing protection and security without sacrificing innovation and invention. SAFE redirects the pursuit of beauty toward the appreciation of economy of function and technology.

Organized by Paola Antonelli, Curator, and Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.

Moma.org – Safe Exhibition
Momastore.org – Safe Exhibition Catalog

Nov 24, 2005

On view Nov 10, 2005 through Feb 05, 2006 at the Whitney Museum in New York City

The Art of Richard Tuttle is the first full-scale museum retrospective spanning the nearly forty-year career of this leading American artist of the post-minimalist generation. Respecting Tuttle’s practice of working in series, the exhibition covers some fifteen bodies of work from the mid-1960s to the present that both blur and enhance the categories of sculpture, installation, painting, works on paper, and artist books.

The exhibition was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A national tour will include stops in major American cities through the summer of 2007.

Whitney Museum
Sperone Westwater
San Francisco Musuem of Modern Art – Tuttle preview

Nov 23, 2005