Intervention

Return to the White Cube

2010-04-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

re:View closed this past Saturday, and on Monday de-installation began. Myself and the other four students joined the preparators and curator of the museum and helped to take it all down. Jayme took down her wall text, making sure to save the photos of “Tom,” Raylene was busy putting many many paintings back into real storage, David hoarded all of his wall quotes, wall text, and labels, Lauren ejected her DVD…Actually, Lauren did a lot more than that, and was pretty fierce when it came to wielding a drill; she helped to removed the mountings that the Jinks Room murals had been attached to.

I was charged with the task of removing my “blueprint” from the Center Gallery’s floor. What had taken two semesters to research, develop and execute, was removed and gone within five minutes. The painted plastic sheets were ripped off the floor and were crumpled into a big heap.

Taking down our individual projects wasn’t the only thing that needed to be done; we also took down all of the wall text from re:View and from Four Rooms and a View, and also took down our big blue title.

What did we do with all of this trash? Jayme turned it into a Lady-Gaga-inspired outfit, that she plans on wearing out this weekend in Hollywood.—Just kidding. After prancing around with all the discarded plastic Jayme tossed it.

Some people asked me if I was going to try and save any of the silhouettes, m response was that my project was really about expanding the known knowledge about the murals. All of the expanded research will be added to the museums file, and will be preserved there. So saving the plastic sheets wasn’t really a priority of the project for me, so much as a creative way to display my research.

The museum galleries have once again been returned to the white boxes. The next thing to go on display in the Fisher is the SOFA show, which will showcase works from students in the Roski School of Fine Art. However one things remains from re:View, and will stay on view until fall. Susan Silton’s work, which was commissioned for re:View still adorns the facade of the Fisher. It reminds us, the student-curators of our project, and welcomes visitors into the museum, and asks them to question what they are seeing.

- Francisco Rosas

Reconsider: On my reading list

2010-04-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

Over the past week I have been reading Patti Smith’s recently published memoir Just Kids about her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and her life in New York during the late 60s through the 1970s. Smith’s account of Mapplethorpe and their simultaneous pursuits in art, poetry and rock ’n’ roll is incredibly charming. I’m enthralled with everything she has to say—I love Patti. But aside from my personal infatuation, throughout the book Smith discusses the state of photography in the 1970s, recounted Mapplethorpe’s own movement toward the medium, deeply indebted to his relationship with curator and collector Sam Wagstaff, his patron and lover. Here Smith recanting her trips with Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe to purchase photographs, and how Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe’s personal interests in photography informed each other’s pursuits:

The three of us would scour Book Row, the dusty secondhand bookstores that once lined Fourth Avenue. Robert would go through boxes of old postcards, stereo cards, and tintypes carefully to find a gem. Sam, impatient, and not impeded by cost, would simply buy the whole box. I would stand aside listening to them argue. It sounded very familiar.

Scouting bookstores was one of my specialties. In rare instances, I would root out a desirable Victorian cabinet card, or an important portfolio of turn-of-the-century cathedrals, and on one lucky excursion, an overlooked Cameron. It was on the cusp of collecting photography, the last period where one could find a bargain. It was till possible to come upon gravure prints of large-format field photographs by Edward Curtis. Sam was taken with the beauty and the historical value of these photographs of the North American Indian, and acquired several volumes. Later, as we sat on the floor looking at them, in his large empty apartment flooded with natural light, we were impressed not only by the images but by the process. Sam would feel the edge of the photograph between his thumb and forefingers. “There’s something about the paper,” he would say.

Consumed by his new passion, Sam haunted auction houses, often traveling across the sea to acquire a specific photograph. Robert accompanied him on these expeditions, and was sometimes able to influence Sam’s choice of images. In this way, Robert could personally examine the photographs of artists he admired, from Nadar to Irving Penn.

Robert urged Sam just as he had John McKendry [then curator of photography at the Metropolitan] to use his position to elevate photography’s place in the art world. In turn, both men encouraged Robert to commit to photography as his primary form of expression. Sam, at first curious, if not skeptical, had now fully embraced the concept and was spending a small fortune building what would become one of the most important photography collections in America.

Patti Smith, Just Kids (2010)

And the Getty would purchases Wagstaff’s collection in 1984, the first major acquisition of photography by the institution, solidifying their committing to collecting the medium as well as securing photography as an artistic pursuit. Mapplethorpe’s own practice as a photographer would similarly solidity the medium as a museum worthy enterprise, even as it would also become a lightening rod of the 80’s “culture wars” (see Douglas Crimp’s “Appropriating Appropriation” in On the Museum’s Ruins and Richard Meyer’s Outlaw Representation). What I was most interested in by posting this section of Smith’s memoir is the personal recollection of collecting photographs—that they were “found” in used bookstores, sandwiched between the dusty pages of forgotten volumes of photographic land surveys, anthropological studies, and tourist guides. It is pertinent to consider that collections of photography were not amassed over a long period of time, like museums acquire the bulk of their objects, but instead many of the important photo collections of the 20^th century were assembled relatively quickly in bulk, peaking in the 1970s. Museum exhibitions of photography do not signal the prior life of images Smith recalls.

Similarly, Reconsider also popped up in another reading this week. Over the past year I have also been working on an undergraduate thesis about Allen Ruppersberg’s 23 and 24 Pieces, two artist books Ruppersberg completed in 1969 and 71, specifically considering them in relation to Ruppersberg’s interest in Los Angeles in the late 60s/early 70s. Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, published in 1971, is an important text I am discussing in relation to Ruppersberg work, as it was at the time one of the most engaged accounts of post-war L.A., discussing the city a particular urban environment with is own positive attributes. Banham’s L.A. is not incomprehensible sprawl or the dystopic future of America, as most urbanists discussed the city throughout the 60s.

It is fascinating to me that Banham continually looks to visual artists throughout his account of L.A.: David Hockney’s A Big Splash (1968) appears on the cover and Ed Ruscha’s Hollywood (1968) is similarly printed in the book’s conclusion. Also, Banham interviewed Ruscha in a 1973 made-for-TV documentary, Reyner Banham Love’s Los Angeles, in which he also visiting the studio of a Venice artist making “finish-fetish” “L.A. Cool” plastic sculptures. For Banham, the cool, easy-going, Pop sensibly of artists such as Ruscha and Hockney is indicative of the city itself.

I recently noticed that, in addition to reprinting Ruscha’s Hollywood painting, Banham also reprints Ruscha’s images from Thirty-four Parking Lots in Los Angeles, published the same year as Banham’s book, as examples of synonymous L.A. spaces, and does not treat them as “art” images. Ruscha is only attributed as the photographer in the image credits, where his painting is presented as a work of art. Thus, Ruscha’s parking lot pictures are utilized as informative images about L.A., not even “quasi-art photography.” That Ruscha’s parking lot photographs moved so freely between art and information demonstrates the fluidity photography enjoyed at this moment.

Consider also that simultaneously, photography’s proto-history was being assembled—salvaged from used bookstores by Sam, Robert, Patti and others. While Smith identifies the last moments before thorough institutionalization of photography, past and present, Ruscha’s pictures still relished in an interchangeable statue. While the acute formalism of Mapplethorpe’s work actively aspired the status of high-art, Ruscha’s deskilled photography would not escape the institution; these books are commonly displayed in art exhibitions today. Yet, these diverge history of the medium overlap, and explain the current position of photograph in museums and the wider cultural sphere.

-David Evans Frantz

Reconsider: Three for a dollar

2010-04-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

The last Reconsider post discussed the unease with which the intervention displays non-art photography within a museum space given the medium’s historically problematic reception within art institutions. It did not however discuss photography in a broad sense, as a popular medium that has structured our understanding of history, others and ourselves, or photography as a ritualized mode of understanding in modern society. This is after all a vital facet of the intervention: that depicting the American landscape was radically altered through the photographic image—that the ability to capture, reproduce or purchase an image with considerable ease initiated a new understanding of the land in American society, one alternate to but equally embedded within the visual language of an early moment, being painting. In considering the scope of the “image-world” photography produced (here specifically related to the American landscape and the West), the twenty-one images displayed in Reconsider are not significant in themselves, through there are certainly captivating photographs. What I am interested in is the picture as examples of the vast amount of photographic images produced of the West at the turn of the century, many of which are now lost. These twenty-one images, produced for commercial, tourist or sentimental reasons, were saved and are the fragments of cultural production that have survived.

Written on back: "32"

Still, little is known of each image specifically: other than what is scribbled on the back, and a general history of the collection in which the photographs were amassed, there is little “knowledge” related to these images, unlike the knowledge that is built up around art objects. We can “read” the information within the image, however that only goes so far. Thus, at least for me, there is an aura of mystery around these photographs—always something within that is perplexing, wondrous, unattainable, yet still close—which is certainly related to my own projection onto the past. Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography (1973): “It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia.” Nostalgia in the widest sense: as something pervasive within cultural consciousness—a general fascination with the past and its loss.

Written on back: “I should of took the turn out of my mouth. The other guy is Penn. He looks like Dick Dal Pozzo don’t you think.”

Here are seven pictures. They are not shown in the intervention. I purchased the images from a vendor at a flea market held in the parking lot of Fairfax High School who has amassed many boxes of unsorted photographs and sells them image by image, three for a dollar. The pictures are the left-overs of photography democratized (thank you Kodak!), images that once had personal significance but have lost their worldly connections. It is safe to assume these images once had sentimental meaning, but their possessor lost or gave up the memory, or at least its object. I have “saved” them, at least for a while.

Written on back: "Grandma Beelie"

Written on back: “April 7, 1946 / Foggia, Italy / Didn’t come out so hi.”

I’m not entirely sure what it means to possess sentimental images that you hold no sentiment to. It’s almost perverse: to be enamored with objects you know were endowed with meaning yet you cannot assess it. Thus, it is with both a peculiar fascination and unease that I make these images public. They were (are?) after all personal objects. It’s a bizarre act of exhibitionism to show them—to make them public—yet this is what the intervention does in a way. These pictures simply didn’t end up an archive. I’m not certain how I would/will feel if/when my own personal photographs are dumped at a flea market and purchased one-by-one by strangers. Of course this assumes I print out my pictures, which most people don’t anymore. And how would I feel about having my image exhibited as an anonymous object? Miss Loomis, seen standing on Glacier Point, was someone after all. And so is/was Kelly, shown here on Halloween in 1975.

Written on back: “Kelly / Halloween / 1975”

Even if Reconsider seeks to present non-art objects in order to reinterpret works of art, it partly works only because the archival images presented have lost a facet of their original meaning, the personal, and have been posited to hold something greater, something about America or the West or continental expansion. They hold “history.” These seven pictures are abandon things. I am not really sure what to make of them, yet they are still interesting to me, simply as images in themselves. Please let me know if you recognize anyone.

-David Evans Frantz

"The Jinks Room, Remembered" Now Playing @ Fisher!

2010-04-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

The final cut of the Jinks room documentary written by myself and directed by Grace Talice Lee is now on display at the Fisher Museum. The film entitled "The Jinks Room, Remembered" features six alumni of the Anoakia School (the original location of the murals). The project investigates memory and film documentation as a contemporary means of writing art history, and sheds light on the significant relationship between work and viewer, which is an important tool in gaining greater understanding of a work of art. Please come visit our show, running until the 17th of April.

Chronicle of Higher Education

2010-04-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece today about re:View: "Sorry, Museum: This Is For Your Own Good." Francisco, Jayme and Richard were quoted:

"In this case, the class really has become the exhibition. There's a certain kind of authority that you give up to the students. I love that, and it's also strange." - Richard Meyer

Band Branding

2010-04-05T00:55:00.001-07:00

In addition to being an Art History major, I am a Public Relations major at the USC Annenberg School. When this class began, we were told that we, the student-curators, would be overseeing all aspects of this intervention project; this included publications and public relations. (Below: Exhibition Brochure with, and without the "bellyband.")

The publication that we created for re:View is an exhibition brochure, one that is exactly the same size as the existing brochure for Four Rooms and a View. We bound the two exhibition brochures together using a strip of paper called a "belly band."

On the front of the belly band is Susan Silton's work that was commissioned specifically for re:View, and that now hangs on the Exposition-side of the Fisher Museum. Once this band is removed the two brochures come apart and the title for re:View is revealed. (Below: the exterior and interior of the belly band.)

On the exterior of the belly band are the titles of the five projects that were developed for re:View: Reconstruct, Remember, Reconsider, Reproduce and Retrieve. The title are in white text on a blue background. This color of blue, and the idea of the band became elements of the branding for the intervention. (Below: a walltext designed for re:View.)The wall panels that were added to the museum for the intervention are distinguishable from those that remain from Four Rooms and a View because of their distinctive blue bands across the top of each panel. We also decided to intervene with the main title of the permanent collection exhibition; we designed a custom vinyl title for re:View that covers (but not completely) the title from Four Rooms and a View, and again uses the idea of the band.

Finally we extended this idea of band-branding outside the museum on posters in several locations. The concept was to create a subtle and savvy method to distinguish our student-curated intervention from the permanent collection show. (Below: posters outside the Fisher Museum.)

- Francisco Rosas

Retrieve: The Resulting Display

2010-04-05T00:40:00.000-07:00

The transformation of the Quinn Wing is now complete, and will be on view through April 17. The once-virtually empty space now holds 35 landscapes in a storage-like display; the works include drawings, paintings and prints spanning from the 17th-21st centuries, some in greater condition than others, and many by relatively unknown (or even just unknown) artists. Here's just a glimpse of how things have changed:

--Raylene Galarze

Shots from the Opening Reception

2010-03-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

Some pictures of the student-curators with their projects at the opening reception for re:View, which happened this past Saturday. The intervention will be up until April 17; admission is FREE.

Los Angeles Times article

2010-03-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

Amazing piece about the exhibition in the Los Angeles Times this morning! Gerrick Kennedy, a Times' reporter, spent a great deal of time at the Fisher Museum during the actual "interventions," talking to student-curators, the professors and artist Susan Silton -- and his article is a thoughtful and well-informed look at the project and its place within the curatorial world. Some choice quotes:

"We wanted them to develop a constant consciousness that everything you see in museums is choreographed." -- Richard Meyer

"Going into the class it felt really experimental. . . . I didn't know anything about curating. It's an art form within itself." - Jayme Wilson

Read the full article here on the Los Angeles Times Web site.

re:View Installation Complete

2010-03-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

The wall text is up, and we're windex-ing the display cases.

Throughout re:View there is a consistent presence of this color of blue, so that the interventions can be easily identified.

The wall labels for re:View have a similar blue band across them, and the intervention brochure has a band around it too. Look for an update about the design of the brochure next week.

re:View open tomorrow!

- Francisco Rosas

TOMORROW: "Museum of Ideas"

2010-03-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

WHAT: The Contemporary Project and the USC International Museum Institute present a symposium exploring the value of placing ideas -- as well as art objects -- on public display. Leading thinkers in contemporary art and curatorial practice will construct a free, one-day-only "Museum of Ideas" at USC.

ALSO: "Museum of Ideas" coincides with the opening of re:View. A free lunch reception and curator-led tours will take place between 1 and 3 p.m. at the Fisher Museum.

WHO:
• Julie Ault, artist and author
• Carol Duncan, art historian and critic
• Helen Molesworth, chief curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
• Connie Wolf, director and CEO, Contemporary Jewish Museum

Moderated by Selma Holo, Richard Meyer and Britt Salvesen, Department Head and Curator of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography and Department Head and Curator of Prints and Drawings, LACMA.

More info here. Hope you can make it!

Reconstruction: Wall stencils

2010-03-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

The show opens tomorrow!

Reconstruction: Painting

2010-03-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

Lauren and Jayme filling in outlines of jesters and leprechauns on the floor of the gallery.

Retrieve: New Room, New Meanings

2010-03-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

Spring break has just come to a close, and it’s now the final week before re:View opens. Though we’ve been progressing well with the storage display, I have a bit left to accomplish…

Here’s what was settled in the past week: finishing the fabric “wall,” spray painting the “metal racks,” (which, many cans later, are now a very convincing silver), gathering more accurate dimensions of the space, and finalizing my layout of the paintings.

I had to figure out how/where each piece would fit together within the wall décor, and to attempt to create a balanced display—by no means an easy task, and add to that the fact that my physical layout on paper was not to scale!

Now to retrieve each work from storage and hang the pieces where I’ve planned, beginning today: nine works have been freed from storage, one at a time, and are now propped against the walls of our newly constructed “storage,” awaiting their proper display. The very presence of color instantly transformed the white cube, so I anxiously await the finished result!

This entire process has given me a lot to think about. I think about my goal in making this display a “de-curation.” In recreating storage I tried not to put too much of an aesthetic eye toward deciding which painting will hang next to which. Still, the display could never have been executed without a plan—not only must everything fit together, but it seems more striking if they contrast one another.
I also think about my own relationship to these stored artworks. Since I’ve been working so closely with the permanent collection, the Art feels less…inaccessible? I’m not sure if this is quite the right word, so I’ll try again: It’s a rare experience to be able to raid storage, to physically handle the ‘sacred’ artwork (in white gloves), to truly see each piece originate from the same place, only to garner ‘meaning’ or ‘importance’ once inside the museum.
As these works travel a very short distance from the storage room into Quinn Wing, it’s amazing to think how their meanings will change/evolve upon inclusion in the exhibition. On the eve of the public display of my chosen landscapes, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve become a part of their story.
--Raylene Galarze

Retrieve: White glove treatment

2010-03-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

Raylene -- rocking white gloves -- as she carries paintings from the storage room to the gallery.

Hanging the banner

2010-03-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

Susan Silton's banner commissioned for the show went up today, outside the Fisher Museum facing Exposition Blvd. and the Natural History Museum. Frankie was a natural on the ladder.

Reproduce: In the gallery

2010-03-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

Top: Jayme. Bottom, from left: Richard, Selma, Jayme and David. The hand-painted reproduction of Return to the Fold by Charles Emile Jacque (unframed, next to the 19th-century original) was painted from the Norton Simon Museum's version of the Jacque painting, and there's a major difference: it's missing a chicken.

Reconsider: Display Cases

2010-03-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

David (red hoodie) in the Fisher Museum courtyard building display cases. From his last post:

". . . the photographs will be shown in display cases, laid flat, positioned throughout the gallery. While they are still “under-glass” (actually plexi), it is my hope that viewing them off the walls, not framed as singular works, will signal their alternate existence as objects of tourism and commerce verse their confusion as “art.”"

Beginning Reconstruction

2010-03-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Now that I had images of all of the mural segments from The Jinks Room, it was time to assemble them in the correct order. This meant more than just organizing the segments from left to right; reconstructing the room meant knowing where columns, doorways, windows, and a large fireplace were located in the room.

I had seen some archive photographs of the murals in situ, but could not determine definitely the correct arrangement of the room. That was until I went through the museum files on The Jinks Room again.

I found in a conservation report (which was written before the murals were removed from Anoakia) a detailed list of which mural segments were located on which walls.

North Wall:

Monk with Jester & Leprechaun, Jester & Leprechaun, Procession with Couples

East Wall:

Jester, Procession with Reluctant Cat

South Wall:

Feast with Friar, Dance with the Fairy Queen, Procession with Reluctant Monk
(segments separated by columns)

On the west wall there was only one segment, Jester with Baton, which seemed strange to me because if there was only one segment on this wall that meant there was a lot of empty wall space. But further on in the conservation report it said that the west wall was mostly made up of windows. This was unexpected since The Jinks Room was located in the basement of the mansion, and I had automatically assumed there wouldn’t be any windows in this room.

Now that I have the correct organization of the mural cycle I can start installing silhouettes of the mural segments in the galleries. Installation started this week!

- Francisco Rosas

Le Monde Blog

2010-03-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

The Le Monde blog "Lunettes Rouges" linked to us and gave us a shout-out in a review of a Master's curatorial student exhibition at the University of Rennes:

"Their colleagues at the University of Southern California are rehanging the museum's collection."

Reconsider: Photographs In (and Out) of the Museum

2010-03-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

This intervention is concerned with how America chose to depict the national landscape across alternate historical moments. In addition to displaying artist books by Ed Ruscha (see previous post), late 19^th and early 20^th century photography will be exhibited from the California Historical Society archive in Special Collections at the USC Doheny Memorial Library. Specifically, the majority of images are from an extensive photography collection within the CHS’s holdings assembled between 1860 and 1930 by relatively unknown photographer C. C. Pierce.

The collection includes images taken by Pierce but also numerous works by other western photographers. Some of the most well known images within the collection to be shown in the intervention are by George Fiske, whose photographs of Yosemite were widely distributed tourist items sold in the national park at the end of the 19^th century. In fact, an advertisement for Fiske’s studio was featured in Galen Clark’s 1910 tourist guidebook The Yosemite Valley: its history, characteristic features, and theories regarding its origin. In addition to Pierce and Fiske, the intervention will also utilize images by photographer Adam Dove (who I have been able to find no information on), as well as other anonymously produced pictures.

George Fiske, Galen Clark on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, ca.1900, Special Collections, Doheny Memorial Library

Advertisement for Fiske's Studio in The Yosemite Valley (1910)

The images to be shown are not “art photography” in any contemporary sense. These images were conceived outside the pursuits of art and the museum, and their exhibition within an institutional setting—a space that emphasizes quality, authorship, and aesthetic value—is inherently problematic. This is, of course, a well-investigated discourse of photography; the assimilation of photography into the art museum has been of critical discussion since the 1970s, a reaction to the increasing presence of the photographic image within contemporary art as well as the construction of a pre-history of the medium as an aesthetically oriented “Art,” largely the product of the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Department. (See Martha Rosler’s “Lookers, Buyers, Dealers, and Makers: Thoughts on Audience” and Christopher Phillips’ “The Judgment Seat of Photography”) As extensive photography collections were established in the later half of the 20^th century (at the Getty for example), images not conceived as art were often treated as such; photographs were attributed aesthetic importance in hindsight. This is most clearly evident in the positing of Timothy O’Sullivan stark survey photography as aesthetically modem works worthy of museum exhibition.

Timothy O'Sullivan, Black Canyon, Colorado River from Camp 8, Looking Above from Geological and Geographical Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian, 1873, Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York)

This summary is too simplistic, however it points out the problematic of this intervention: Reconsider presents a collection of photographs within a museum never intended to be understood as art—never intended to be seen through the museum’s frame—and this is a long-standing issue of concern. Thus, the intervention could be misguiding the viewer (with regard to the history of photography) by attempting to reconsider another history (that of the American landscape).

With this in mind, the intervention has made an obvious choice not to frame the images for exhibition. The museum practice of framing photography—placing it under glass and then hanging it on the wall—only intensifies viewing the photographic image in an aestheticizing mode, like one views a painting (not that one could approach a photograph without an aesthetic eye). If this intervention is intended to disrupt standard museum practice, while positing these photographs as objects of distribution intended to show and claim the Western landscape, then treating them as “art” objects would be disingenuous to the project. With that in mind, the photographs will be shown in display cases, laid flat, positioned throughout the gallery. While they are still “under-glass” (actually plexi), it is my hope that viewing them off the walls, not framed as singular works, will signal their alternate existence as objects of tourism and commerce verse their confusion as “art.”

Three women and a boy with an arched Yucca in the Mojave Desert, Antelope Valley, California, ca.1880-1940, anonymous photographer, Special Collections, Doheny Memorial Library

It is also my hope that displaying the images outside “the frame” (not that they could escape the greater frame of the museum) will highlight certain particularizes often suppressed in museum settings. Some of the photographs selected for exhibition clearly show ware as objects of use: some are frayed, bent, or have marks on the print. Some images are printed on different photo papers: while many are on a typical glossy surface, others are one thinner, tinted paper or thick board. Still others show a considerable amount of fading and deterioration.

Similarly, the books by Ed Ruscha also show signs of ware and use. The page creases of Every Building on the Sunset Strip have yellowed. The pages of Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles are close to falling out of the book’s spine. These minor idiosyncrasies, these small marks of use, will be a subtle reminder that the books and photographs had alternate lives prior to entering the library and (for a short while) the museum.

-David Evans Frantz

Reproduce: Mommy, where do Jacques come from?

2010-03-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

Throughout the creative process the location of where our Jacque was being created was quite ambiguous. Most of us had heard horror stories about reproduction paintings being out sourced to China where the artists are treated as...let's just say "starving artists," literally. When we received a biography of our Ocean's Bridge artist we learned that he was from China, leading us to imagine our hand painted masterpiece being conceived in China under sweatshop-like conditions.

However, on the Ocean's Bridge website there is a whole section dedicated to showing the prospective customer "the studio." According to their Web site their studio is "Located at the foot of a mountain yet just 200 yards from the beach, we've 20,000 square feet of studio space spread over three different European-style buildings." The description is supplemented by photographs of lush landscape and beautiful buildings.

I am by no means saying that Ocean's Bridge is one of the reproduction painting sweatshops mentioned above, but when our Jacque arrived this week the return address (Hong Kong, China) did make us question the journey of our Jacque.

Remember: Day one of Filming

2010-03-10T14:42:00.000-08:00

Day one of filming was a success. Five hours of tape, one Kleenex box, and countless memories later, Grace and I managed to wrap filming three of our six interviews for the project.

Marti and Sue, two of our interviewees, were already waiting, snapping photos of themselves in front of the Jinks Room murals in various poses mimicking the figures in the murals. Both brought folders, documents, Anoakia memorabilia, and photographs to share. They each told their respective stories, shared memories and reminisced about different wild things they did together years ago– both on and off the record.

Both told stories about sneaking back into Anoakia after its closure in the 1990s, and both regretted not having a grand sleepover at the mansion, which was believed to have been the home of several legendary ghosts! The interview was an emotional process for both of them – both Marti and Sue shed tears for their nostalgia for Anoakia, and explained how important the school was to them and how they hoped it would carry on in the future through our memories. Both women were wonderful to work with and provided a ton of new information about Anoakia.

Bede, our third interviewee, was a student at Anoakia from the 3rd to the 5th grade. He provided interesting perspective into how his experience of the murals had changed from when he was a child to his current experience as an adult. He was kind and very thoughtful, and we’re also thankful for his help.
By the end of the day, we had a ton of new material to work with and a pretty sound idea of the direction in which to take our film. We’re excited for day two, and will give more updates in the near future. That’s all for now!

Retrieve: Pre-Installation, Pre-Retrieval

2010-03-04T22:40:00.000-08:00

After several weeks of planning the display of storage and searching for the necessary materials, the concept really seems to be coming together. Today, the Quinn Wing is still a white cube; chairs and other materials are taking temporary residence here before we begin installing. Tomorrow should begin the physical intervention...

Attempting to reveal what's inside storage along with the room itself will involve two main things: re-creating faux metal racks on the walls and constructing a partition to shorten the wing. Working with Fisher's Chief Preparator Richard, we were able to find a lightweight barrier fencing to mimic the metal racks on which stored paintings hang. This bright-orange will soon get some much-needed paint treatment!

To shorten the space, we found fabric to serve as a temporary backwall; the plan is to hang some paintings here after it has been put up and reinforced from behind. Hopefully there is enough material...

I'm still working on visualizing the entire layout -- though the first steps will involve these details of construction, soon will come the time for physical retrieval. Along with picking up ordered materials and ensuring the gathering of other supplies, this week has included visiting storage to hand-measure each framed work (everything must fit in the "new" space!). Next up -planning the hanging of paintings!

But before departing to this next stage, I will say that finding the materials initially was not easy -- the fencing in particular was hard to find, and it seemed that waiting on out-of-state shipping might pose unneeded setbacks. Yet, after a little searching, we found everything locally downtown...Just another reminder that L.A. really is our laboratory.

--Raylene Galarze

Reconstruct: Filling in the Missing Pieces

2010-03-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

The Jinks Room mural segments in the Fisher Museum’s collection are only six of the original nine that made up the cycle. The three other segments have remained with the family that donated the segments to USC. Lucky for me some of those mural segments are still in the area.

I was put in touch with Mrs. Mary Regis, the daughter of Lowry B. McCaslin the original donor of the Jinks Room murals to the Fisher Museum. Mrs. Regis is conveniently located in Pasadena, just a short trip north from USC. Never having visited a museum donor before, I was feeling nervous about making a good impression on her. It turns out there was no reason to be nervous; Mrs. Regis invited me very warmly into her home and spoke with me enthusiastically about Anoakia and the Jinks Room.

There on the wall of Mrs. Regis’s sitting room were two Jinks Room segments. One had a single figure of a sinister-looking jester. The other had a jester, a leprechaun and a fairy. This segment was fascinating because the cover for the lightswitches of the room was still attached to it—a reminder that these mural segments were once in a functional room of an estate. And low and behold along with the switch cover, Mrs. Regis also had original light fixtures from the Jinks Room, which were displayed alongside the mural segments.

It turns out that Maynard Dixon not only painted the murals in the Jinks Room (as well as a mural cycle feature Native Americans now in the California State Library), but also designed light fixtures for this room and throughout the entire Anoakia estate! Mrs. Regis even had a book of Dixon’s original designs for the fixtures with directions for fabricated by Tiffany and Co. Mrs. Regis said Dixon even designed doorknobs for the Jinks Room that had little jester heads on them!

Something that Mrs. Regis did not have in her house was the last mural segment. This segment is with Mrs. Regis’s sister. Luckily the museum had photos of this last segment on file so that we could develop a silhouette of this segment.

Going through the museum’s files on the Jinks Room I found an archive photograph of the last mural segment in its original setting. The lone figure of a jester was situated between a doorway and a large craftsman style fireplace. Now I have images of all the mural segments and can begin to reconstruct the Jinks Room.

Next week’s update will be on the creation of the silhouettes, which will be featured in the Reconstruct portion of the intervention.

- Francisco Rosas

Selma in Christian Science Monitor

2010-03-03T08:40:00.000-08:00

Selma Holo, one of the professors behind this blog and "intervention" project, was quoted today in the Christian Science Monitor about Los Angeles museums such as LACMA planning exhibits to honor the bicentennial of Mexico's independence and the centennial of its revolution: "This kind of comprehensive look gives Mexico the respect of having a civilizational series of curves, not just a modern history but one that goes way back and really represents a huge cultural moment in the history of the world," Holo said. Holo is director of the Fisher Museum and the International Museum Institute at USC.

Remember: Exploring the Jinks Room's past

2010-02-27T14:14:00.000-08:00

The intervention entitled “remember” explores the relationship between artwork and viewer, as well as the ways in which the changing interpretation of an artwork throughout time manifests the evolution of an individual and of a generation. For this intervention, I explored the history of the Jinks Room murals as told through the eyes of the viewers that have been a part of that history. Six interviews with alumni and faculty of the Anoakia School tell the story through a short video documentary (filmed by Grace Talice Lee).

Before arriving at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, Maynard Dixon’s Jinks Room was housed at the Anoakia Mansion in Arcadia, California (pictured below). The mansion once served as a lush pad for Anita Baldwin and her entourage, but was later converted into an all-girls boarding school and then a co-ed day school in the latter half of the 20^th century. Our interviewees are all associated with Anoakia, whether they themselves are alumni whom attended music lessons in the Jinks room, school librarians and staff members searching for an escape from their daily routine, or a young boy encountering the murals for his first time.

The meaning and reception of artworks evolve over the course of time and with changing contexts of display. To fully understand a work of art, it is important to realize that its original location, maker, and viewers cannot tell the entire story. Rather, we must research other places, other people, and other rooms to truly understand a work’s history, significance, and long-term impact upon our society. More to come on days one and two of filming in the near future – stay posted!

Retrieve: Inside the "Icebox"

2010-02-26T10:47:00.001-08:00

Presumably, the average museum visitor gives less thought to what it means for a museum to have a “permanent collection” than to the actual art on view. To be brief, what isn’t shown is stored--a much larger percentage of the collection of works remains normally unviewed. And if what’s in storage is “unseen,” then more so is the room itself; USC Fisher Museum’s storage room is a very small space concealed slyly within the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, an ordinary doorway un-announcing to the everyday student-passersby.

Behind these double-doors are a variety of artworks resting within a climate-controlled environment. All along the walls hang paintings, drawings, prints and mixed media works, while framed photographs are shelved on what appears as a tall, black bookcase at the back of the room. Older/larger paintings/works take their residence on sliding metal racks. Pulling out a single rack without knowledge of the collection is as if to uncover a treasure; you’ll find a painted portrait of Lincoln on one, a Warhol screenprint on another.

Sheltered away from the curatorial hand, these undisplayed works seem to hang together in limbo, quietly, un-hierarchically.
Still, there are less-than-treasures here. A “fake” Constable hasn’t been fully restored for its questionable attribution; dented and broken frames have made some older paintings unpresentable; a stack of paintings awaits its departure from the collection; and of course, not every work can have a fitting place in a theme show.

For my purposes, in bringing out other landscapes to display that were not chosen in Four Rooms and a View, there was initially less “choosing” involved in raiding storage for landscapes, as the concept arose simply because my visits to the storage room made it evident that the museum holds a good number of them. But “raiding” is too strong a word here: limitations of display prevented me from getting as many works for show as possible—some are currently in too poor condition to be displayed safely, others on loan in temporary locations or off-campus. But the retrieval of stored works from the permanent collection is never an arbitrary decision; after all, works chosen for display must have some value to them.

-Raylene Galarze

Reproduce: Our Baby's Conception

2010-02-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

Have you ever found yourself standing in front of a work of art, wishing you could ~~steal~~ have it? Maybe you even went so far as to think about how amazing it would look above your fireplace or in your dining room. But masterpieces, especially oil paintings, can never be reproduced…right?

Wrong! Thanks to Ocean’s Bridge, an oil painting reproduction company/ artist collective, you can now buy your very own hand painted masterpiece, free shipping included! According to Ocean’s Bridge, they are able to reproduce a bevy of renowned oil paintings because a painting enters the public domain once the artist has been deceased for more than 70 years ago (so make sure that your desired oil painting was done by an artist that has been long gone).

I can say from experience that Ocean’s Bridge is a dream to work with. I contacted them when we were first thinking about buying a reproduction for re:View. After fully interrogating the company through emails, I got all my questions answered and concerns taken care of. After deciding to purchase the Jacque painting for our exhibition, I have continued to keep in touch with James at Ocean’s Bridge. He sends me reassuring emails that our painting is in good hands, even sending me pictures of the “artistic process.” James has become our painting’s surrogate mom and we are so excited for our baby’s arrival!

- Jayme Wilson

Reconsider: Palm Trees Found

2010-02-23T10:10:00.000-08:00

From an early stage in planning our intervention, Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) was identified as a potential work to add to the exhibition’s landscape painting galleries. Every Building, a small object in book form, unfolds into a 25 foot long accordion with two continuous horizontal bands of photographs depicting both sides of the Sunset Strip. Every Building is one of many artist books Ruscha created during the 1960s and early 70s that have subsequently been identified as significant across multiple historical categories: pop art, conceptual art, artist books, post-war photography and theories of postmodernism being a few. The USC Architecture and Fine Arts Library has many of Ruscha’s books in its collection (including two copies of Every Building), but (of course?) they are now held in the libraries rare books section.

While doing research on Every Building and other books by Ruscha I noticed that A Few Palm Trees (1971), the last book Ruscha published in this period, was listed as “missing” at the AFA library (concerning), however another copy was available at Leavey, a general reference library at the university. I thought this seemed peculiar and possibly just a typo on the library’s website, but to be thorough I decided to investigate.

Leavey Library, 4^th Floor, section Q, bottom shelf on the far left, call number QK495.P17R87 1971: (to my surprise!) a small book with a glossy solid black cover, only exhibiting minor ware. Inside: 15 black and white photographed palm trees of many varieties floating on solid white pages. The palms, methodically removed from their original photographs—isolated from their urban context—are all printed on the right side. The left pages list the Los Angeles street address of each tree: 6675 Franklin Ave., 5529 W. Sunset Blvd., S.W. corner of McCadden Pl. & Yucca St., and so on. While A Few Palm Trees is not unique among Ruscha’s books for its deadpan interplay between image and information (being the address), what is interesting is that Ruscha cuts the book’s subject from photographs of the greater environment, and that Ruscha is investigating something natural (sort of—palm trees aren’t actually native to Los Angeles) within the built environment, verse the build environment itself.

But best of all about this discovery: it was filed in the horticulture reference section and I was able to check it out!—an absolutely wondrous mistake by the library. Art historian Douglas Crimp similarly encountered a miscataloging of a Ruscha book (Twentysix Gasoline Stations was filed in transportation) at the New York Public Library, which he discussed in an 1981 essay, "The Museum's Old, the Library's New Subject." Concluding his essay on photography’s assimilation into the museum and the category of “Art,” Crimp contends that considering these incidents of miscataloging is fundamental to understanding the books: “I now know that Ed Ruscha’s books make no sense in relation to the categories of art according to which art books have been cataloged in the library, and that is part of their achievement. The fact that there is nowhere within the present system of classification a place for Twentysix Gasoline Stations is an index of its radicalism with respect to established modes of thought.”

And to be honest, I am somewhat surprised, as well as delighted, that the books are still ill suited for such classification. Since Crimp wrote his essay in 1981, theories of postmodernism, the photographic image and institutional critique have been widely discussed outside, as well as within, the museum; Ruscha’s books have been included in numerous museum exhibitions as precious works of art (recently a number were added to LACMA’s recreation of the New Topographics exhibition); and works by Ruscha, including the books, have become highly prized, as well as priced, objects of collection. That A Few Palm Trees was not identified as an art book today—that it somehow slipped through the cracks—is wondrous; indeed, a sign of its “radicalism” as an object.

Of course, by writing this, I am calling attention to the book’s misplacement, and it will most likely be re-catalogued as an art book. While I relish the idea of another person discovering the book (who was there prior to me?!), it should probably be protected as a rare book as one is already missing from the university’s collections. However, before its uneasy transition to being a full-time art object, it will be shown in our intervention exhibition, alongside Every Building on the Sunset Strip and another Ruscha book, Thirtyfour Los Angeles Parking Lots (1967). Until our show opens, it will remain a lost artist book, or possibly a bizarre plant reference book on Los Angeles palm trees and their mailing addresses.

-David Evans Frantz

Douglas Crimp, “The Museum’s Old / The Library’s New Subject,” originally printed in Parachute 22, Spring 1981; reprinted in On the Museum’s Ruins (1993) and The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography (1989), as well as other anthologies on photography and postmodernism.

Reconstruct: Part One

2010-02-22T10:45:00.000-08:00

The USC Fisher Museum of Art has in its collection a mural cycle painted by the Californian artist Maynard Dixon, called the Jinks Room. The Fisher Museum has six of the original nine segments; the other three segments have remained with the donor family.

For the portion of the intervention re:View called reconstruct, all nine mural segments needed to be studied. Reconstruct aims to recreate the original architectural space of the Jinks Room. The permanent collection exhibition happening right now at Fisher is Four Rooms and a View, which presents the Jinks Room murals with only the six mural segments in the Fisher Collection.

Below is a video of the installation of the Jinks Room murals in Four Rooms and A View.

The mural segments in the Fisher’s collection (the ones in the video) were:

Procession with Couples
Feast with a Friar
Dance with the Fairy Queen
Monk with a Leprechaun and a Jester
Procession with Reluctant Monk
Reluctant Cat

This means I need to track down the three unknown segments.

- Francisco Rosas

About re:View

2010-02-22T10:32:00.000-08:00

It is not everyday that two professors of art history have the opportunity to work together on a dream project. This year, however, we were granted just such an opportunity by the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and the Provost’s Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching. The result—a new, undergraduate course titled “Contemporary Art and the Art of Curating”— combines the study of contemporary art with the realities of making a museum exhibition.

Given a modest budget, a year to work with our students, and complete access to the Fisher Museum staff and permanent collection, we sought to bridge the gap between academic art history and hands-on curatorial practice. Our course was conceived neither as a vocational exercise nor as a curricular requirement for art history majors.

Rather, it was designed as an experiment in critical and creative thinking. Educated citizens need to be able to dig beneath the surface of what is presented to them as authoritative—in museums, on the internet, and in every aspect of their daily lives.

Beginning in September 2009, a select group of undergraduates—David Evans Frantz, Raylene Galarze, Lauren Maldonado, Francisco Rosas, and Jayme Wilson—along with Cindy Robinson (the first Ronald Tutor Campus Center Art Fellow and a recent graduate of USC) began to explore museum practice throughout the Los Angeles region. They went to exhibitions and analyzed the underlying significance and effectiveness of different curatorial strategies. They met with museum directors, curators, and critics and reported on what they learned from these meetings in class.

Throughout the fall semester, the students also became acquainted with USC’s own collections of art and photography, including those housed at the Fisher Museum, the Architecture & Fine Arts Library, and Special Collections, Doheny Memorial Library. While closely observing the curatorial process undertaken by Fisher staff in creating the exhibition Four Rooms and View: USC’s Collection Highlights, the students began work on their major assignment for the spring semester.

Their project was to curate an intervention in Four Rooms and a View after the show had been on display for two months. With that in mind, each member of the class identified a specific work or group of works on which to focus. They investigated not only the individual artists at issue but also the broader social and economic conditions that shaped art practice and collecting at the time.

The students uncovered unknown histories and then fashioned strategies for making those histories visible in Fisher Museum. They introduced additional works of art into Four Rooms and a View, including a custom-ordered, hand-painted copy of a French Barbizon School oil painting, wrote new wall texts, designed special floor treatments, and produced a video documentary. Then they titled the resulting exhibition re:View.

The class also invited conceptual artist Susan Silton to contribute an intervention to re:View. Silton’s provocative banner on the exterior of Fisher Museum alerts visitors to the multiple histories, interpretations, and perspectives on display inside.

To make the banner, the artist photographed two nearly but not quite identical backdrops of a desert landscape which she rented from a Hollywood prop company. The message inscribed on these slightly discrepant backdrops reads, “We See It Differently, You And I.”

We hope that re:View provides a model for future curatorial collaborations between students, artists, and faculty on the USC campus, and, more broadly, between the museum, the contemporary art world, and the academic community.

- Selma Holo and Richard Meyer