Bad at Sports » Meg Onli

The Woodmans

Meg Onli — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:33:43 +0000

At first, C. Scott Willis’ latest film “The Woodmans” appears to be a film documenting Francesca Woodman, who at the age of 22 took her own life and left behind a body of exquisite photographs. Instead, it is a rare portrait of an artist family, all of which have been successful, in their own right. This is not the first documentary on Francesca Woodman. In 2000 Elisabeth Subrin created the film, “The Fancy” in which she models a linear time line by “[reorganizing] information from the catalogues in order to pose questions about biographical form.” But unlike Subrin, Willis had an all access pass to Woodman’s diaries, photographs, some of which have never been exhibited, and her family – the three together trace the artist’s early life and death.

Growing up in an artist household – mother Betty a ceramist who has shown at the Met and father George, a painter who has exhibited work at the Guggenheim – both Francesca and her brother Charlie spent much of their time in and out of their parents studios. “Our children learned that art is a very high priority; you don’t mess around. They learned this is a very serious business at an early age,” George Woodman says as he sits near one of his paintings. The family spent time between Colorado and Italy with Francesca and Charlie switching back and forth between schools. As an act of defiance as a teenager, Francesca enrolled in the Abbot Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts – her father gave her a camera to take with her.

Francesca quickly began photographing herself and her friends, often in the nude. Willis interviewed childhood friends who expressed their perplexity at the time. But, George and Betty were not phased by her daughter’s comfort in front of the camera; “I looked at Francesca’s photographs almost more as formally what they were rather than getting myself tied into knots over the subject matter. I don’t see them as autobiographical but I guess in some way all the work we make is autobiographical; it’s about us,” explains Betty.

Between the years 1975 – 1978 she created some of the iconic photos we know today while an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating she moved to New York where she briefly worked as a fashion photographer’s assistant. The use of her journal as a partial narrator gives an intimate look into her troubling final years. Towards the end of her life she struggled to create work and seemed dissatisfied with the lack of notoriety she was receiving.

Towards the end of the film we see the family continuing with their artistic practices. When asked how the loss of their daughter affected their work Betty says that they have each “dealt with it in different ways.” Although Betty took a break from creating work George shifted his practice to photography – creating unsettling images of young naked women that resemble his daughter’s work.

Willis is really able to build a great tension – the film can really make you feel uncomfortable at times. Preconceived notions of a privileged artist family can be hard to avoid. Although I feel as a director he strived to present his subjects in the best light they do not always come off that way. The inevitable jealousy of Francesca’s fame comes up several times in the film. Handling the estate themselves, the family has seen her work eclipse theirs. But candid statements of their frustration humanizes the family who come off a bit disconnected at times. While sitting near the family’s pool George expresses his concerns, “She was so good; she made my own work look kind of stupid…I wouldn’t mind getting a bigger slice of cake myself.”

Taiwanese CGI| California Pot Legalization

Meg Onli — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:10:52 +0000

Video | Surprise Attack

Meg Onli — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:18:02 +0000

Richard Serra “Surprise Attack” (1973)

Video | Democratic Camera

Meg Onli — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:48:58 +0000

Center Field | Interview with Bill Eiseman

Meg Onli — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:06:15 +0000

Our bi-weekly column, Center Field | Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports on Art21′s blog has its latest post with an interview with Polyester’s Dirctor Bill Eiseman. Check the teaser below and go read the entire article over on Art21′s site.

Like many people, my girlfriend and I set out on a road trip this summer. Our trip took us from Chicago to Portland, following most of the Lewis and Clark Trail. After officially starting in St Charles, MO, where Louis and Clark initially met for their historic journey, we headed west, hitting not only typical locations like Yellowstone, The Badlands, and Mount Rushmore, but also a few random towns along the way, like Mitchell, SD (home of the only Corn Palace in the world). I had not planned for our trip to include many museums or galleries, but while driving downtown in Omaha, NE, I spotted the word ‘Polyester’ painted in orange on a building’s facade. We drove back around the block and to my surprise, it was a bookstore and gallery specializing in contemporary and vintage photographs.

Founded in 2006 by Bill Eiseman in downtown Los Angeles, Polyester has established itself as a unique voice within photography. In 2010, Eiseman moved shop to Omaha, where he has been able to expand his gallery to include screenings. In the spirit of the final days of summer, I asked Bill a few questions about my find in Omaha.

Meg Onli: What prompted a move from such a large scene (Los Angeles) to a place such as Omaha?

Bill Eiseman: It was a decision I spent six months deliberating. The downtown artwalk in Los Angeles brought anywhere from 500 to 1500 people into my gallery on the second Thursday of every month. The crowd at our last monthly artwalk here in downtown Omaha numbered roughly 50. From an economic standpoint, it probably wasn’t the wisest of choices, at least in the short term. But as a gallerist, since I am now the only contemporary photography gallery in the region, suddenly I have the creative freedom to exhibit known, represented artists and works that were previously unavailable to me and in a space that is more than four times the size as its L.A. predecessor (for less rent). [It] also allows me to have both a main gallery and annex, a dedicated video room, present live performances and film screenings — pretty much everything I ever wanted to do but never had the space to make a reality. There is also a certain amount of notoriety that comes with being new and unique, which I must admit to enjoying. And I spend (at most) fifteen minutes per day in my car, which is something that Los Angelenos can only dream about.

Read the entire article on art21

Video | A Very Important Message About the Arts

Meg Onli — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:00:13 +0000

David Shrigley’s new ad for saving the arts in Britain is signifigently more entertaining and endearing than I had thought it would be. Tracey Emin putting out a fire? Hilarious.

Monday’s Video Pick | Girls Gone Wild

Meg Onli — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:29:15 +0000

This week’s video pick comes from the Hindi film Machalti Jawani.

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Art in the Middle | Roger Brown: California U.S.A

Meg Onli — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:18:16 +0000

This week over on Center Field | Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports I had a chance to interview Nicholas Lowe, curator of Roger Brown: California U.S.A at the Hyde Park Art Center. Check out the teaser below and read the entire article over on art21.

After passing away in 1997, painter, sculptor, and notorious collector, Roger Brown bequeathed his homes and collections to his alma mater, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). His Chicago home located at 1926 N. Halsted became what is now the Roger Brown Study Collection (RBSC). Known as an “artist’s museum,” the study collection houses Brown’s work and collection intact. His New Buffalo home, which was designed by his partner, architect George Veronda, has become an artists’ retreat for SAIC staff and faculty.

Unlike his other residences, Brown’s home in La Conchita, California, was sold in 1998 and the contents were archived and moved to the RBSC. With the help of the study collection’s curator Lisa Stone, assistant curator James Connolly, and SAIC alum Dana Boutin, Chicago-based artist and curator Nicholas Lowe has organized an exhibition based on the work that Brown made and the objects he collected while living in California. Roger Brown: California U.S.A, currently on view at the Hyde Park Art Center, explores Brown’s Virtual Still Lifepaintings and the intricate relations that formed while working in his home in California.

Meg Onli: How did this exhibition evolve and how did you decide to show Brown’s collection outside of his homes?

Nicholas Lowe: This exhibition grew from a discussion about what would be the best way to show [Brown's] Virtual Still Life object series. There are 27 of these [paintings] and they were all made [from] 1995 to 1996, while Brown was living in La Conchita, CA, in the house that he commissioned Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman to build. Brown died in November 1997, and the house was subsequently sold in 1998. The contents, including all Brown’s personal possessions, from inside and outside the house were documented, cataloged, and packed. These items were placed in deep storage at the museum, and in 2008, with the help of Lisa Stone and her staff we began to unpack and assess the material.

Read the rest of article on art21.

Monday Video Pick | Kristof Luyckx

Meg Onli — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:30:37 +0000

Hermanos Inglesos feat. MeMe – Wanderland from Kristof Luyckx on Vimeo.

Our video picks are back, but have moved to Monday! This weeks pick is Hermanos Inglesos’ music video Wanderland directed by Belgium artist Kristof Luyckx.

Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys

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Regarding the Death of One Barry Maguire, or Wherefrom Joseph Beuys

Meg Onli — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:37:00 +0000

Over on art21 I have an interview with Caroline Picard of The Green Lantern. During the interview Caroline sent me her latest video, Regarding the Death of One Barry Maguire, or Wherefrom Joseph Beuys. Below is the an excerpt from the video and a brief Q&A.

The latest video you have been working on, Regarding the Death of One Barry Maguire, or Wherefrom Joseph Beuys, is a narrated story of the two men. Could you talk about how the story came about? Did it initially begin as a short story and move into a video?

Yes, it did begin as a short story. It’s a story that seems to keep getting longer and longer. It began as an essay. I was interested in thinking about what I started calling ” the suburban shaman” in America. Basically I started noticing hipsters with dream-catcher t-shirts and feather earrings, and rope head bands and deer heads, moccasins. I started thinking about how it seemed like an extension of the already ironic surface-self, while also being an attempt, perhaps, to overcome irony. I started thinking about the “American Primitivism” approach to visual work–something I’d also started noticing around town, though the phrase isn’t mine. And then too with bands like Animal Collective and MGMT–there seemed to be this interest in the feral, tribal child. Appropriating a wildness via icons of spirituality seemed like a potentially authentic gesture that nevertheless collapsed at the same time. So the essay was going to connect this new trend with Beuys’ shamanic art practice. And then the essay became a story and then it developed other parts. It became a story about a patriarchal lineage. And about myth and our relationship to history. It begins with Bueys as a boy hunting a stag. He flies his bomber and crashes and I look at the story about the Tartars (which of course, he made up). Then I look at him as an artist, and his relationship to the bombed out city. At the beginning of the second part, you discover that Beuys did not get all of his spirit back after the plane crash and in fact a piece of his spirit entered a coyote. Then the coyote becomes a wherecoyote and bites a hippy. The hippy (Craig Maguire) discovers this while tripping. Craig Maguire has a son (Barry Maguire) and Barry Maguire goes to an artist residency where, by playing with a Ouija Board they meet the ghost of Joseph Beuys who has come to take the missing piece of his spirit back. There are other parts to the story as well, it’s starting to flesh out into more of a proper-novel, but it has been a really awesome opportunity for me to do research into different indigenous practices, to think about what it means to appropriate those practices (even if it’s just the signs of them, i.e. a dream catcher) and to, I suppose, continue exploring ways around or outside of the pulse of capitalist consumer society. Which these kids are trying to get away from by living in the woods. And of course, it’s not that simple. I liked using WWII as a beginning point because I feel like it has shaped so much of who we, as a world, are. It was also a great place to think about and compare the bombed out-city with suburbia, with the woods and a campfire. And then of course Barry Maguire falls into his own reflection and disappears.

The video is illustrated by a collage of still and moving images. It reminded me of Jaimie Baron’s essay Contemporary Documentary Film and “Archive Fever”: History, the Fragment, the Joke which frames the video spam letter + google image search = video entertainment as a contemporary archive. Do you have any thoughts about working from clips to create a whole? Although I recognized many of your sources they all blended rather well together.

Totally. I was really interested in that idea, actually. In some sense I feel like the text itself is a compilation of stories from elsewhere–Joseph Beuys, for instance, or the second patriarchal figure is based on a hippy/musicial called Craig Smith who changed his name to Maitreya Kali and got a spider tattooed on his face. A song from his band, Apache Indian plays in the background at one point. And then of course there is stuff from today. I thought using appropriated footage would reflect the way the story was compiled in one sense, while also reflecting on (hopefully) how the brain supports stories it hears with images that come from elsewhere. In other words the video is also a kind of psychological landscape of the story. We have so much access to so much material, constantly being flooded by outside imagery, I think that stuff must shape and feed our associations. While I was interested in overriding/dismissing any copyright issues, I am interested in so far as those images, once they are incoporated into one’s own imagination, seem to belong to that imaginative self. Because they provide evidence. Sometimes the visual landscape is intentionally skewed and incongruous with the visual film. The story constantly returns to this idea of the photograph–particularly the photograph that Bueys claims the Tartars took of him in front of his plane crash. Beuys used that photo as evidence that his mystical experience with the nomads was authentic. And yet it’s next to impossible that they ever took that photo. I was thinking about moving images in the same light….

Bad at Sports » Meg Onli

The Woodmans

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