Absolument Moderne

We’re going back to the basics this week with LA-based artist Robyn O’Neil’s lesson in the figure-ground relationship: Draw a Psychological Landscape. 

Episode 6 INSTRUCTIONS: 

1. Get a piece of paper and something to draw with. 

2. Create a ground on your picture plane.

3. Populate the ground with figures and give them human-like characteristics.

4. Upload it using #theartassignment

5. Fame and glory. (Your work might be featured in an upcoming video.)

Learn more about Robyn’s work here, and follow her on twitter!

Andy Warhol Art Found on Floppy Disks, via juxtapozmag

Stakeouts! You guys did some really amazing surveillance. It’s been a pleasure to watch these roll in, and we hope you continue to do so. 

If you missed Deb Sokolow’s Art Assignment video, you should watch it first. 

Thanks to all who posted responses featured in this video:

Emoji-nation. part 2.

by Nastya Ptichek.

Dedicated to Edward Hopper.

This week John and I answer your questions about The Art Assignment and show just a few Intimate, Indispensable GIFs! Today, I’ll be answering other questions here on our Tumblr and Twitter as well. 

Keep posting your GIFs and your responses to episodes 1 and 2. We continue to monitor what’s coming in and share a selection on Tumblr. 

Toyin Odutola’s GIF An Undoing (2014) in all of its glory. See the individual drawings on her website. 

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast spotlights conceptual photographer Robert Heinecken with Museum of Modern Art curator Eva Respini.

Heinecken was a pioneer in using media to critique media, a practice that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have adapted for a television age. Heinecken rarely took his own photographs, instead using existing images and long-familiar photographic and printing techniques to create new semi-collages made up of multiple images. Heinecken’s work is the subject of "Robert Heinecken: Object Matter," a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition is in member previews, opens on Saturday, and runs through September 7.

While Heinecken is best-known for his interest in and his critiques of sex in media, he also made a substantial body of work about violence in media, and the ways in which violence and sex were (often unintentionally) juxtaposed to help sell products. Today on MANPodcast.com we’ll be spotlighting Heinecken’s violence-themed work.

This is an untitled, undated off-set lithograph Heinecken made. It features a typical example of Heinecken using one of his ‘favorite’ news images — a Cambodian soldier holding two severed heads — and presenting it in a single image with the sort of news magazine advertisement that would have ‘accompanied’ the photograph. This piece is in the collection of the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Ariz.

Eva Respini has organized exhibitions of Cindy Sherman and with Vik Muniz. Her many projects are chronicled at her website. She organized “Heinecken” with curatorial fellow Drew Sawyer.

On the second segment, Museum of Fine Arts Houston Anne Wilkes Tucker discusses Heinecken as a conceptualist. On the occasion of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s 1999 Heinecken retrospective, Tucker gave a lecture in which she posited that in the future the conceptual nature of Heinecken’s practice would be more valued and more useful to other artists than it was then. Did her prediction come true?

Tucker was most recently a guest on The MAN Podcast to discuss an MFAH exhibition she co-curated titled, “War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath.”

Listen to or download the Smithson MAN Podcast on SoundCloud, via direct-link mp3, or subscribe to The MAN Podcast (for free) at:

iTunes; 

SoundCloud; 

Stitcher; or

via RSS. 

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Catherine Yass.

Her large-screen projection Lighthouse (2011) is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the exhibition “Fluid Motion.” The installation, which will remain on view through June, was curated by Al Miner. Later this year Lighthouse will go on view at the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna. The image above is a still from Lighthouse.

Yass’ exhibition credits include a 2011 mid-career retrospective at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, England and presentations at Washington’s Phillips Collection, the Stedelijk-Hertogenbosch Museum and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Her work is in the collections of the Tate, The Jewish Museum, New York, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, and the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. She was short-listed for the 2002 Turner Prize.

On the second segment, the program airs the fourth of its four segments on the Getty Conservation Institute’s work on Jackson Pollock’s landmark Mural (1943). The painting is in the collection of the University of Iowa Museum of Art. GCI conservator Laura Rivers updates us on the work done on the painting and what Getty scientists learned about the creation of the artwork.

With the conservation of Mural complete, the painting will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from March 11 through June 1. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that details the conservation of the painting. Amazon lists it at $20.

Listen to or download this week’s MAN Podcast above, on SoundCloud, via direct-link mp3, or subscribe to The MAN Podcast (for free) at:

iTunes; 

SoundCloud; 

Stitcher; or

via RSS. 

Watch some early responses to The Art Assignment Episode 1: Meet in the Middle! Thanks to all of you who have posted responses! These are not ALL of the responses, and we encourage you to continue meeting in the middle and posting your responses with #theartassignment. There are many more great ones than are excerpted here (!), and we encourage you to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram to continue seeing interesting responses.  It is true. We have an Instagram: http://instagram.com/theartassignment

Episode 2 is live! Meet artist Chicago-based artist Deb Sokolow and receive your assignment to do a stakeout!

EPISODE 02 INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Find an interesting or intriguing object.  2. Place the object in a public spot where people can interact with it.

3. Pick a location to observe these interactions, and observe the interactions.

4. Document what happens. You can do this however you’d like, using photos, video, text, drawings, or anything else.

5. Upload your documentation and share it online using whatever social media platforms you prefer, being sure to tag it with #theartassignment so we can find it. Your response to the assignment may be included in a future episode! Learn more about Deb’s work here: http://debsokolow.com

Listen to a great interview with her here: http://badatsports.com/2013/deb-sokolow-interview/