Carnegie International: What’s the Value?

When man first started putting paint on cave walls some 32-thousand years ago there was probably not much debate over its value or impact on the art world. Today a curator cannot open a show without a throng of critics making a wide variety of comments. So how should one judge the worth of the 55th Carnegie international? There are several ways.

In 1896 the Carnegie International, under a different name, was launched at the same time as the Carnegie Museum. Andrew Carnegie told his curators to search out the old masters of tomorrow, put them in the show and buy their art before it got too expensive. That was how he was going to fill his museum. Former Carnegie art museum director Jack Lane says they did a good job of building the collection quickly and the shows can be judge a success by that yardstick.

The museum’s ability to purchase art from the shows has ebbed and flowed over the years and the critic’s reception of the instillations has been up and down as well. However, the critic’s have usually agreed on one thing, the show caries great weight in the art world.

Since the opening, reviews have been coming in from big cities like New York and L.A., small town newspapers like the Monessen Valley Independent and international newspapers including one in France and another Canada. Fallon and Rosof’s ‘The Art Blog” writer Andrea Kurs says for critics and art lovers the Carnegie International a destination. In fact, the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau is counting on it.

Bureau Marketing Director Beverly Morrow Jones says travel writers have been brought into to town to see the show with the expectation that their stories will lead to more visitors who will spend the night and eat some meals. Jones say it is impossible to tell just what impact the show has on the local economy but she knows it will be big.

But administrators, critics and tourism promoters are just hangers on in the art world. The real impact should be measured by the artists themselves. Tim Blum and Jeff Poe run Blum and Poe gallery and serve as the connection between artists and the buying public. Over the years the gallery has represented a hand full of International artists and have seen their career take off following the opening.

Mark Grotjahnz was featured in the 2004 international. He says being in the International is “huge.” Before the Carnegie International Grotjahnz had not had a solo show outside of a gallery. Nearly overnight, his works went from selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars to being worth millions.

Artists are not the only ones who can be profoundly and forever impacted by the Carnegie international. Thousands will see the show this year and there is no telling how many will be like Jill Krause. She saw her first international in 1970 as a freshman at CMU and feel in love with art. She eventually left Pittsburgh to work as a designer and 10 years later began collecting art. Krause’s collection has grown to the point that now museums, including the Carnegie, borrow works from her as they mount shows.

Krause says people in Pittsburgh are often surprised to learn just how well known the Carnegie International is worldwide and the impact it has on the museum, the art world and the local economy.


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Carnegie International: Doug Aitken’s “Migration”

A project that was little more than a kitchen table brainstorm five months ago is now attracting attention as one of the Carnegie International’s best works. In December, when Carnegie International curator Douglas Fogle was still just talking to artists and working on his final selections, he found himself in the southern California home of film maker Doug Aitken. The two talked about projecting a film on the front of the museum. Aitken was coming off a successful piece for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was working on a few other projects but he was excited about the possibility of being part of the International.

Aitken eventually was chosen and quickly began thinking about the piece. He came up with the idea for a film he calls “Migrations” and began shooting in Pittsburgh the third week of March. Aitken then began a migration of his own that would take him back to his home in L.A.

The film juxtaposes the natural landscape and the manmade landscape, and explores how humans have remade the country to fit their needs, including their need to feel at home even when they are halfway across the continent. Then he places the animals that once roamed the land into our environments.

A bison tosses a bed in a hotel room, a beaver explores the bathroom complete with complimentary shampoo, conditioner and coffee pot. And the omnipresent hotel television becomes the window to allow us pass between those worlds.

The work has been well received by critics and most of those who have happened upon the piece since it began showing. Aitken says he was not looking to make a film with a message or an ending. “I’m looking for a continuum, I’m looking to provoke or create a response and a personal reaction,” says Aitken, “I was after a new America, a new landscape.”

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Carnegie International: The Opening

Millions of dollars, nearly three years of one man’s life, and hundreds of thousands of air miles have been invested in building the 2008 Carnegie International art exhibition and starting tomorrow the public will get to see the fruits of those labors.

Curator Douglas Fogle writes in his essay for the Carnegie International, “Underlying each of the works is an attempt to come to grips with what it means to be human today.” But that search carries a signature piece by artists Paul Thek who died in 1988. As you walk through the galleries you get a long look at Thek’s painting of the earth from space on newspaper done in the 70’s. Fogle says Thek’s work carries many of the sensibilities of the show.

As you walk into the main gallery a wall of 60 repetitive, works by Mark Bradford greets you. He uses advertising posters as the foundation for his art, building them up and sanding them down. In this instance he has collected posters for a lawyer working with dads to get custody of their children. Bradford also has two large works that almost look like a city streetscape from a satellite.

Turn around that imaginary satellite and you have the work of Vija Celmins. She builds layer after layer of blue and white paint until she comes up with what looks like a sky full of stars. They look like scientific photographs but the star fields never existed.

Objects not being what they seem is a theme that runs through the show. Peter Fischli and David Weiss have created a room filled with objects you might find in an industrial break room. A dusty vinyl couch, parts of an engine, cigarette buts. However, none of them are real. They are all made of Styrofoam and weigh next to nothing. Another artist’s makes minimalist couches out of ceramic where each “cushion” comes in at more than 200 pounds.

The Carnegie international continues outside in the courtyard where Scotland native Susan Philipsz has installed a sound piece. Philips recorded herself singing “The Banks of the Ohio.” The work is solar powered and it slows as the sun goes down. That is when another work is just getting started. Doug Aitken’s film “migrations” will be projected on the building’s façade.

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Carnegie International: Placement

In less than a month visitors will begin walking through the 2008 Carnegie International, taking in the work of 40 artists. As much care goes into placing the works in and around the building as goes into making the art itself. International artists Thomas Hirschhorn came to Pittsburgh this month from Switzerland to build his work himself. It is an artful and art-filled cave made from cardboard, packing tape, posters and other everyday materials. Hirschhorn says his work is a melding of prehistoric and contemporary art and he is pleased with where it has been placed.

2008 Carnegie International Curator Douglas Fogle is well aware of the new and old and just about every other juxtaposition in the Carnegie complex that could help or hinder an artist’s work. For video artist Doug Aitken the discussion on the placement of his work began in his dining room in California and ended with a site visit. He says the space very much influences his final product.

Sound artist Susan Philipsz says she cannot work on a piece until she sees where it will be installed. That is why site visits and meetings with curators are so important to her.

It is a push and pull with each artist as Fogle tries to meld his vision with theirs. The first piece you will see will be that of Mark Bradford even though the show’s signature piece is by Paul Thek.

Artist Richard Wright’s work is all about the space in which it is created. He paints directly on walls where, in his words- “Architecture does not work.” A room has been created just for his work.

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WDUQ’s Mark Nootbaar will examine a different aspect of the Carnegie International every month through the opening of the show.

Carnegie international: What’s in a Title?

54 Carnegie Internationals have been mounted in Pittsburgh and none of them have had a title. But curator Douglas Fogle says this year is going to be different. As we continue our look at what goes into the making of the show WDUQ’s Mark Nootbaar asked Fogle why he titled the show “Life on Mars.”

List to the interview here.

WDUQ’s Mark Nootbaar will examine a different aspect of the Carnegie International every month through the opening of the show.

Carnegie International: The Artists

The names of the 40 artists whose work will comprise the 55th Carnegie international will be officially released later today. They come from more than a dozen countries and represent a wide variety of styles. One of the first artists chosen by Carnegie International Curator Douglas Fogle was Swiss born sculptor Thomas Hirschhorn. Fogle says Hirschhorn brings to his work many of the sensibilities of the exhibition, which looks to explore the question of what it means to be human today. Like many of the artists in the show, Fogle says Hirschhorn can make something wonderful out of everyday materials.

Another artists using every day objects in new and creative ways is Haegue Yang. She creates art, using items such and mini blinds, air conditioners, theater lights and even scent machines used by department stores. Yang says she will collect much of her material from local sources before she installs in Pittsburgh to make sure she gets the right feel.

The work of American born artists Doug Aitken will grace the façade of the museum. He is creating a new film that explores the “new American landscape” and he says he was inspired by the exhibition subtitle “Life on Mars.”

Matt Monahan is also thinking about “Life on Mars.” While working on the pieces for the show he has been playing the David Bowie tune of the same name. Monahan works in paper, foam and a long list of other materials and he says he has not yet decided on what he will use for the International.

WDUQ’s Mark Nootbaar speaks to many of the artists in the version of the story aired this morning on WDUQ FM.

WDUQ’s Mark Nootbaar will examine a different aspect of the Carnegie International every month through the opening of the show.

Carnegie International: Pulling it Together

Every three years the Carnegie International opens with much fanfare and a rush of public and private reviews, but visitors rarely think about what went into choosing the artists. For the curators, that is the key to a good show and the continuation of the mission to find the “old masters of tomorrow.”

Like every Carnegie International curator in the last decade and a half Douglas Fogle came from out of town to take the job. He had to start from scratch, learning about the city, the institution and his new roll as curator of contemporary art, and of course, the International. Fogle says every curator finds the first artists or piece that they want to put into the show and it grows from there. During the last two years Fogle has logged some 200-thousand miles in the air, searching the globe for the next emerging artist.

The board of the Carnegie has been known for giving curators all the support they need to pull the show together. Fogle says they also give a great deal of freedom in putting the show together, which is a double-edged sword. “The board gives you enough rope to hang yourself,” says Fogle. The world will not know if he climbs or swings from that rope until the 55th Carnegie International opens in May.

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WDUQ’s Mark Nootbaar will examine a different aspect of the Carnegie International every month through the opening of the show.

Carnegie International: History

In May, the Carnegie Museum of Art will open the 55th Carnegie International featuring the works of nearly 40 artists from around the world. Over the years the show has changed the way it looks and feels while still spotlighting artists that are destine for greatness. It all started in 1896 when Andrew Carnegie decided the city needed an art museum. There were two problems, he did not have many pictures to put on display and he did not want to spend too much to start a collection. So he told his employees to build a museum by purchasing the works of the “old masters of tomorrow” and the museum has been growing with the help of the exhibition ever since.

The Carnegie International enjoyed varying degrees of success over the decades and soon fell into a grove of hiring a new curator for each show including Richard Armstrong who did the 1995 show and then stuck around as the director of the museum where he is today. Now Douglass Fogle is putting together the 55th Carnegie International and has been scouring the world for two years looking for those “old masters of tomorrow” and maybe even a few good bargains to add to the museum’s growing collection

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WDUQ’s Mark Nootbaar will examine a different aspect of the Carnegie International every month through the opening of the show.