Reality Television Without Tears

Art:21, the Peabody Award-winning television documentary series on contemporary art, is coming to Honolulu. The UH Manoa Art Department in conjunction with The Contemporary Museum will be hosting an advance screening that is free and open to the public this Tuesday at 7:00pm at the UH Manoa Art Auditorium.

Although the exact episode to be screened at the Honolulu preview is still under wraps, the 5th season of Art:21 is jam-packed with interview gems. In an episode themed "Compassion," artists William Kentridge, Carrie Mae Weems and Doris Salcedo are profiled. Artists Julie Mehretu, John Baldessari, Kimsooja and Allan McCollum are featured in another episode themed around "Systems."

Although nothing beats a big screen, have no fear if you can't make it to the UH Manoa screening: the televison show is on the PBS Hawaii television lineup for Wednesday nights, and full episodes are also available online.

Art and Design at the Hawaii International Film Festival

The Hawaii International Film Festival doesn’t need any help being hip, but they’ve turned it up a notch at this year’s festival with a terrific series of films addressing design-related topics. Here’s a quick run-down of their picks. My top choices include a documentary about the recently-deceased architecture photographer Julius Shulman, and a documentary about the underground world of rock concert poster-designing graphic artists.


Art & Copy

Art & Copy is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray, it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time - people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside of their industry. Exploding forth from advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation.

October 22, 7:00pm
October 23, 3:00pm

Died Young Stayed Pretty

Rebellious, ironic, vulgar and, at times, a bit demented. Welcome to the underground world of the rock poster graphic artist, a renegade outcast who knows the value of octopus imagery and 70s porn. Inspired by a personal tragedy, Director Eileen Yaghoobian’s raw, uncontrollable documentary mirrors the visual rant of its subject, showing why the waning world of rock poster art is more than just an advertising tool of the music industry.

October 23, 8:30pm
October 24, 9:00pm

Milton Glaser: To Inform And Delight

From newspapers and magazine designs, to interior spaces, logos, and brand identities, to his celebrated prints, drawings, posters and paintings, this documentary offers audiences a rich appreciation of one of the great modern renaissance men. Artfully directed by first time filmmaker Wendy Keys, the film glances into everyday moments of Milton Glaser’s personal life and captures his immense warmth, humanity and the boundless depth of his intelligence and creativity.

October 17, 8:30pm
October 20, 11:30am

Objectified

Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It is a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. The film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

October 21, 6:15pm
October 23, 1:00pm


And a couple HIFF films that didn’t make it into the series, but should have:

Ed Hardy: Tattoo The World

Ed Hardy. You’ve seen his name on clothing worn by Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and Mick Jagger, on wine and energy drinks and dozen of other commercial products. Directed by Emiko Omori, whose documentaries have received critical acclaim (Rabbit In The Moon, Sundance 1999), Ed Hardy: Tattoo The World chronicles the journey of Hardy’s phenomenal rise to cult icon and the evolution of his personal art.

October 17, 7:15pm
October 24, 10:30am

Visual Acoustics

Visual Acoustics celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California’s modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public. This unique film is both a testament to the evolution of modern architecture and a joyful portrait of the magnetic whip-smart gentleman who chronicled it with his unforgettable images.

October 16, 1:00pm
October 24, 5:30pm


All films are held at Dole Cannery, and tickets can be purchased by phone at 808-548-5905, through the internet, or in person at their box office across the street from the Dole Cannery theaters. If you’re considering seeing six or more films, membership is a good deal. If you’re broke, volunteering in exchange for free tickets is an even better deal.

Vault Diving goes Digital at the Honolulu Academy of Arts

Exciting things are afoot at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Their Hokusai exhibit just opened, they have a new UH art student artist in residence, and they’ve got some spick-and-span newly renovated restroom facilities. But perhaps most exciting of all are the the developments happening beyond museum walls. In a study of doing more with less, the Academy has been tirelessly experimenting with innovative ways to reach out to the public through new media.


The newest tool in the Academy’s clickable arsenal is eMuseum, an online database of the museum’s permanent collection, accessible through the museum’s website. Like most museums, the Academy’s galleries only hold a small percentage of the total number of objects contained in the collection; the rest remain hidden in the vaults for years and sometimes decades at a time. Through eMuseum, the public now has access to these objects.

To complement the Hokusai exhibit, eMuseum currently showcases some 4,000 Japanese woodblock prints from the permanent collection. Most object entries contain information including the title, date, artist and printer as available, medium, donor to the museum, short description, and a photograph of the object. Plans are in the works to add more objects from the permanent collection to the eMuseum database over time.


Art museums across the country have been gradually making this shift towards giving the public access to their permanent collections through online databases. However, for smaller museums with limited staff, or larger museums with predominantly digitally undocumented collections, creating an online database available for public access can be a cost-prohibitive proposition. The Academy brings these resources to the public for the first time thanks to the support of the Robert F. Lange Foundation.

Although online databases of museum permanent collections such as the Academy’s eMuseum are most obviously useful for scholars and collectors looking to research specific artists and other art topics, some museums have taken online databases a step further. The Brooklyn Museum crowd-sources their database by allowing for interactive object tagging by the public. So, for example, what if you’re looking for an object in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection that might be described as “Pee Wee”? They’ve got it. SFMOMA seamlessly integrates their database with educational resources including background-providing write-us, visuals, audio and video extras.

I look forward to seeing what sorts of exciting new uses the Honolulu Academy of Arts thinks up for eMuseum. Judging from the museum’s innovative use of new media, from their blog and Flickr account to Twitter feed and Facebook page to participation in the cross-country digital photography scavenger hunt Wikipedia Loves Art, one thing remains clear: the e-future for the Academy is anything but stagnant.

Seeing The Unseeing: Rinus Van de Velde Explores Meaning-Making at Interisland Terminal's Inaugural Exhibition

Rinus Van de Velde is the kind of artist that writers can't get enough of, simply because there is so much to say. His work packs the double punch of being both visually interesting and conceptually rigorous. The primary outlet of his work, drawing, is a daily routine for Van de Velde, who uses an extensive personal archive of photographic clippings from old issues of National Geographic, film stills and internet sources to recreate the images in dark charcoal on white paper. The drawings couple these appropriated images with mismatched text, forming new meaning through context. For his recent exhibition in Honolulu curated by Wei Fang of Interisland Terminal, Van de Velde created a group of drawings that together coalesced around the theme of the unseen.

Van de Velde's frequent use of National Geographic magazine images, favoring ethnographic snapshots from the 1950s and 60s, creates an easy link to postcolonial discourse. However, the drawings chosen for Interisland Terminal's exhibition (unexpectedly, considering the Hawaii location), speak more to a playful investigation of semiotics through verbal/visual mashup.

The drawings, although varied in subject matter and text, all seem to be on some level preoccupied with the theme of seeing the unseen. In Another Exercise in Solitude, a watery cloud of a dozen pairs of swimming flippers loom above the viewer, water surface hiding the figures heads. It is only the most foreground figure who, head resting below the surface, looks down towards darkness. I Take It All Back. Who Sees It Anyway (Forget The Background) depicts a loose line of smooth black rocks receding into the distance, becoming gradually smaller and less perceptible. The text mocks the viewer, asking "who sees it." Who sees what?

Through their lack of singular meaning, the drawings themselves serve as proof of the frailty of visual description and the corresponding pliability of text. Van de Velde's sketchy strokes of charcoal, effective visual descriptors without being overly exact, serve to further remind the viewer of the presence of the artist within the work: if the artist is the meaning-maker, his intentions are left intentionally vague.

RVDV: HI, Drawings by Rinus Van de Velde, was on exhibit at Interisland Terminal's temporary gallery space in Kamuki from July 16 through July 26, 2009.

Georgianna Lagoria of The Contemporary Museum and David de la Torre of the Mission Houses Museum to leave Honolulu

Wife-husband art executive team Georigianna Lagoria and David de la Torre will be leaving their museum director positions in Honolulu for new opportunities in Los Angeles.

Photograph by Cindy Ellen Russell, taken from the Star Bulletin's 2007 profile of the couple, written by Joleen Oshiro

Georgianna Lagoria, Executive Director of The Contemporary Museum (TCM), resigned early yesterday. Lagoria has directed TCM for over 14 years. During her tenure, the museum established an endowment fund, opened its downtown branch at First Hawaiian Center, and began a capital campaign to construct a new building designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners to house the permanent collection.

Due to the economic downturn, TCM has recently had to shift directon much like many of its sister institutions. It has put its plans for a capital campaign on hold, and in late 2008 it laid off 25 of its 48 employees. Further recent budget cuts have resulted in a shift from national and international traveling exhibitions to a renewed focus on artist residencies, the museum's permanent collection, and shows of local Hawaii art.

Lagoria will be joining husband David de la Torre, Executive Director of the Mission Houses Museum, who has accepted a position as Director of Programs and Chief Curator at a new Los Angeles cultural center, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes (LAPCA). Prior to working at the Mission Houses Museum, de la Torre was head of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts Art in Public Places Program, and Assistant Director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Lagoria and de la Torre's departures open opportunities for both The Contemporary Museum and the Mission Houses Museum to redefine their operations and programming and choose new Executive Directors who can meet the specific needs of these challenging times. No official announcements have been made about possible candidates.

Full journalistic disclaimer: I was among the 25 staff members laid off from The Contemporary Museum in 2008.

SPECIAL MAUI EDITION: Satoru Abe Branches Out

Driving into the Maui Community College campus, visitors are hard-pressed to miss it: an outcropping of five bronze trees looms large on the grassy yard, each tree up to 12 feet high. Satoru Abe's newest and possibly largest sculpture, titled A Path Through The Trees, was commissioned as part of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts' Art in Public Places program. Although Abe's smaller, detailed works tend to take advantage of the bronze patina to best effect, the sheer size of A Path Through The Trees allows the viewer the less ordinary viewpoint of seeing the sculpture from its interior out.


With A Path Through The Trees, Maui Community College has joined Honolulu Community College and Leeward Community College, as well as a plethora of local grade schools and public spaces, as sites of Satoru Abe sculpture installations. Abe is nothing if not prolific.

Gallery Talk with John Szostak at The Contemporary Museum

John Szostak, Assistant Professor of Japanese Art History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will be giving a gallery talk on contemporary Japanese artists this Saturday, July 25, at The Contemporary Museum. Szostak, whose area of expertise is traditional Japanese painting of the Meiji, Taisho and early Showa eras (mid-19th to early 20th centuries), has published articles on war propaganda prints of the Meji era and on the appropriation of traditional Buddhist imagery and iconography by modernist Japanese painters. His talk at TCM will discuss contemporary Japanese artists including Yoshihiro Suda, whose plant-inspired miniature wood carvings currently dot the nooks and crannies of the TCM galleries.

The gallery talk will take place at TCM at 10:30am on Saturday, July 25. Reservations can be made by phone at (808) 237-5217 or by e-mail at qyoung@tcmhi.org.