Paul McCarthy and Ed Ruscha in Open This End

Open This End at the Hoffman Gallery at Lewis & Clark College is the best group show Portland has seen in 6 months and should not be missed. We also have an opportunity to hear from its curator Joseph Wolin on October 25th.

Open This End is traveling selection from Blake Byrne's excellent collection, the exhibition isn't just a scattered trophy room of; Warhol, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Gerhard Richter and Bruce Nauman. It follows several threads of intertwined societal and personal narratives. I think the installation of Jimmy Carter by Jennifer Steinkamp alone should be compelling because it isn't just the same old political art, it is subtle in a way politics usually are not. What's more, Steve McQueen's groundbreaking multi-channel Drumroll video is on display at PAM as part of Open This End as well.

Open This End| September 8 - December 11
Curator's talk: October 25, 7PM, Miller 105
Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art
Lewis & Clark College
0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road




Ralph Pugay is one of Portland's favorite artists and will be the featured speaker at the next Clark Art Talks. As always there is humor but there is something about our awkward times... the way our customs and institutions seem like ill fitting suits these days that makes his work ring so true. The Archer Gallery also has an interesting poster show called HASTA SIEMPRE.

Clark Art Talk: Ralph Pugay
Wednesday, October 26th, 7PM
Clark College: PUB 161
1933 Ft. Vancouver Way, Vancouver Wa.

Yves Klein is perhaps art history's biggest wildcard and arguably his influence on the artists of today has never loomed larger. This latest exhibition at Tate Liverpool seems to make a great case as joker savant but it also shows how committed the artist was in comparison to the texture, pigment, happenings and materially exhausted stack sculptors of today. It's that gonzo conviction that seems to be missing often... as if any artist who moves something around deserves a gold star. For Klein it was never about the moves he was making, it was about the strive... that drove a beautiful and fractured subtlety. Klein's work was whole by never attempting to be a complete exercise in art, architecture, or performance. He kept his edge by never being too proud of his genre or material, instead testing Art's elemental use and validity powered his work.

This review of No Man's Land provides a quick but not shallow look at what Art created women can sometimes be without just resorting to the easy cliches. Sure they are there and even then they are better than what I normally come across... nutcrackers and that worn out 2012-2016 trend of mannequins but I also like how it approaches the body. Earlier this year PORT interviewed Wengechi Mutu and years ago I interviewed one-time Portlander Mickalene Thomas. The fact that it all comes from one collection makes it an interesting document but I'd like to see something that rigorously pursues the idea looking at significant art that the market isnt so attached to for greater breadth.

Western Culture by and large doesn't value the body and the use of space and the discussions around such things are stilted or often relegated to some project room rather than front and center. Frankly, I'd like to see that change in many Portland spaces because I'd argue that female artists here tend to be the genre MVP's... despite the fact that the least edgy ones get a disproportionate share of institutional resources. I will argue that female artists with an edge are being undervalued in Portland... despite the fact that they have international and national careers that seem value that very quality.

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NordArt 17 is looking for applicants for their contemporary art exhibition and symposium in Germany (there is no fee). Deadline: November 30, 2016

Upfor Gallery has teamed with NYC's Eyebeam to create a AR/VR residency (with housing) in this emerging genre (virtual reality). Portland is a hub for this important new media. Deadline: October 21, 2016 PORT has always pushed for new media and technology.

Newspace Center for Photography has an interesting call for artists utilizing images and history (not just traditional photography). At a time when Portland is changing so quickly this is a much needed Project. Deadline: November 7, 2016

The PNCA managed Leland Ironworks residencies are open to both emerging artists and mid career ones. Deadline: October 31, 2016

Andy Warhol Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation at the Portland Art Museum (all photos Jeff Jahn)

The current retrospective at the Portland Art Museum, Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation is the largest of this seminal artist's output ever and should be on the to do list for anyone who can make it. There is breadth and scope here so PORT took a walk through to discuss the exhibition with noted print scholar and curator Richard Axsom, who contributed an essay to the catalog. Like so many Post WWII artists Warhol had mostly drained his work of allegory while introducing popular iconography as a kind of folk or kitsch context. This was something fascists had abused so Warhol's rise as an artist became a rehabilitation of sorts, bringing back iconic secularism without nationalistic jingoism and other subjugation. As the Cold War continued Warhol became became the defacto Pope of Americana, canonizing our pop culture saints and sinners, addressing capitalistic, societal and more underground iconography alike so I was eager to geek out with Axsom on one of the true greats and touchstones of the late Twentieth Century. Speaking as geek myself if we have inherited the Earth in the Twenty-first Century, Warhol is definitely one of our own... a kind of iconographer in chief who created an extended family with his art production.

Jeff Jahn: Welcome to Portland... there is so much here let's do the obvious thing and start the discussion with the early work in this room.

Richard Axsom: Well he was the best known and most celebrated graphic designer in in the late 1950's

JJ: Paid very well for it too


Andy Warhol(detail)À la recherche du shoe perdu, 1955

RA: A huge amount of money and this reflects the directorship that I. Miller gave him to oversee a major shoe campaign. What we see here though wasn't done for commercial promotion. It was done to be a self published artist book for friends. Here is what you might call the... (more)

First Brexit, now England is devaluing the importance of art history as a form of education. Not a good sign for the USA where such things have never been taught or valued much, leading to a lack of critical thinking skills.

5 art cliches that have run their course. I agree, limp fabric was DOA years and years ago, anyone who tacks a tarp or dropcloth from the studio floor on a wall is generally not concerned about looking like a derivative hack. Leaning stuff, also weak. Stacks of anything... especially stuff that looks like it was found in a dumpster is also deeply lame. I'll add another, anything grotty looking on top of a wood grained or painted plinth. People, Isa Genzken and Rachel Harrison did this years ago... Rauschenberg, decades ago. Its revival happened almost 20 years ago and caught on at MFA programslike wildfire since. It is done and isnt a bus that artists can catch anymore.

Curator resigns in St. Louis after controversial art hits the wrong notes. Its true the work was tone deaf... but if curators had to resign for that there would be no curators at major institutions. The problem is the way that artists overreach to... (more)

It's been a crazy art week filled with press conferences and constant questions about PAM's new Rothko Pavilion expansion but frankly I'm more interested in looking art. I might even do a few studio visits to get back to the source next week. This weekend has some great opportunities to step out though.


Flash-November 22, 1963 with soup cans and flowers reflected

The big event this weekend is Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation at the Portland Art Museum. First, this is a full retrospective and I think the breadth of early work like the blotted ink technique shoes to a pop up book and album covers will give a more intimate personal view of an artist that most immediately associate with Soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. Those are present too but the exhibition does a good job of filtering in social concerns, politics and erotica in a way that goes beyond the celebrity obsessions that defined Pop Culture. In particular an entire gallery space devoted to the entire folio called Flash-November 22, 1963 is eye opening. It throws the entire show into a different relief. The folio has rarely been shown and it is a crucial piece of Americana that combines concrete poetry, political idealism and tragedy. I'll have an interview with scholar Richard Axsom published here this weekend where we discuss it and other works in depth. Warhol is a crucial artist and in Portland we so seldom experience well executed retrospectives that seeing this show is mandatory. What is great about Warhol is his art was all about "accessibility" a trend which has come to even further define the 21st century, yet somehow Warhol's work isn't the spent force of yet another meme, they age well. Overall, with Warhol's close knit cadres of filmmakers, fashion designers, actors and musicians Warhol predates many of the concerns of Millennials, long before they came of voting age. I'll be curious to hear how they and those even younger respond? Warhol came from a living practice of an extended artistic family so the way the work lives today essentially creates an indexed benchmark of the American identity... similar to the way the Greek Pantheon galvanized that culture. There will be a variety of events and films as well.

Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer | October 8, 2016 - January 1, 2017
1st lecture: Collecting Warhol with Richard Axsom and Jordan Schnitzer | October 9, 2-3PM
Film schedule here Beginning October 8th
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Avenue



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Mark Rothko retrospective at the Portland Art Museum 2012 (photo Jeff Jahn)

Major news PAM has announced its long anticipated expansion, featuring an idea that was first suggested by Tyler Green (it was in private but repeated publicly and constantly by PORT since... a Rothko pavilion with works on loan from the Rothko Family collection). PORT has been the biggest champion of this idea and Rothko's legacy for a very long time, even in the face of heavy resistance from Rothko deniers... one simply cannot deny history, which Arcy notably first brought to greater light on PORT.

Here is the Press Release:

"The Portland Art Museum today announced both an expansion that will unify its campus by connecting the Museum’s freestanding buildings, and a 20-year partnership with the children of Mark Rothko, Christopher Rothko, and Kate Rothko Prizel".... (more)