cutro design brochure
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Company brochureTRANSCRIPT
02
cutródesign
Client: Blind Spot Project: Covers
Client: Blind Spot BooksProject: “Attracted to Light” Mike & Doug Starn
MIKE & DOUG STARN ATTRACTED TO LIGHT
Client: Magjak PrintingProject: Corporate brochure
[ smoth, precise, clean ]
ACCLAIM ENTERTAINMENT, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES8 ACCLAIM ENTERTAINMENT, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES 9
N64 PC CGB PSX/PSX2 DC
12%
11%
25%
31%
21%
N64 PC CGB PSX DC
24%
11%
18%
29%
18%
New platforms, new excitement
The entire industry is focused on the arrival of the newest generation of game consoles which offers gamers a whole new worldof realism and eye-catching effects using central processing units packing ever-increasing levels of computing power. Sega'sDreamcast console was launched in September 1999 to record-breaking demand and we look for-ward to the upcoming launchesof Sony's PlayStation2 and Nintendo's new console, code-named "Dolphin."
Acclaim is prepared for the next generation of gaming technology. Our strategy is quite simple: to provide the hottest newgames for the hottest new platforms on the market. To make sure we meet that aim, we are committed to publishing multiplegames for each new platform when it hits the marketplace. We are one of the only third-party developers that is creating gamesfor all of the new platforms that have been launched or are under development.
As importantly, in the current fiscal year, we are increasing our emphasis on CD-based products for the PlayStation andDreamcast consoles versus cartridge-based products such as Nintendo 64. CD-based products offer substantially higher marginsand shorter production times. As a result, we anticipate that CD-based products will represent the majority of our product mix.Moreover, because of our in-house studios and commitment to being primarily a game publisher rather than a distributor, we havethe organizational skills and focus to remain a strong industry leader in both game innovation and profitability. Because of thestrength of our studios and game franchises, the manufacturers of next-generation game systems have been generous in sharingtheir proprietary technical information with us. They know that having Acclaim games available as soon as their new products hitthe marketplace can help maximize the success of their new offerings.
Calendar 1999Product Mix
Calendar 2000Product MixForecast
ANNUAL REPORT 1999
ACCLAIM ENTERTAINMENT, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES 51ACCLAIM ENTERTAINMENT, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES50
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ACCLAIM ENTERTAINMENT, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES4
Interactive gaming is exploding, and Acclaim is an industry leader
The dynamic growth of interactive gaming is one of the best-kept secrets in the enter-tainment industry and certainly the biggest.In 1998 the video game industry was, by far, the fastest growing entertainment industry in the world. As this phenomenal growthcontinues today, the videogame industry is taking a bigger share of consumers' entertainment spending. In fact, sales of videogamehardware and software are expected to reach $10 billion in 1999, exceeding total movie box office receipts for the year.
This is just a taste of success yet to come as gaming's penetration of the entertainment market continues to grow. Total pene-tration of the current generation of consoles in North America alone now stands at 35.7 million, up 35% over 1998. Despite thatrapid growth, enthusiasts' appetite for still more interactive entertainment remains keen, as the average amount of time gamers playcontinues to rise. Serious gamers - who have traditionally been young and male - are currently estimated to number 3.5 million inthe US alone. These dedicated customers buy, on average, 20 games a year, spending a per capita total of $720, or $2.5 billion peryear in aggregate. They are merely the iceberg's tip in terms of total demand, as gaming is increasingly attracting older males aswell as females of all ages with advances in content and style that hold gamers' interest even as they mature.
ACCLAIM ENTERTAINMENT, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES 5
30.0%
BOOKS RECORDS FILM VIDEOPC GAMES
25.0%
15.0%
10.0%
5.0%
0.0%
6.4% 5.7%
9.2%
25.0%
12
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
10
8
6
4
2
0
Video Game Industry vs Motion Picture Industry1988 Entertainment Industry Growth
GAMING – AT THE CENTER OF INTERACTIVITY
"computer games aren't just the preserve of pimply 14-year-old boys anymore. It's a $10 billion business worldwide, one that will grow to $15 billion within three
years, ac-cording to Merrill Lynch estimates. That will make games bigger thanfilms, bigger than pop music and a lot bigger than books - in short,
the world's most lucrative enter-tainment medium."
– Bloomberg News, December 1, 1999
Source: Interactive Digital Software Association 1999 State of the Industry Report
Source, for data on the motion picture industry isfrom the MPAA.
Client: Acclaim Project: Annual Report
Client: Clinical Autonoimic Research JournalProject: Cover & logo
Official Journal of the American Autonomic Society, Clinical Autonomic Research Society and European Federation of Autonomic Societies
Clinical Autonomic Research
ISSN 0959-9851
carJanuary 2002 • Volume 12 • Number 1
D20289
Local sympathetic function in human skeletal muscle & adipose tissue assessed by microdialysisS. Bruce, C. Tack, J. Patel, K. Pacak, D.S. Goldstein.
New silicones for the evaluation of sudomotor function with the impression mold techniqueJ.J. Vilches, X. Navarro.
Effects of lung volume and chemoreceptor activity on blood pressure and R-R intervall during the Valsalva maneuverJ.H. Mateika, R.E. DeMeersman, J. Kim.
Thoracic sympathectomy: effects on hemodynamics and baroreflex controlR. Kingma, B.J. TenVoorde, G.J. Scheffer, J.M. Karemaker, A.J.C. Mackaay, K.H. Wesseling, J.J. de Lange.
Association between neuropsychiatric and autonomic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s diseaseJ. Idiaquez, E. Sandoval, A. Seguel.
Client: Genio CardsProject: 64 pages factoid book,featuring Marvel® Super Heroes™
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spread
T H E M A G A Z I N E O F D I G I T A L A R T S & C U L T U R E
0 909128 47576
08>
DOWN & LOADEDAT BOSTON CYBERARTS
CODE WARRIOR JOHN SIMON HEATS UP
NATALIE JEREMIJENKO GETS LIVID
FINAL FANTASY’SFLICK CHICK
DEPUNKIFICATION OF WEB DESIGN
08 / 01 US $6.50 / CAN $8
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Cover
69ARTBYTE January-February 2
000
Facing
page:
Seed sh
ape fo
r frac-
tal of
the p
alace
of the
chief
of
the cit
y of L
ogone-
Birne in
Camero
on. Deta
ils on
facing
page
and th
is page
depic
ting t
he thi
rd
iterati
on of
the se
ed sha
pe.
68
Are the
names
al-Khuw
arizmi, a
l-Biruni, a
nd Ibn
Sina fa
miliar to
you?
Probabl
y not.
What ab
out Eu
clid, A
rchimede
s, Ptole
my, and
Aristotle
?
The fa
ct is t
hat we w
ould p
robabl
y not
know of
Euclid
, Arch
imedes,
Ptolemy, a
nd
Aristotle
if it w
eren’t
for al-
Khuwariz
mi, al-Birun
i, and
Ibn Sina
. While
Europ
e was
in the
Dark Ages
, math
ematic
s flour
ished
throug
hout m
uch of
the r
est of
the w
orld. T
he
Europe
an ruli
ng cla
sses li
ked th
ings t
hat way.
It wasn
’t until
schol
ars an
d artis
ts loo
ked
outsid
e the
limited
Euroc
entric
framew
ork th
at thin
gs cha
nged.
In 1202, L
eonard
o
Fibona
cci pu
blished
his inf
amous
Liber
Abaci, w
hich b
rought
to Eu
rope a
revise
d syst
em
of num
eric no
tation
—includ
ing Arab
ic num
erals a
nd scr
ipt fro
m North A
frica a
nd the
zero f
rom Ind
ia—ren
dering
the le
ss effi
cient
Roman
system
obsol
ete. F
ibonac
ci’s tra
ns-
lation
of the
esote
ric world
of nu
mbers a
nd sig
ns is a
nalogo
us to
the Gute
nberg
revolu
-
tion in
literat
ure.
In effec
t, Fibo
nacci t
ook nu
mbers a
way fro
m the p
riests
and m
agicia
ns. Fo
r cen-
turies
, the m
agi’s a
rcane
methods
of nu
merolog
y cont
rolled
the fin
ances
and flo
w of
goods
throug
hout m
uch of
the c
ontine
nt. Fib
onacci
’s Libe
r Abac
i broke
the m
ental
chains
the c
hurch
and its
banke
rs had
used
to con
trol kn
owled
ge of
mathem
atics a
nd
“decod
ed” th
e infor
mation f
or oth
ers to
use.
From th
e pala
ces of
the p
riests
and
banker
s, num
bers a
nd the
ir sund
ry for
ms of re
presen
tation
migr
ated in
to the
realm
of
the ev
eryday
, and
the ef
fects
of the
quiet
revolu
tion ar
e still
felt no
w.
In a se
nse, a
divers
ified c
ultural
histor
y of n
umber
s migh
t have
been
the ca
sualty
of
Fibona
cci’s p
rometh
ean ge
sture.
That’s
where R
on Egl
ash co
mes into
the p
icture.
An assi
stant
profes
sor of
Science
and T
echnol
ogy Stud
ies at
Renssel
aer Polyt
echnic
Ron E
glash
Inte
rview
ed
by D
avid
Goldbe
rg
Intro
ductio
n b
y
Paul D
. Mille
r
Hip-H
op
Mat
hemat
ics
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spread
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spread
56 ARTBYTE MAY-JUNE 2000 ARTBYTE 57MAY-JUNE 2000
PHOTOS AND TEXT BY ALIX LAMBERT
SUPER SKYTACULARTHE GOODYEAR BLIMP MAKES THE WORD GO SLOW
IN THE COMMUNICATIONS ERA
SONAR DIARY OU R TECHNO CRITICFIGHTS IRRATIONAL FEARS AS SHEHITS BARCELONA FOR THE YEAR’SMOST IMPORTANT GATHERING OFDJS, DESIGNERS, AND MUSIC HEADS
arTbyTe September-October 01 3938 arTbyTe September-October 01
BY TRICIA ROMANO
Credit: Alicia Aguilera
54 arTbyTe November-December 01
organic plasticIF TODAY’S HIPPEST FURNITURE GIVES YOU DÉJÀ VU,
THERE’S A REASON: THE BLOBJECT FINDS ITS ROOTS
IN MID-20TH CENTURY FORMS.
by aric chen
55
utants, meltdowns, and mushroom clouds maytaint our impressions of atomic energy and theatomic bomb, but rosier thoughts tend to surfaceabout the postwar culture of the Atomic Age that
brought them. Tupperware parties and Leave it to Beaver aside,this was an era that produced a 1956 Walt Disney children’s bookabout Our Friend the Atom. And even the less convivial artifacts—say, a government civilian defense manual entitled “How toSurvive an Atomic Bomb”—lose some of their original powerwhen viewed through eyes accustomed to recontextualizingnearly everything of that period as a kitschy collectible. But inrecent years, as part of a broader trend, the mid-20th century hasalso resurfaced as an important moment in American designwith its Eames chairs, George Nelson marshmallow sofas, andIsamu Noguchi coffee tables. Design, in those years, was dynam-ically innovative, infused with a charming—and perhaps naive—can-do optimism. But these days it’s also looking awfully famil-iar. Despite pronouncements that millennial forms are a radicalexpression of a brave new world, so much design of the digitalage is literally copying that of the atomic.
That is the sense one gets—though the curators may not haveintended it—from the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s current exhibi-tion Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960, on view through January 6th. With nearly 250 objects, theexhibition—co-organized by Kevin Stayton, chair and curator ofDecorative Arts at the Brooklyn Museum, and Brooke KaminRapaport, associate curator of Contemporary Art—captures theyears between 1940 to 1960 in a cross-disciplinary survey of art,photography, architecture, ephemera, and, especially, design. It’sthe third and final installment of a trilogy that began with themuseum’s 1976 exhibition The American Renaissance, 1876-1917,followed by The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941 ten yearslater. Both of the earlier shows portrayed a vigorous Americanculture in flux—an emerging nation struggling with its identityin the first, and an industrial power grappling with the chal-lenges of the machine in the second. Vital Forms is no exception.Here, however, we are presented a postwar America immersed inits proverbial prosperity, with an enthusiasm perhaps only tem-pered by the looming post-Hiroshima specter of annihilation.This sense of anxiety has a particular resonance now since ter-rorism has shown its horrifying potential and we’re currentlyrevisiting war and missile defense systems.
With its emphasis on design—the consumer goods of a con-sumer age—the exhibition includes such icons as the plywoodchairs of Charles and Ray Eames, the ceramics of Eva Zeisel andRussel Wright, images of landscape architect Thomas Church’skidney-shaped swimming pools, and other examples of the peri-od’s organic or biomorphic shapes. Forms were softened andhard edges gave way to the curvilinear, partly as an alternative tothe austere functionalism of the International Style andBauhaus, partly taking its cue from the nature-inspired designsof Scandinavia, and partly in response to heightened ergonomicconcerns. Wartime developments in plastics and molded ply-wood also encouraged fluid contours. It’s compelling to think of
M
Charles and Ray Eames’ m
olded plywood folding screen.
arTbyTe November-December 01
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spread
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spread
arTbyTe November-December 01
EXHIBITIONISMTHIS FALL, LONDON’S VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM MOUNTS A “MULTIMEDIA” SHOW THAT RECASTS AVANT-GARDE FASHION AS HIGH-CONCEPT DESIGN. AN INNOVATIVE CURATORIAL STRATEGY? OR YET ANOTHER REASON TOFETISHIZE BEAUTIFUL CLOTHES?
Rei Kawakubo’s checkered future works the runway in a Radical Fashion installation.
by gloria m. wong
44 45arTbyTe November-December 01
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spreads
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spread
iTemsiTems
1514 arTbyTe September-October 01
OffbeaTs and on�oin�s
If digital technology and telecommunications have dimin-
ished territorial borders, then this year’s Venice Biennial is
a fitting exhibition for these times. With video works and
video projection in ample evidence, much of the show exists
in the de-territorialized space of the black box. A sense of
being nowhere and yet everywhere—perhaps a side effect of
our pervasive Internet connectivity—can also be seen spilling
into many real-world artworks, while a hybrid practice of art-
making that embraces both the virtual and the physical
increasingly informs these works’ sense of place, aesthetics,
and processes.
Charles Sandison’s compelling data installation Living
Rooms is an exemplar of these trends and embodies the best
possibilities to be found at the intersection of high-tech and
high-concept. Filling a darkened room with endlessly rotating,
streaming bits of text (“mother,” “male,” “food,” “old,”
“dead,” “father,” etc.), Sandison constructs a self-contained
“living” system. These are not merely projected words, rather,
they are data bits living out lives in circumstances generated
by thousands of computer code lines. Energized by “food,”
they procreate, age, and die. The neutral room becomes the
world and the viewer is privileged with the big picture, follow-
ing bits as they live and eventually perish, while the whole
swirls on without notice.
Though the sprawling scale and scope of the exhibition
makes any overview difficult, the following page presents a
survey of works that embody and exemplify these hybrid art-
making practices and our changing sense of space/nonspace.
arTbyTe September-October 01
BLACK BOX BIENNIALby thomas lail
Charles Sandison’s Living Roomsbreathes life into data streams.
daTa
16 arTbyTe November-December 01
Parisians certainly know how to transform old edifices into sexy newvenues for exhibiting art. Think of the Musée d’Orsay—once anabandoned railway station, now sleek galleries. The Palais de Tokyo,a stodgy government building just across the Seine from the EiffelTower, will soon be reinvented as the City of Light’s first institutiondevoted solely to contemporary art. In November, two monthsbefore its official opening, the museum is launching Le Pavillion, astudy program for young, up-and-coming artists, curators, and criticsbetween 25 and 30 years old. The inaugural group, selected from270 applicants, will work within “the eye of the storm” as the muse-um takes shape, says the institution’s co-director, Nicolas Bourriaud.
This concept reflects the museum’s quest to be an “open plat-form for artists to express themselves,” according to co-directorJérôme Sans, rather than a place where art is fossilized—like theLouvre. Nothing new here, as museums of modern and contempo-rary art have had special project spaces for years, where name-brand artists can showcase recent or commissioned work. But whathappens when virtually all the galleries are devoted to work byyoung, unknown, unpredictable artists?
There’s some method to the madness. Every six months, forexample, an artist will take over precisely 200 square meters of thegiant wall at the museum’s entrance. And every six months, an artistor designer will appropriate a space under the stairs and set up hisor her own salon. The Palais de Tokyo plans to invite artists from allover the world and all different disciplines: design, fashion, dance,fine art, literature, and Net art (to be shown in online exhibitions onthe museum’s website, www.palaisdetokyo.com). “We are trying toopen the debate in the arts as wide as possible,” says Sans.
A sense of rebelliousness prevails. The Palais de Tokyo will offerwhat it bills as an “anti-cafeteria,” live nonstop lectures, fashionshows, and some traditional amenities, like a bookstore and giftshop. Hours are noon to midnight, because, as Sans says, “Why notmake a place with a human schedule?”
The grand U-shaped building features some 4,000 square metersopen to the public and was turned into a spare industrial-like spaceby architects Anne Locaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, who designedthe Maison du Japon in Paris and the Osaka Cultural ExchangeCenter in Japan. Locaton and Vassal cite a square in Marrakesh,Djemaa-el-Fna, as a major source of inspiration, and hope the muse-um will feel “like a family home.” Sans adds that “when you enterthe place, you have to smell the difference. You will understand thatwe are proposing a place for experimenting, a place where we putartists front stage.” Palais de Tokyo, 2 rue de la Manutention, Paris,33.1.4723.5401.
—Ann Landi
A FRENCH REVOLUTION
openin�s > launches > breakThrou�hs
arTbyTe November-December 01 17
exhibition rooms: courtesy of Palais de Tokyo;
Anne Locaton and Jean Philippe Vassal.
The Palais de Tokyo mapped out (above)and digitally prefigured (below).
39artbyte May-June 0138 artbyte May-June 01
Hollywood, home to stars and starfuckers, has anew divide. And as directors duke it out, some
have declared an all-out war. The stakes? Only the future of filmmaking.
by tim grierson
paradisocinema
lost
Client: Artbyte MagazineProject: Spread
32
WHAT IF: YOU WERE A MULTIMEDIA ARTIST WITH UNLIMITED FUNDSWHILE IT REMAINS MONTHS AWAY, IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED A GENEROUS GRANT, IT’S NOT TOO EARLY TO START GEARING UP FOR BURNING MANby david kushner
Ricoh’s RDC-i700 (Price tba, <www.ricohzone.com>)
When video images do not serve his muse, Mobile
Artist produces his RDC-i700 Image Capturing Device.
This handheld wonder lets him take pristine digital
stills and send them directly over the Net. He can edit
and caption the shots, and even add commentary via
audio AVI files. And should Mobile Artist desire, the
RDC’s built-in HTML file-creation software makes it possi-
ble to put the magnificent shots on the Web.
Handspring VisorPhone ($299, <www.handspring.com>)
This is the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup moment for
mobile communications technology, a time for noble
and delicious pairings. Just like Chocolate + Peanut
Butter = Peanut Butter Cup, PDA + Phone =
Handspring VisorPhone. This little clip-on—which
attaches to the top of the handheld and hooks up to a
telephone headset—transforms a Handspring into a
fancy communications device.
Orange Videophone (Price £1,299.99, <www.orange.co.uk>)
His art is worthless if it can’t be seen
and heard. So Mobile Artist has
shelled out the pounds for the new
Orange Videophone: one of the first
mobile commercial products that
actually lets you see who you’re talk-
ing to. The Videophone does all the
necessary stuff: beaming sound and
video, as well as e-mails. Mobile Artist
is not sure if this Brit tech will fly in the
States, but he remains calm.
Mobile Artist hates his PDA stylus, so he’s packed
along this collapsible keyboard for his Handspring.
The stealth black peripheral starts off the size of a
Pop Tart and unfolds to a spacious full-size set of
keys. The power gets sucked straight from the
handheld, so there are no extra batteries to schlepp.
Stowaway Keyboard ($99, <www.targus.com>)
Picture a lone artist heading deep into the Nevada desert to create the ultimate all-digital art for the ultimate
human happening: the Burning Man festival. There’s only one problem. His grant stipulates that he needs to
create and transmit the finished work real-time, and the only gadget he owns is the Handspring Visor his
mom gave him for his birthday. Fortunately, the Burning Man organizers have provided a wireless intranet
and satellite-delivered online access. Thanks to them, mom, and the latest mobile technology, Mobile Artist
can complete his mission. Here’s what’s in his Platypus Thunderhead Hydration Pack.
artbyte March-April 01 artbyte March-April 01
Sierra Meteor Light Tent ($280,<www.sierradesigns.com>)
Weighing in at a feathery seven pounds six ounces, this
snappy tent keeps Mobile Artist cozy during those long
desert nights. It is fully freestanding, so it doesn’t have to
be pegged into the ground. This is good for Mobile Artist,
who prays each night he’ll be tractor-beamed, tent and all,
by a passing alien ship.
33
Client: Artbyte Magazine.Project: Spread
artbyte March-April 01 2928 artbyte March-April 01
nomadism, technology, detritus, and sprawl. San
Francisco–based firm Perimetre-Flux seems to have
been particularly influenced by the concepts of
“detritus” and “sprawl” in designing the dazzling,
sometimes overstimulating look of the Flash-
intensive site.
“We were interested in foregrounding the
themes that the curators identified,” agrees Stephen
Jaycox, Perimetre’s design media director. “The
most obvious is the sprawled navigation, which is
programmed to randomly create its own patterns
and grow over time. It may open up the idea of
sprawl as an aesthetic issue.”
Locating the navigational interface—a matrix of
pixels—involves moving through translucent ele-
ments and texts. The site’s user’s guide is required
reading and part of a sequence of steps—not all of
SFMoMA makes a bold, splashy, and flawed
attempt to up the ante in the effective presen-
tation of Web projects with 010101: Art in
Technological Times. Compared to online museum
exhibitions that mimic their physical counterparts,
010101 has tried something much more ambitious:
First, it’s an exhibition space and an integral com-
ponent of a show also playing out in SFMoMA’s gal-
leries March 3 to July 8. Second, it’s a virtual zone
that showcases five commissioned artist Web proj-
ects by Mark Napier, Entropy8Zuper!, Erik Adigard,
Matthew Ritchie, and Thomson & Craighead.
Third, it provides additional context, information,
and dialogue space within a visually compelling
format. In attempting to balance these factors,
010101’s successes and failures mirror the unre-
solved issues that still pepper—and inform—the
medium and its art.
Conceived and organized by a cross-disciplinary
team of SFMoMA curators with technical and finan-
cial assistance from Intel, the show tackles the
myriad ways technology has rewired art processes
and subject matter. The exhibit touches on seven
digital-age buzzwords: anonymity, identity, reality,
SFMOMA’S ONLINE EXHIBITION: 010101
them intuitive—needed to get to the meat of the
project. Before you can see the goodies, you’re pre-
sented with scrolling introductory writings that
function like wall texts in a gallery. You’ll have to
read through (or close the window) to get to the
next section.
But getting people to do homework isn’t easy in
a medium rich in instant gratification. (Know any-
one who actually reads their cell-phone manual?)
The site is ambitious in its aims to challenge visi-
tors, or at least slow them down. It is indeed
intended as a thought-provoking art space, not one-
click Amazon.com. That idea, however, raises a
difficult and still unresolved digital question: Are
audiences interested enough to stick with an art
site if it isn’t exactly user-friendly?
For answers, Jaycox looks to the film-industry
model. “It’s like the difference between Hollywood
and indie film,” he says, suggesting the slick
SFMoMA site is an art film—albeit one with a big
budget. “If people come with a certain expectation,
and it’s not fulfilled, they’ll be frustrated.”
Conversely, those willing to make the effort may be
rewarded with new media insight.
The site does draw from the physical as well,
with the grounding quality of real-world museum
architecture serving as a comforting metaphor.
According to SFMoMA curator of education John
Weber, the site is intended to offer the same view-
ing, educational, and social functions that the
museum would provide. “Our physical building
and the website have something in common,” he
says. “Certain zones, like the atrium, are design-
heavy, while the galleries are clean.” Alluding to
museumgoers wandering the halls, Weber adds, “It
may take someone a while to find things, but they
enjoy being in the building.”
WEB DESIGN FIRM PERIMETRE-FLUX AND THE SFMOMA DRAW A FINE LINE BETWEEN NET ART AND THE VIRTUAL GALLERYby glen helfand
Art
On
Pape
r Sept.-Oct. 2000US $10/Can $12Sept.-Oct. 2000US $10/Can $12
Client: Art on Paper MagazineProject: Cover
Client: Art on Paper MagazineProject: Cover
Art
On
Pape
r Vol. 4, No. 5 May-June 2000US $10/Can $12
Vol. 4, No. 5 May-June 2000US $10/Can $12
RICHARD SERRA
DAIDO MORIYAMA
FIONA BANNER
RICHARD SERRA
DAIDO MORIYAMA
FIONA BANNER
JANE HAMMONDTHE UNPHOTOGRAPHABLE
GIUSEPPE UGONIA OF BRISIGHELLARICHARD POUSETTE-DART
Art
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rP R I N T S • D R A W I N G S • P H O T O G R A P H Y
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rA
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per Michael Ackerman
Corbett on GustonThe Tiger’s Eye
The Peapod StyleSugimoto’s Noh
Michael AckermanCorbett on Guston
The Tiger’s EyeThe Peapod Style
Sugimoto’s Noh
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Art On Paper 4948 January-February 2002
What Was There and What I Felt
by Miriam Rosen
“It’s not just about seeing,” states Michael Ack-erman, who talks like other people play chess,with long periods of thoughtful silence before
he makes his move.The “it” in question is his photogra-phy: black-and-white images—or “pictures” as he prefersto call them—from snapshot size to large format, shotwith a Leica, a Polaroid, a panoramic, a throwaway plasticcamera for kids, hundreds of pictures taken over the pastdozen years or so in New York or Benares; Paris, Mar-seilles, or Naples;Auschwitz, Berlin, or the Atlanta neigh-borhood of Cabbagetown—all of which exert a hypnoticpull on the viewer.
We proceeded by elimination. “Bit by bit, you get ridof more and more,”Ackerman told me early on, in refer-ence to the pictures. But the same turned out to be trueof the conversations we had when he was back in Paris lastsummer. I discovered, for example—notwithstanding themental order imposed by the successive exhibitions andbooks that I have seen in Paris over the past four years—that his pictures are not really chronological or geograph-ical. His Times Square photos from 1996–97, which werethe first of his work to be shown in France (in somewhatunconventional exhibitions organized in connection withthe World Soccer Cup finals in 1998 and Amnesty In-ternational’s 1999 campaign against the death penalty inthe U.S.), were actually made after most of those in hisfirst book, End Time City (1999), a hallucinatory series ofimages taken in Benares between 1993 and 1997. And,chronologically, they coincided with the ones he took inCabbagetown in 1996–98, some of which appear in thedocumentary film Benjamin Smoke (2000), co-directed byPeter Sillen and Ackerman’s friend Jem Cohen. His newbook, Fiction, meanwhile, published in Paris in 2001 (anEnglish edition is forthcoming from the German publish-er Gina Kehayoff Verlag), interweaves a few of the last
Michael Ackerman, New York, 1998, gelatin silverprint (16x20 in.).All photos courtesy the artist.
The Pictures of Michael Ackerman
Art On Paper 6564 March-April 2002
Apair of small hands motion in front of elevatordoors, the hands both reflected and abstracted bythe brushed aluminum surface. There are seven
such black-and-white photographs, each mounted on asheet of brushed aluminum, in Incantation, a series byJennifer Bolande. Why are they so troubling? True, it’s astrange conceit, using incantatory gestures to open elec-tronic doors. (The artist says she was looking to find a newform of “interface”with an everyday object.) Perhaps what’sunsettling is the reference to touch. The quintessentialexpression of postmodernism, photographs are not typi-cally considered tactile objects. And yet, here the hand isdoubly implicated.The artist’s hands dissolve into the metalin the picture, enticing us to touch the metal of the frame,which has the mirror coolness of what one imagines pho-tography to be. It’s a surface that once touched, would bephysically spoiled, like a photograph is by a fingerprint.
Equally troubling is Gerhard Richter’s 128 Fotos voneinem Bild (Halifax, 1978), from 1998. This portfolio ofeight offset lithographs reproduces in black and white the128 photographs Richter made of a colorful abstractpainting for his Pictures exhibition held in Halifax in 1978.(The original set of photographs are in the Kaiser WilhelmMuseum, Krefeld, which published the recent prints. Asub-generation is the artist’s book 128 details from a picture,Halifax 1978, published by the Nova Scotia College of Artand Design in 1980.) This endless endgame of paintingand reproduction has, since 1962, been a familiar strategyfor Richter, who once reflected,“Suddenly, I noticed thatthe copying of photographs had more to do with paintingthan everything I had ever painted before . . .”1 Indeed, justlike the latest discovery scientists are bound to make of yet
another infinitely tiny particle of matter and materialmeasure, there’s something reassuring about this artist’sability to parse another layer of imagery out of his own art.Our systems of representation continue to function andfind interesting things to do.
What is disturbing about the 128 Fotos is the view theyoffer, or fail to offer. “The photographs were taken fromvarious sides, from various angles, various distances andunder different light conditions.”2 Consequently, eachframe in this Atlas-like grid reads as a picture in its ownright: some resemble landscapes; others, weirdly blurred bythe camera’s focus, make abstractions of abstraction. Stillothers appear as straightforward documents for a paintingconservator: mug shots of brushstrokes.Throughout, thereis a sense of mapping, of gathering and plotting informa-tion. Upon pulling back, the overall impression is of a ter-rain, but one that in no way resembles the original. Thisterrain has been deconstructed into a panorama of parti-cles—particles of photography attempting to coalesce intopainting. At this point, Richter’s work comes full circle.His abstract paintings always appear loaded and wet withthe potential of the photographic image—they both lookand feel like emulsion assaulted by a squeegee during thedarkroom act of development.
To write of particles is to speak of dust, or in this case,Dust Breeding (Elevage de poussière), which Richter’s 128Fotos visually and conceptually resembles. For this collab-orative work of 1920, Man Ray photographed MarcelDuchamp’s Large Glass covered by several months’ accu-mulation of dust. Like Richter’s various views of his paint-ing, Elevage de poussière shows a painting rendered invisibleand pitched into relief by the particular. It also brings to
the unphotographablenotes on photography and dustby Ingrid Schaffner
Art On Paper 65
Gerhard Richter, 128 Photos froma Painting,TKTK (25-1/4x39-3/8in.), 1998. Courtesy MarianGoodman Gallery, New York.
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Dirty Hole: StevenPippin’s O
bscu re Routes
Art On Paper 3534 January-February 2000
by IngridScha
ffn
er
Steven Pippin’s contemporary camera work ex-hibits flagrant Victorian tendencies, most con-
spicuously in his inventive approach to the medium.In its early days, photography attracted many enthu-siastic amateurs who, like Pippin, were eager toexperiment, despite the relatively cumbersome ap-paratus and messy technique. Pippin’s work aboundswith echoes of a number of 19th-century precur-sors, among others that quintessential Victorianphotographer, the Reverend Charles LutwidgeDodgson (1832–98), more famous as Lewis Carroll,author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and infa-mous for his portrayals of little girls. Indeed, to illu-minate Pippin’s art is to peer down a hole (albeit nota rabbit’s hole) at photography’s origins, there to dis-cover a route to new ends.
One arrives at the brink of this hole by rail, ameans of conveyance fascinating to both Dodgsonand Pippin.As a boy growing up near the first pas-senger railway line in Britain, Dodgson constructedelaborate toy trains from garden equipment.1 From1850 onward, he resided at Oxford, where hebecame a math lecturer with a brilliance for logic.In 1856, a favorite uncle, Skeffington Lutwidge,introduced him to photography, which became hispreferred recreation until 1880, when he put awayhis camera. Dodgson satirized his experiences in anautobiographical story, “A Photographer’s DayOut,”2 an account, detailed by much comic break-age and spillage, of one Mr. Tubbs’s quest to takegood pictures. Like Dodgson, Tubbs employs thewet collodion process, which necessitates on-the-spot development with a kit of delicate glass platesand chemicals.Tubbs’s grail is a portrait of the beau-tiful Amelia, the young daughter of a friend. Shebids he first photograph a nearby cottage where,caught trespassing by a farmer, Tubbs ends hisadventures in bruising and yearning.
As is well known, Dodgson’s own object of de-sire was Alice Liddell, the daughter of one of hiscolleagues and the muse of his Alice books.Amongthe photographs of his many, mostly female, childfriends, the best known is an 1858 portrait of Alicedressed as a beggar maid. In it, she appears as a tinytemptress with bare legs and shoulders, hand on hipand with a cocky expression. Out of her artfullyarranged rags peeps one breast. Dodgson often cos-tumed his subjects, but in 1867 he began to photo-graph them nude. By this time, much to hisanguish, Alice was pretty much out of the picturesince, in 1863, he had been banished from theLiddell home for reasons that remain mysterious.
While little girls are not his photographic cup oftea, Steven Pippin shares with Dodgson both aninterest in gadgetry and a predilection for things
interdicted. Born in 1960 in Surrey, England, hefirst pursued a course in engineering. (Today, be-sides his works on paper, he makes sculptures basedon machines other than cameras, such as televisionsand phonographs.) In 1981 he began to study art,completing his education at the Chelsea School ofArt in London (he presently divides his time be-tween London and Berlin). It was just prior tojumping careers, when he was employed at amachine shop, that he started making industrialphotographs and working in the darkroom. Theprocess may have made him feel at home: as a boyPippin helped his father, an amateur photographer,print negatives in the bathroom and load film in thebed. “He was a very keen amateur photographer,”Pippin has said, “but there came a time when hejust gave it up completely, and I suppose I musthave taken over at that point.”3
Among his first projects, Pippin set out to pho-tograph the exact London park site that appears inAntonioni’s film Blow Up (1966),“in the belief thatI would perhaps discover some small nuance of thefilm, as yet undiscovered, in the bushes surroundingthe scene.”4 Instead, Pippin confronted an over-whelming feeling of “guilt at trying to photographan empty park, vainly trying to record an absentspace.” Moseying around the bushes, he suddenlyhad a picture of himself, camera in hand, as “anobsessive pervert, filled with an acute sense of plea-sure at the notion of this obscure juncture of ficti-tious events.” While he failed to get the intendedpicture, he did capture the essence of his futurepractice. If using a modern-day camera engenderedguilt at breaching the conventions of photography,then Pippin would simply have to create an alter-native means to fulfill his furtive photographicdesires. In light of which, his subsequent camerawork can be seen as a paradoxical method of hid-ing his shame while simultaneously going public,coming clean, with the dirty deed of photograph-ing nothing.
Having begun in earnest, in the early 1980s,converting various objects—a bathtub, a smallhouse, even a commercial photo-booth—into pin-hole cameras, he turned, in 1993, to his first majorproject, The Continued Saga of an Amateur Photog-rapher, which was also documented on video. Thepiece commences promptly at 12:32 P.M. with atrain pulling into London’s Victoria Station. On theplatform stands Pippin, dressed in dapper suit andtie, carrying an attaché case. He boards the train andlocks himself in the lavatory—an exceptionallysmall room (the word “camera” does literally meanroom). The video, taping in a position above theartist’s head, rarely allows one to see Pippin’s face as
Art On Paper 4746 March-April 2002
Giuseppe Ugonia,Master Lithographer of Brisighellaby William L.Vance
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44 July-August 2001 Art On Paper 45
Pierre Christin and Enki Bilal, page from The Sarcophagus (205x265 cm), 2000. © Dargaud, Paris.
the graphic nov els of enki bilalby Miriam Rosen
If Enki Bilal did not exist, one of his writer or filmmaker friendsmight well have invented him as an emblematic (anti-) hero of our postmodern, globalized, multicultural, multimedia era.
Transplanted to the suburbs of Paris at the age of nine, this Belgrade-born “Yugoslovak” (as director Alain Resnais has dubbed him: hisfather is Bosnian, his mother Czech) perfected both his French andhis drawing through the comic books he discovered in France—Spirou, Tintin, Pilote. After winning Pilote’s “new talent” competitionin 1971—he was 20 at the time—he went on to become a regularcontributor to the venerable magazine and, by the end of the decade,a star of France’s thriving comics counterculture.
Like any recurring (anti-)hero worthy of the name, Bilal hasremained young, handsome, and up for adventure. As can be seen fromthe 20-odd albums and books he has authored or co-authored overthe past 25 years, his political preoccupations and personal obsessionsare remarkably intact: the individual confronted by monolithic pow-ers, memory and its erosion, the search for identity outside of reac-tionary national or ethnic labels.But in terms of subject and style alike,Bilal has constantly called his work—and himself—into question. Ifthere was never anything very “comic” about his often futuristic andalways pessimistic albums (more appropriately designated in French asbandes dessinées or “drawn strips”), he has long abandoned the genresand codes of the medium as well. Since the early 1980s—and in coun-terpoint to numerous posters, book jackets and illustrations, and cos-tume and set designs for ballet, opera, and film, not to mention twofeature films of his own—he has been experimenting with the graph-ic novel, notably through his Nikopol and Nike trilogies (1980–92,1998–), but also with a kind of docu-fiction developed in various col-laborations with his journalist/writer friend Pierre Christin.
Their fin-de-millennium special, Le sarcophage (The Sarcophagus,2000), offers a timely point of entry into the artist’s universe.Conceived and written by Christin, The Sarcophagus takes the form ofa true-false prospectus for a true-false Museum of the Future, vaunt-
Artists’ BooksWiens Laden & Verlag
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James Siena's algorithmic works on paperJustine Kurland in a historical context
The Met's comprehensive show of Leonardo's DrawingsGallery Walks: London and New York
James Siena's algorithmic works on paperJustine Kurland in a historical context
The Met's comprehensive show of Leonardo's drawingsGallery Walks: London and New York
THE PHOTOGRAPHS OFBOHNCHANG KOO
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Four Chinese Artists Who Reinvent Traditions / New Prints /Gallery Walks: Paris and Chicago / The Michelangelo Discovery Four Chinese Artists Who Reinvent Traditions / New Prints /Gallery Walks: Paris and Chicago / The Michelangelo Discovery
Eva Hesse’s DrawingsKenneth Tyler: A History Adam Fuss in His Own Words
Eva Hesse’s DrawingsKenneth Tyler: A History Adam Fuss in His Own Words
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exhibition reviews
92 art on paper
Greuze the Draftsman.Frick Museum.With passionate subjects that sometimes
achieve the emotional pitch of a Brazilian
soap opera, the moralizing art of the French
18th-century master Jean-Baptiste Greuze
engages even today’s viewer with its melo-
drama. And yet “Greuze the Draftsman,” an
exhibition at the Frick Collection this sum-
mer on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum
in Los Angeles September 10–December
1), proves that bathos is only one mode
within this prolific artist’s work.
In this first exhibition devoted to
Greuze’s drawings, curator Edgar Munhall
has included a dozen rarely seen sheets
from the Hermitage Museum that reveal
Greuze as both a singular draftsman and a
compellingly human figure. Munhall pres-
ents the artist’s early and later drawings in
separate galleries, conveying Greuze’s fluc-
tuating personal fortunes as well as his
interest in a wide range of subjects and
emotions. This is a an artist capable not
only of orchestrating expansive genre
scenes but also of producing sensitive ren-
derings of distinguished aristocrats,
exhausted children, and even distracted
dogs. Greuze might have been an inconsis-
tent draftsman, but he was nonetheless
able to describe human passions and tem-
peraments with fluid ease. His natural
warmth emerges in such early preparatory
sketches for tenderly painted subjects as
The Dry Nurses (1765) and The Beloved
Mother (1769). The biographical sources
NEW YORK
for many of Greuze’s subjects are evident
from some of these drawings. A study for
the bride’s father in his painting A
Marriage Contract (1760-61) can be identi-
fied as Greuze’s father-in-law François
Babuti, and many drawings from the early
happy period of the artist’s marriage, such
as Head of a Sleeping Woman (ca. 1760),
feature his wife, Anne-Gabrielle.
Greuze’s notorious domestic unhappi-
ness later on is also well represented in the
compositional studies for hugely popular
genre subjects like The Father’s Curse: The
Ungrateful Son (1777), The Torn-Up Will
(1785), and The Angry Wife (ca. 1786).
While the artist’s paintings offer a florid,
even operatic intensity, the Frick show sug-
gests why, when Greuze’s teacher Charles-
Joseph Natoire commented on his draw-
ing, the artist responded with confident,
bravura, “Monsieur, you would be happy
if you could do one as good.”
—Elizabeth Guffey
Thomas Zummer: Portraits ofRobots. Frederieke Taylor Gallery.At first glance, the new robot portraits by
author and scholar Thomas Zummer, on
view at Frederieke Taylor this summer,
seem to be photographs. The detail is
astonishingly realistic and the variation in
surface texture suggests the graininess of a
photo. When closer examination reveals
them to be graphite drawings, the viewer
may chalk up the fastidiousness of the ren-
dering to a kind of nostalgic fetishism of
old technology. But Zummer is up to some-
thing more complex with these drawings,
proposing correlations between the modes
of reproduction and representation invol-
ved in robotics and portraiture.
While they look like stills from a
1950s sci-fi flick, each of the eight por-
traits in the series is a drawing of a photo-
graph of an actual robot. Sabor (2000)
depicts a robot from the ’50s that had nip-
ples and smoked cigarettes, and MOBOT
II (2000) features a mobile robot designed
by an American aircraft company to
replace humans in radioactive areas. These
Jean-Baptiste Greuze,The Ungrateful Son.,red chalk on whitepaper, (16 1/2 x 12 3/4in.) ca.1777-78.Courtesy The FrickCollection, New York.
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Guercino, Testa di DioPadre, red chalk andwhite chalk on beigepaper (12 x 9 in.),1620. CourtesyBudapest Museum ofFine Arts.
104 art on paper
This catalogue of eighty-four drawings by Italian artists of the
Seicento, which accompanied an exhibi-tion at the Istituto Nazionale per laGrafica in Rome this past summer, at lastgives a wider audience the opportunity tobecome familiar with the late 18th-centuryHungarian collector, Prince MiklòsEsterhàzy (1765-1833). A scion of one of Hungary’s most illustrious families, heacquired a collection of paintings anddrawings from the Italian, Parisian, andLondon markets representing the mostimportant European schools; these draw-ings are now in the holdings of theMuseum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
The prince’s choices were dictated bythe late-Neoclassical tastes predominant inEurope at the time, and he was particularlydrawn to Bolognese and Roman Classi-cism. It is no accident, therefore, that thecollection’s most significant 17th-centurygrouping consists of an assortment ofworks by the three Carraccis, who wereresponsible for artistic reforms in Bolognathat opened the way for Seicento paintingin Rome. Contrasting with LudovicoCarracci’s dynamism is his brotherAgostino’s incisive power, evident even inworks derived from ancient sources. Incontrast, Annibale began his career withdrawings for Palazzo Fava (no. 1 in the cat-
alogue) and for the Elemosina di SanRocco (cat. 2), which convey a fullness ofform and flesh that, in the studies for theGalleria Farnese (cat. 3-4), merges theClassicism of ancient sculptures, Raphael’ssolemnity, and Correggio’s grace. The qual-ity of the Bolognese School drawingsremains high even among the Carraccis’pupils: Algbani, Domenichino, Lanfranco,Reni, and the later Cantarini and Sirani.Also noteworthy is the substantial group ofworks by the lesser-known Faccini, whosehigh-contrast, deeply shaded studies linkhim to Annibale. The pearl of the collec-tion, however, is the wondrous sequence offigures, landscapes, and holy scenes byGuercino, all related to his paintings.
It is possible to advance new hypothe-ses on some works from the later Bolo-gnese period, included in the cataloguewith problematic attributions. AndreaCzère, curator of prints and drawings atthe Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest,includes a fine pastel, which she attributesto Canuti, for instance, even though thesoftness of the colored chalks seems to sug-gest a late 18th-century dating. Even moreproblematic is a splendid study of theMartyrdom of a Female Saint, related to afresco in the church of Santa FrancescaRomana in Rome. Czère attributes thedrawing to Burrini, but, in my opinion, itis more likely of the late-Seicento RomanSchool, because of the Cortonesque style
The Esterhazy Legacy: 17th-
Century Italian Drawings from the
Budapest Museum of Fine Arts.
Published by the BudapestMuseum of Fine Arts, Budapest.Essay by Andrea Czère. 235 pp. 94illustrations, $30.
Princely DrawingsA catalogue of Italian drawings documents theoutstanding collection of an 18th-centuryHungarian prince.
books in depth / by Simonetta Valenti Rodinó
The prince’s choices were dictated by the late-Neoclassical tastes predominant in Europe at thetime, and he was particularly drawn to Bologneseand Roman Classicism.
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