Claude Lévi-Strauss (1928–2009)
11.03.09
The New York Times reports that Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who transformed Western understanding of what was once called “primitive man” and who towered over the French intellectual scene in the 1960s and ’70s, has died. He was one hundred years old.
Lévi-Strauss's legacy is imposing. “Mythologiques,” his four-volume work about the structure of native mythology in the Americas, attempts nothing less than an interpretation of the world of culture and custom, shaped by analysis of several hundred myths of little-known tribes and traditions. The volumes—The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, The Origin of Table Manners, and The Naked Man, published from 1964 to 1971—challenge the reader with their complex interweaving of theme and detail. In his analysis of myth and culture, Lévi-Strauss might contrast imagery of monkeys and jaguars; consider the differences in meaning of roasted and boiled food (cannibals, he suggested, tended to boil their friends and roast their enemies); and establish connections between weird mythological tales and ornate laws of marriage and kinship.
Many of his books include diagrams that look like maps of interstellar geometry, formulas that evoke mathematical techniques, and black-and-white photographs of scarified faces and exotic ritual that he made during his field work.
His interpretations of North and South American myths were pivotal in changing Western thinking about so-called primitive societies. He began challenging the conventional wisdom about them shortly after beginning his anthropological research in the 1930s—an experience that became the basis of an acclaimed 1955 book, Tristes Tropiques, a sort of anthropological meditation based on his travels in Brazil and elsewhere. His work elevated the status of “the savage mind, ” a phrase that became the English title of one of his most forceful surveys, La Pensée Sauvage (1962).
Designer Hannu Kähönen Receives Franck Design Prize of 2009
11.03.09
Industrial designer, artist, and professor Hannu Kähönen has been chosen to receive the Kaj Franck Design Prize of 2009. Kähönen graduated in 1971 from the University of Art and Design Helsinki. He has also written about design and has taught design at the university level, reports Dexigner.
Kähönen is a winner of the Pro Finlandia award and the founder and CEO of the Creadesign agency. He is known as a versatile designer, professionally involved in work ranging from strategic design to the design of products and corporate images. His many works include Abloy padlocks and keys and the low-floor trams and buses of the Helsinki City Transport Department. Kähönen emphasizes the concept of “Design for All,” with accessibility and environmental impact as prime considerations.
The prize jury of 2009 consisted of Pentti Kivinen of the Finnish Fair Foundation, rector Helena Hyvönen of the University of Art and Design Helsinki, professor and designer Heikki Orvola, designer and Kaj Franck expert Tauno Tarna, and Mikko Kalhama of Design Forum Finland.
Albert York (1928–2009)
11.03.09
Albert York, a painter of small, mysterious landscapes who shunned the art world yet had a fervent following within it, died last Tuesday in Southampton, NY. He was eighty and lived in Water Mill, NY, according to the New York Times. The cause was cancer, said Cecily Langdale of Davis & Langdale, the gallery that, first as Davis Galleries and later as Davis & Long Company, has represented him since 1963.
In a 1995 New Yorker magazine profile of York, Calvin Tomkins said he was perhaps “the most highly admired unknown artist in America.” He described a shy man who avoided anyone connected to the art world, who worked slowly and who was perpetually dissatisfied with his work, prone to scraping down his wood panels and starting over.
His paintings’ geometric simplicity, flatness of form, and workmanlike brushwork exuded a quiet modernity, as did their wholeness of composition and feeling. In the catalog to a 1975 York exhibition at Davis & Long, the critic and painter Fairfield Porter wrote, “Certainly part of the strong emotional appeal of these paintings” is that York “is not clever, and in no sense superior to the nature of his medium or the nature of the subject, but that he is at one with both.”
Thom Mayne, Anna Wintour Among New Appointees to Obama's Arts Committee
11.03.09
If eclecticism was the goal for Barack Obama in choosing members for the president's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, then he has succeeded hands down, judging from yesterday's announcement of twenty-five appointees, writes David Ng in the Los Angeles Times.
Among the most famous names on the list are actors Sarah Jessica Parker, Edward Norton, Forest Whitaker, and Alfre Woodard, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, theater director George C. Wolfe, and architect Thom Mayne.
Established in 1982, the committee's mission is to work with organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to encourage partnerships between the public and private sector on cultural projects. The committee also seeks to initiate and support cultural programs, according to its official website.
LACMA Elects Three New Board Members
11.03.09
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced yesterday the election of three new members to its board of trustees: Carole Bayer Sager, one of the most prolific songwriters in pop history; Ghada Irani, a philanthropist with ties to humanitarian and cultural causes; and Dr. Richard Merkin, founder, president, and CEO of Heritage Provider Network.
Sager’s songbook spans almost forty years and contains hits such as the Grammy-winning “That’s What Friends Are For,” the Oscar-winning “Arthur’s Theme,” and the Oscar-nominated “The Prayer.” Her songs have been recorded by such artists as Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Bette Midler, and Celine Dion.
Irani has worked with UNICEF to establish a regional chapter in Los Angeles, where she serves as board cochair. She also chairs the fund-raising Snowflake Gala dinner, as well as the dinner honoring Goodwill ambassadors. Irani provides ongoing leadership and support for a California-based effort to address the educational needs of orphaned and underprivileged children in Lebanon as the honorary president of the Lebanese Ladies Cultural Society.
Merkin is the founder, president, and CEO of Heritage Provider Network, established in 1996. He is also founder of the Heritage Medical Research Institute, a nonprofit medical-research corporation emphasizing health-care quality and outcomes studies. He serves on the boards of the California Institute of Technology, the California Center Advisory Council, EdVoice, the Sierra Nevada College, the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, the office of the Education Master Plan, and the board of United Friends of the Children. He is a collector of art with interests ranging from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on masters of Hungarian art.
Dave Woody Wins National Portrait Gallery’s 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition
11.03.09
Dave Woody of Fort Collins, Colorado, has received first prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. His photograph, titled Laura, was chosen as the winner from a field of more than three thousand entries in every visual-arts medium. The first prize was a cash award of twenty-five thousand dollars and a commission from the museum to portray a remarkable living American for the NPG permanent collection. Woody’s portrait, as well as works from forty-eight other artists, are on display at the National Portrait Gallery, in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition exhibition on the second floor.
Jurors for the competition were Wanda M. Corn, professor emerita in art history at Stanford University; Kerry James Marshall, artist; Brian O’Doherty, artist and critic; and Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for the New Yorker. Jurors from the National Portrait Gallery were Martin E. Sullivan, director; Carolyn K. Carr, deputy director and chief curator; and Brandon Brame Fortune, curator of painting and sculpture.
Stanley Rayfield of Richmond, Virginia, received second prize for a painting titled Dad, while third place went to Adam Vinson of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania for his oil-on-panel painting titled Dressy Bessy Takes a Nap. Commended artists are Margaret Bowland, for a her painting Portrait of Kenyetta and Brianna; Yolanda del Amo, for her C-print photograph Sarah, David; Gaela Erwin, for her pastel on paper Baptismal Self-Portrait; and Emil Robinson for an oil-on-panel portrait titled Showered. Each was awarded a cash prize.
The competition is named for Virginia Outwin Boochever, a former NPG docent and an ardent supporter of the Portrait Gallery. The exhibition’s catalogue describes Boochever’s endowment for the portrait competition “as a way to benefit artists directly . . . as a unique opportunity to fill a void in the American art world.”
More on the winners can be found at the Smithsonian's site here.
Higher Bail Offer by Polanski Is Rejected
11.02.09
Officials in Switzerland rejected an offer by the film director Roman Polanski to post higher bail in return for his freedom pending review of a request for his extradition to face sentencing in the United States on a thirty-two-year-old conviction of having sex with a minor, reports Michael Cieply for the New York Times. Folco Galli, a spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry, said the request had been denied because of concern that Polanski would flee. Galci said that the offer was “not cash” and that it “could not be seized if he fled.”
Hervé Temime, a lawyer for Polanski, said the bail request would now move to the Swiss courts. This week, fifteen California legislators signed a letter supporting efforts by the Los Angeles County district attorney, Steve Cooley, to have Polanski returned to the United States, from which he fled on the eve of sentencing in 1978.
Lehman Art Sale Draws $1.35 Million
11.02.09
An eclectic batch of artworks that once adorned the corporate offices of Lehman Brothers sold for $1.35 million yesterday at Freeman’s Auctioneers in Philadelphia, reports Lindsay Pollock for Bloomberg. While the tally for the 283 lots was almost double the projected total of as much as $760,800, it represented no more than a modest dent in the $250 billion Lehman owes creditors.
The marathon six-hour sale drew fast-paced bidding and strong prices. The top lot was Roy Lichtenstein’s blue-and-white-striped Statue of Liberty print titled I Love Liberty, 1982, which sold for $49,000, nearly double the $25,000 presale high estimate.
Other pricey lots included a 1975 primary-colored series of seven Robert Indiana prints called “Polygons.” Expected to fetch no more than $6,000, the set went for $23,750. Arturo Herrera’s Mine, a looping blue-and-white collage, sold for $16,250 to a Venezuelan collector attending his first auction. All the 283 lots sold, and the majority were offered without a minimum price.
“I think there was a certain amount of trophy hunting,” said Alasdair Nichol, Freeman’s vice chairman and auctioneer, after the sale, noting the presence of former Lehman employees and staffers from other financial companies. “What’s not to like? It’s nice boardroom art, presented nicely, ready to go up on the walls. People lapped it up.”