Tag Archives: Helen Molesworth

HELEN MOLESWORTH AT UCLA

Image result for this will have been molesworth

Helen Molesworth will be teaching a class at UCLA this fall. Last month she gave the commencement address at the university’s School of the Arts and Architecture:

“Thank you. Thank you, Dean [Brett] Steele, for the invitation to speak today to the UCLA faculty and staff, to the families and friends of the students gathered here today. I know it sounds cliché, but it really is an honor to stand before you this afternoon. First things first, I want to offer the graduating class of 2018 of the School of Arts and Architecture some big-time congratulations. The word “congratulations” has two Latin roots. The first is to wish joy, and the second is to be together. It gives me such pleasure to be together today with you and wish you joy. Congratulations.

“The task of the commencement speaker is to send you into the world with some pearls of wisdom before you start your so-called real life. But I confess, I wonder what knowledge I possess that could be useful for you, you for whom the Internet always existed, you for whom gay marriage and marijuana are legal. Neither were legal when I was in college—[I was] pretty much a petty criminal by the time of my graduation. You who witnessed the first black president as an everyday reality rather than an impossible dream, you who saw the Twin Towers fall as children. What can I possibly say to equip you not for the journey you are about to begin, but the journey that you are already on?

“I’ve decided to tell you how hopeful I am about the future, and one of the reasons I am hopeful is because of your generation. You guys have come of age against an extraordinary backdrop of actual and symbolic change. From the two-term Obama presidency that shaped your sense of political possibility, to new ideas in the workplace symbolized by the Me Too and Time’s Up movements, to your generation’s acceptance of trans identities, to the bravery of those of you with DACA status, to your support of the water protectors at Standing Rock, to new ideas about race and power exemplified by Black Lives Matter. And now there are those following in your footsteps. High school students across the country, led by their peers from Parkland, calling for an end to gun violence. These are huge advances in the realm of everyday life, and you have already helped to shape these changes.

“But, even though I am hopeful, it would be foolish not to mention how spectacularly messed up the world is at the moment. Both here and abroad, democracy finds itself imperiled by the all-too-familiar wins of authoritarianism and nationalism. In our country, the difficult task of democracy is under enormous pressure from a newer threat, an increasingly powerful oligarchy that has concentrated more money in the hands of fewer individuals than the feudal period. This oligarchy has inserted its values of profit and their inherent belief in money and wealth as the ultimate metrics of success into democracy’s most fundamental institutions: the press, scientific research, concert halls, the university, museums, all institutions that were previously believed to stand apart from the forces of the market. The worlds of culture and art, the worlds you are poised to enter, are striated with the pressure of these moneyed forces in ways we have never before encountered.

“And yet, I find these times as joyful as they are scary. One reason for my joy is my ability to address you, the next generation of artists and cultural thinkers, as the folks who have as the bedrock of your pedagogical experience the crit. The crit, for those of you in the back rows who may be unfamiliar with the term, is short for the word “critique.” It is a classroom exercise in which an artist shows her work to her teachers and fellow students, and everyone is at liberty to say what they think. The crit is unique to teaching in the arts, and it happens in writing, art, design, and architecture. The crit teaches students how to present their work and share their intentions and their process. Many people think that the primary value of the crit is that it teaches the student presenting her work to be as good as talking about her work as she is as making it.

“But I want to suggest that you were learning something else in the crit. You were learning how to listen. When you sat in a crit, you weren’t simply learning to wait your turn before you spoke. Some of you were learning how to listen to what was being said, as well as what wasn’t being said. You were learning to listen carefully to people’s choice of words, learning to listen for the emotional content of a statement as well as its factual one. You were learning to listen as a way to slow down the formation of your own opinion. You learned it was better to listen to what happened in the crit before you made your mind up about what you thought about the work. You were learning how to listen with compassion and ambivalence. In other words, you were learning how to listen to the complexity and the nuance of the crit itself.

“I want to be clear, not everybody learns how to do this. While you were learning to make and talk about art, you were also learning how to listen. I can think of no other time when it has been this important to be a very, very good listener. The composer John Cage suggested that listening would be our greatest virtue when he wrote his famous composition “4’33,” a piece for piano where the performer goes to the stage, walks up to the piano, lifts the lid of the piano, and sits with his hands in his lap. They sit motionless for four minutes and 33 seconds. Audiences rebelled when they first heard this piece. They were incensed that they were not being entertained by the artist. But Cage was asking the audience to listen differently. He was showing them that there is no such thing as silence. There is always sound. It is the ear that must be trained. We must learn to listen as much as we learn to speak.

“This is what Parkland High School student Emma Gonzalez did when she stood silent for four minutes before an assembly of tens of thousands of people to protest gun violence in the United States. She was refusing to lead us or entertain us with her grief. She was asking us instead to listen, to ourselves, to each other, to the situation. Those of us who have been in a crit know that one of the most interesting questions we can ask ourselves right now is, what did we hear when Emma Gonzalez stopped speaking?

“Don’t get me wrong. I know it’s actually really hard to listen. But I’m pretty convinced that it’s the only way towards change. Listening is the basis of empathy, and empathy is the only way to think our way out of the stranglehold of the debilitating and outmoded forms of thought we have inherited from our colonial past. It’s inspiring to stand in front of you today because you guys already have a leg up. Because of the crit, you guys already know that listening helps you learn, that every choice you make has meaning. You know from listening to others that meaning is not made individually, but collectively. In other words, you know how to be a citizen.

“I think your generation is the first generation to come of age when we can say that white supremacy is dying. In my entire life, I have never heard so many people from so many different walks of life be able to name and acknowledge the disaster visited upon us. I know in my heart of hearts that some of the most important voices who have helped us understand how the past has shaped us have been artists and musicians and dancers and writers and architects, for they were listening and they have been reporting back to us about what they heard.

“But the capacity to identify and name the problem is only half the battle. There will be a long and hard fight ahead. People in power have a lot to lose, for their very sense of self is bound up in fantasies of whiteness and money and power. And yet, what I hear in the daily barrage of bad news is not strength, but weakness. What I hear in this current administration’s culture of lying, bullying, hatred, and violence is not power, but a death rattle. Indeed, I think we are bearing witness to the death rattle of our colonial past, and like all deaths from toxic diseases it will not be an easy or a graceful one. The patient is fighting the diagnosis, fighting the reality of our country’s new demographics, new demographics so beautifully on display here today.

“Yet I believe Martin Luther King when he said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends ever so slightly toward justice. We are on the downward slope of that long arc now. Now is the time to consider listening an active skill rather than a passive activity. Now is the time to listen to those who have not been in power. Now is the time to listen to the myriad ways people talk, think, and feel. Now is the time we make sure to listen to the words, the feelings, and the silences of the many, rather than the few. Can you imagine what our lives would be like if we had listened to Native peoples, if we had listened to the centuries of women denied formal education, if we were listening to the migrants crossing our borders?
“Now is the time for the artists who founded Black Lives Matter, for the artists who founded Time’s Up, for the young drama students at Parkland, and you guys, the assembled artists sitting before me today, to bring your very special listening skills to bear on this extraordinary time of change. I selfishly cannot wait to reap the benefits of how your generation will listen, and my faith in your ability to listen brings me back to my congratulations, to this act of gathering and wishing one another well, for being together and expressing our thoughts and feelings is what art is all about, and it is also the imperative work of democracy itself.
“All right. I looked up lots of graduation speeches on the web, and you’re supposed to offer some advice. So this is now the five pieces of very concrete advice I am going to offer you.

“One, we have two ears and one mouth, so technically it should be twice as easy to listen as it is to talk.

“Two, stick close to your friends over the years ahead. Look around at each other now, smile, dap your friends, kiss your lovers. Life is long, and you are all going to need each other.

“Three, make your bed. I know that that’s a very Oprah-like thing to say, and I have no idea what it has to do with white supremacy, but I also know that making your bed is one of those things that makes you a more productive person. I don’t know why that is, but you should just do it. Trust me. Make your bed.

“Four, if you are lucky enough to enjoy prosperity, remember to share it. Don’t stockpile power and money. If they come your way, redistribute them. Share the joys of your successes widely.

“And five, most of all, please remember that love remains our greatest attribute. Our capacity for love is infinite. The more love we make, the more we receive. The more we receive, the more we can give away, and so on, and so on, and so on.

“Congratulations.” — Helen Molesworth

artnet.com/helen-molesworth-commencement-ucla

See “Under the Volcano: Helen Molesworth in conversation with Dorothée Perret,” PARIS LA 14 (Winter 2016): 29–37.

dopepress.fr/paris-la-issue-14

See: artforum.com/sarah-lehrer-graiwer-introduction-helen-molesworth

Above: Helen Molesworth, This Will Have Been, exhibition catalogue (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art/New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 2012).

Below: Helen Molesworth at UCLA commencement, 2018. Image credit: UCLA Arts.

Helen Molesworth. Photo: Courtesy UCLA Arts.

9780300181104_1

Helen-Molesworth-1

THE UNDERGROUND MUSEUM

Image result for joe goode purple

“Colors, like scents, are a royal road from the outside world to our emotions.” — Peter Schjeldahl*

The Underground Museum—founded in Los Angeles in 2012 by artists Noah Davis and Karon Davis—is dedicated to the exhibition of museum-quality art, and serving as a cultural hub for low-to-moderate-income communities.

According to UM director Megan Steinman, the museum’s current show ARTISTS OF COLOR—the third UM show curated by Noah Davis before his death in 2015—explores “how color is perceived or deployed, and how that can shift over time or by culture.”** Artists represented in the show include Josef Albers, Lita Albuquerque, Michael Asher, Jo Baer, Jeremy Blake, Noah Davis, Dan Flavin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joe Goode, Carmen Herrera, E.J. Hill, Jim Hodges, Jennie C. Jones, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Imi Knoebel, Diana Thater, and Brenna Youngblood.

The museum has strong local partnerships with LAXART, MOCA, and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. and future programming will be organized by Karon Davis (Noah’s wife), artist and director Kahlil Joseph (Noah’s brother), and MOCA chief curator Helen Molesworth.

All programs are provided free of charge.

 

ARTISTS OF COLOR, through February 4, 2018.

THE UNDERGROUND MUSEUM, 3508 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles.

theunderground-museum.org/Artists-of-Color

A Friday night cinema series runs through October in the museum’s Purple Garden:

LA JETÉE (1962, directed by Chris Marker) and CRY OF JAZZ (1959, Ed Bland), Friday July 21, at 8 pm.

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE LEADER (2015, Brady Corbet), Friday, July 28, at 8 pm.

CITIZENFOUR (2014, Laura Poitras), Friday, August 4, at 8 pm.

PURPLE GARDEN CINEMA, THE UNDERGROUND MUSEUM, 3508 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles.

*Peter Schjeldahl, “Going Pop: Warhol and His Influence,” The New Yorker, September 24, 2012, 94.

** latimes.com/underground-museum

From top: Joe Goode, Purple, 1961–1962. Photograph by Brian Forrest. Image credit: Underground Museum, MOCA, and Joe Goode Studio.

Noah Davis, 2004 (1), 2008. Image credit: Collection of Lindsay Charlwood and Ryan McKenna, and the Underground Museum.

Image result for noah davis, "2004 (1)"

static1.squarespace

largerlarger

ARTHUR JAFA IN LOS ANGELES AND LONDON

“There’s just a certain genius to accompaniment, how you actually support other people being expressive, and that’s the jazz thing again. I keep coming back to that: listening and responding, but responding in a way where you still allow the person a certain kind of platform. To a certain degree it goes into this whole space that I circle back on so often, this “usher” work. How do you function as a platform for other people’s expression or articulation, which I think everybody’s sort of doing all the time in jazz. They cede the floor to one another. So I always definitely saw DREAMS ARE COLDER THAN DEATH as usher work. It was always about creating a platform for black folks—as I say, uncommon black folks—and for specialists to voice their feelings about where they were but ostensibly where we are, collectively.” — Arthur Jafa*

As part of the MOCA exhibition ARTHUR JAFA: LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH, curated by Helen Molesworth, the museum and Los Angeles Film Forum at MOCA present a screening of Jafa’s 2013 documentary DREAMS ARE COLDER THAN DEATH.  The film will be introduced by Saidiya Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, who will participate in a post-screening Q & A.

 

ARTHUR JAFA: DREAMS ARE COLDER THAN DEATH, Thursday, May 11, at 7 pm.

THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA, 152 North Central Avenue, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.

moca.org/program/los-angeles-filmforum-at-moca-presents-arthur-jafas-dreams-are-colder-than-death

 

ARTHUR JAFA: LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH, through June 12.

THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA, 152 North Central Avenue, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.

moca.org/exhibition/arthur-jafa-love-is-the-message-the-message-is-death

 

Jafa’s first solo show in London will open next month at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. ARTHUR JAFA: A SERIES OF UTTERLY IMPROBABLE, YET EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS, curated by Amira Gad, “will take the form of a site-specific installation at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, while also expanding beyond the gallery to the peripheries of the city with a series of performances, screenings, and events in venues or areas of London that function for Jafa as ‘black sites.’ ”*

 

ARTHUR JAFA: A SERIES OF UTTERLY IMPROBABLE, YET EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS, June 8 through September 10

SERPENTINE SACKLER GALLERY, West Carriage Drive, London

*serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/arthur-jafa-series-utterly-improbable-yet-extraordinary-renditions

 

*Cassie da Costa, “Interview: Arthur Jafa,” Film Comment, May 8, 2017:

filmcomment.com/blog/interview-arthur-jafa/

Also see: frieze.com/article/arthur-jafa?language=en

Image credit: Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, the Message is Death

Image credit: Arthur Jafa, Dreams Are Colder Than Death

 

 

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL AND HELEN MOLESWORTH IN CONVERSATION

“[Kerry James] Marshall’s Garden Project series, five enormous canvases produced in 1994 and 1995, is one of the great painting cycles of our period….Before seeing the group installed together, as it is in MASTRY, one might have thought it impossible for contemporary painting to simultaneously occupy a position of beauty, difficulty, didacticism, and formalism with such power. There are really no other American painters who have taken on such a project.” — Carroll Dunham*

On the occasion of the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition KERRY JAMES MARSHALL: MASTRY, the Colburn School welcomes Marshall and Helen Molesworth—chief curator at MOCA—for a public conversation.

MASTRY—organized by Molesworth, Ian Alteveer (associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and Dieter Roelstraete (guest curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago)—is Marshall’s first major retrospective exhibition in the United States.

 

KERRYJAMESMARSHALLANDHELENMOLESWORTHINCONVERSATION

Thursday, March 30 at 7 pm.

Zipper Hall, Colburn School, 200 South Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

 

 

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL—MASTRY

Through July 3.

MOCA Grand Avenue, 250 South Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

*Carroll Dunham, “The Marshall Plan,” Artforum, January 2017, 184–185.

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Painter), 2009, acrylic on PVC, 44 5/8 x 43 1/8 x 3 7/8 inches. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Gift of Katherine S. Schamberg by exchange. Photograph by Nathan Keay © MCA Chicago.

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Painter), 2009. Acrylic on PVC, 44 5/8 x 43 1/8 x 3 7/8 inches.
Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Gift of Katherine S. Schamberg, by exchange.
Photograph by Nathan Keay
© MCA Chicago.