Parkett Vol. 56 - 1999 | Vanessa Beecroft, Ellsworth Kelly, Jorge Pardo

Editorial

Modern Art—Modern Life “Aesthetic,” “modern”: At the end of this century, no two words radiate such an aura, no two words are so redolent of the great intellectual achievements of an outgoing epoch and yet so pregnant with the shrill banality of consumerist reality’s utilitarian values. Aesthetics, the imperial discipline of philosophy, is challenged today more than ever by a rampantly accelerating and changing “modern global culture,” in which the field most suitable for reflection seems to be undergoing constant growth. In the present volume of Parkett, we invite readers to embark on an exciting journey back and forth between art and the everyday, in which any certainties about a momentary destination are promptly undermined. The fundamental issues of art may be pursued with great subtlety in the paintings of Ellsworth Kelly, who, as Briony Fer observes, makes the wall a mutely eloquent partner of his works, or with striking audacity in Vanessa Beecroft’s latest coup in which she has acquisitioned an elite troup of the US-Army as her artistic material. The excitement of Ellsworth Kelly’s work is enhanced by his special position within the history of American abstract art, which has made a fetish of the ideas of purity and autonomy. Twice in the present issue readers enjoy an inside view of the New York Guggenheim. The one picture shows Ellsworth Kelly’s 1997 retrospective, mentioned with enthusiastic acclaim more than once in the articles that follow, while the other presents Vanessa Beecroft’s tableau vivant of young semi-clothed and nude women in her SHOW of 1998 at the same venue. Modernism as a lifestyle: contradiction or logical consequence? Jorge Pardo shows great determination in confronting us with this issue. One of his works is titled 4166 SEA VIEW LANE, the address of his own house in Los Angeles, which he built together with an architect. Last fall he „detoured“ visitors of the MOCA to his home, which made Kate Bush wonder whether it was „a public sculpture, a piece of architecture, a DIY house, a case study, a satellite exhibition space, a museum commission, or Jorge Pardo’s home?“ .

Table of Content

We Go Round and Round in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire – Cerith Wyn Evans by Greg Hilty

Ellsworth Kelly
An American in Paris by Thomas Kellein
To Hell with Pictures – Elsworth Kelly’s Walls by Briony Fer
Forever in the Present by Simone Maurer
Why Kelly Now? by David Rimanelli

Vanessa Beecroft
US Navy SEALs by Russel Ferguson
Parades by Pier Luigi Tazzi
Clasic Cruelty by Keith Seward
Let the Picture Do the Talking by Ian Avgikos

Jorge Pardo
What Is Lost for Arts Is Gained for Life by Russell Ferguson
The Tonality of Contradictory Settings by Christina Végh
Off the Table by Camiel van Winkel
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, Jorge Pardo and the Human Scale by Frank Frangenberg

4166 Sea View Lane by Kate Bush

Christian Markley – Indexicality Concrète by Thomas Y. Levine

On Location – Diana Thater by Lynne Cooke

Civilization on Its Discontents, Architectural Dialogue One, Les Infos du Paradis by Diane Lewis

Art Rules, Cumulus from America by Adrian Dannatt

Prag 2000, Cumulus from Europa by Petr Nedoma