Sarah Hromack

Hello: forwardretreat (at) gmail (dot) com
Work: whitney.org
New Museum:

“The art work neither articulates its intimacy with nature and origins, nor does it make friends with the Zeitgeist. Art exists only as a conflict with its times and the reality of the Zeitgeist. Every genuine art work is out of time. It always comes too early, always from the future, never from the past. Bad art can be recognized through its sentimentality, nostalgia, adoration of the past, through its inability to make the future precise. Instead of competing with documentation and historical work, art is an opening toward the future. It is always a matter of tailoring names to the future today, of giving — today, here and now — a form to the formlessness of tomorrow. The defining task and mission of art includes the courage to give answers to questions which the future poses, to questions which do not preexist. There is no art beyond such an answer. There is no art beyond the wager of bringing forth something new. However much the new relies on what already exists, it remains, as demanded by the Aristotelian perspective, nevertheless embedded in the material texture. The new redefines this texture, it rewrites it by appearing in it as something unforeseen, as something impossible.”

—Marcus Steinweg’s, essay “23 Theses on art, Philosophy, Truth, and Subjectivity,” was recently published in the exhibition catalog for Berlin: 2000, which remains on view at Pace Wildenstein through 18 April. This particular passage, thesis number 22, is particularly pertinent given the recent opening of the New Museum’s Generational, which I find rife with works whose sentimentality is more ironic than it is wistful. It performs nostalgia for a decade that many experienced as children, yet “remember” (reference) as though they were adults. More thoughts soon on AiA.
Just over a hundred words into “‘Jesus’ Saves,” his review of the New Museum’s Generational for New York Magazine, Jerry Saltz delivers a eulogy for my undergraduate class (MICA, ‘02): It’s a cool school, admired by jargon-wielding academics who write barely readable rhetoric explaining why looking at next to nothing is good for you. Many of these artists have sold a lot of work, and most will be part of a lost generation. They thought they were playing the system; it turned out that they were themselves being played. Saltz has hope for the new kids on the block. Maybe he’s right, but do note that we’re younger than Jesus, too. + ‘Jesus’ Saves (Jerry Saltz, NY Magazine) + Young Artists, Caught in the Act (Holland Cotter, NYT) Ryan Trecartin video still courtesy of the New Museum, the artist, and Elizabeth Dee, New YorkJust over a hundred words into “‘Jesus’ Saves,” his review of the New Museum’s Generational for New York Magazine, Jerry Saltz delivers a eulogy for my undergraduate class (MICA, ‘02): It’s a cool school, admired by jargon-wielding academics who write barely readable rhetoric explaining why looking at next to nothing is good for you. Many of these artists have sold a lot of work, and most will be part of a lost generation. They thought they were playing the system; it turned out that they were themselves being played. Saltz has hope for the new kids on the block. Maybe he’s right, but do note that we’re younger than Jesus, too. + ‘Jesus’ Saves (Jerry Saltz, NY Magazine) + Young Artists, Caught in the Act (Holland Cotter, NYT) Ryan Trecartin video still courtesy of the New Museum, the artist, and Elizabeth Dee, New York

Just over a hundred words into “‘Jesus’ Saves,” his review of the New Museum’s Generational for New York Magazine, Jerry Saltz delivers a eulogy for my undergraduate class (MICA, ‘02):

It’s a cool school, admired by jargon-wielding academics who write barely readable rhetoric explaining why looking at next to nothing is good for you. Many of these artists have sold a lot of work, and most will be part of a lost generation. They thought they were playing the system; it turned out that they were themselves being played.
Saltz has hope for the new kids on the block. Maybe he’s right, but do note that we’re younger than Jesus, too.

+ ‘Jesus’ Saves (Jerry Saltz, NY Magazine)
+ Young Artists, Caught in the Act (Holland Cotter, NYT)

Ryan Trecartin video still courtesy of the New Museum, the artist, and Elizabeth Dee, New York

The New Museum Does Damage Control

Like good journalists should, Gothamist follows up:

“The New Museum just gave us their statement: ‘On Sunday, Feb. 8th around 1 p.m., two young men walked up to the front of the museum, and dumped a dead deer onto the sidewalk, and then ran away. New Museum security staff followed and was able to get photos of the two men. A police report was filed and the deer was quickly removed.’”

See also: Art Fag City actually broke the story as it happened. I was probably lunching at Balthazar or doing something equally cliched and irrelevant.

Take Drugs, Sleep at the New Museum for $10/Hour »

Artist Chu Yun is looking for women from 18-40 to take sleeping pills and sleep on a bed in the New Museum from noon to 6 pm every day. Pay: $10/hour. Better, perhaps, than the spinal abrasions I incurred by throwing myself on the cement floor of the Wattis Institute again, and again, and again for Tino Sehgal’s “This Exhibition.”

+ via: Cityfile


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