August 19, 2010. We’ve reached the end of our first issue year, during which Art Practical went from being an enthusiastically supported idea to an established critical forum for Bay Area visual arts. To mark the occasion, Art Practical’s editors reflect on the wealth of writing that’s appeared on the site, while some of our writers highlight their favorite exhibitions, events, and people from the past twelve months. They had free range to choose their themes; their selections—both singular and recurring—range from the notable to elegiac to the idiosyncratic. It has been a very good year, made possible by tireless work of our editors, the dedication of our writers, the brilliance of our designers and developers, and the generosity of our partners. We hope you’ll join us when we begin Year 2 on September 16, 2010, with the second annual Shotgun Round. Enjoy! - PM

Photo: Eden Maloney.

July 29, 2010. Today is Art Practical’s nine-month anniversary—a gestational period, if you will. Although technically we were birthed in late October, the reflection and analysis in which the editorial team, writers, and readers have been engaged since then have felt very much like incubation at times. The conversations around what the site can and needs to do have adopted a rhythm familiar to new initiatives in the Bay Area, a combination of welcomed embrace, enthusiastic participation, and finely tuned critique. Moving forward, the most pressing question seems to be how to venture further afield, and continue to faithfully analyze and mirror the activities here?  How do we position ourselves—and the Bay Area—out in the world? We’ll take the leap, and see.  Enjoy - PM

July 15, 2010. We are separate yet connected. The idea is no less true for its prevalence, and Issue 19 is proof. Collaborations—among reviewers, curators, galleries, and artists―abound. Christine Wong Yap and Lea Feinstein team up to review “They Knew What They Wanted,” a group show with four curators spanning four separate galleries, while AP partners with Daily Serving to present a review of “They Have Not the Art to Argue with Pictures.” Hou Hanru interviews two artists who rely on audience participation, while Anthony Marcellini talks with philosopher Alva Noë, who argues that consciousness forms through our interactions with each other and the world. While such an idea can’t be proven, given this issue’s contours, it certainly feels true.

Happy summer.―Victoria Gannon 

July 1, 2010. In this issue, we include interviews with Natasha Wheat about social practice and photographer Marion Gray about documenting significant moments of Performance Art.  Through these conversations, art can be understood as a negotiated social encounter in space and time.  And in the reviews, tenuousness, arbitration, and ambivalence are all givens in encounters with contemporary art.  But can things that are binding be teased out from temporary situations and subjective perspectives? Or what does it mean to rely on the imagined, the conspired, and the dreamed to find the truth? 

We are honored to present a portfolio of photographs by Marion Gray. Enjoy - PM

June 28, 2010. As a bonus to Issue 17, we'd like to present this excerpt from a work in progress by artist Matthew Rana, entitled Script for a Dead Comedian (1962-2010). As part of his ongoing investigation into the relationship between art and law, Rana examined suppression and representation of the truth in his article "The Law, Onstage: The People vs. Lenny Bruce," focusing on the comedian's performance of the law following his obscenity trials in the early 1960s.  Here, Rana combines the comedian's night club act with the transcript from his San Francisco trial, as well as historical and theoretical texts related to rhetoric, testimony and "fearless speech" in a short video. Enjoy. - PM

(Editor's note: this video contains harsh language)

June 17, 2010. The idea that an artist needs to be highly introspective is a prevailing one, and it butts up more or less against the perceived mandate for one to effect wide-ranging change.  An artist stakes territory somewhere along the spectrum of poet, seer, truth-seeker, and activist. In this issue, our writers offer commentary about each of those positions, as well as how they are performed for, and perceived by, audiences.  Studio research and personal inspirations are put on view in “Lending Library,” while the recent Open Engagement conference generated a long list of questions that spin off from the seemingly straightforward one, “Do artists have an ethical obligation to the community with which they engage?” In other words, an artist’s impetus and motivation falls under examination alongside the work s/he produces.  Who gets to throw the first stone? Enjoy. - PM

June 3, 2010. One of the most remarkable things about Louise Bourgeois’ career was neither its length nor late-bloom—although both are quite remarkable—but her capacity to remain current. Each new body of work added perspective to our understanding of her as an artist and to the dialogue around contemporary art.  That fact gains significance when we contemplate the ever-diminishing lifespan for an object’s relevance. Wunderkammers and wonder boxes are esoteric frameworks for perceiving the world; taste is an outmoded term in the discourse on art; and public sculpture no longer needs to make a permanent claim on a site.  That these objects and terms are being re-considered here has little to do with nostalgia.  Instead, there is the opportunity for “speculative reverberation,” as Christine Wong Yap notes in her review, the chance to understand why and how things have meaning in our lives in this moment. Enjoy —PM

May 20, 2010.  Uneasy bedfellows permeate Issue 15: optimism and folly, community and exclusion, the representation and construction of images. Not necessarily opposites—more like wary co-dependents—these qualities and attributes often underlie the contradictory impulses of the Bay Area visual arts community. The perpetual struggle for funding hardly dampens the outpouring of new initiatives, and the critical and philosophical engagement with social practices doesn’t undermine the desire to engage with the market.  Aspiration, risk, failure, and reconciliation are all of a cycle. This issue explores some of the transitions and tightrope-like negotiations artists make along this continuum. Enjoy! - PM

May 6, 2010. “It is not yet the end of May for us,” Jeffrey Stuker writes in his essay on Michael Asher, recalling the Paris strikes of 1968, but also asserting that we cannot swear off the potential for rupture and collapse of law, a law always on the verge of martial law.  Those words echo across Matthew Rana’s examination of regulations that deny to some the very rights they grant to others. And as these writers (and the artist who are their subjects) question the legitimating forms of visibility, their inquiries reverberate across the acrimonious national debate surrounding Arizona’s new immigration statute.  As the philosopher Blanchot notes, the movement of refusal is rare and difficult, though equal and the same for each of us.^[1] How do we embrace, then, an aesthetics of refusal?  - PM 

^{[1] Maurice Blanchot,"Refusal," in Friendship, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Bloomington: Stanford University Press, 1997), 111.}

April 22, 2010. Art Practical not only strives to produce engaging and thought-provoking essays, but to encourage creative efforts, and think about what forms critical dialogue might take.  We hope to enable emerging writers to refine their practice amidst those already renowned for their critical insight. In this issue, contributor Lea Feinstein reflects on her writing practice—the questions she asks in coming to an understanding of a work of art—as a prelude to our two-part Critical Sources workshop, co-hosted by The Lab on May 1 and May 8. The workshop will focus on developing strategies for writing about art, and feature Bill Berkson, Whitney Chadwick, and Kevin Killian, among others. We hope you can join us; more info can be found on our News page. Enjoy! —PM.