{"id":1121,"date":"2014-07-16T01:34:48","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T08:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talkinggrid.com\/dev\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2014-07-18T06:51:13","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T13:51:13","slug":"get-fresh-baked-muse-news-now-talkinggrid-nancy-baker-frau-kolb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/get-fresh-baked-muse-news-now-talkinggrid-nancy-baker-frau-kolb\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Fresh Baked Muse NEWS with artist Nancy Baker on Kara Walker’s New Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATTENTION TALKINGGRID Heads: artist\u00a0<\/span>Nancy Baker<\/a><\/span>, Brooklyn resident, and Frau Kolb in California; have met, on-line, and had an intimate and revealing, private ART CHAT of monumental significance\u2026 Baker is an excellent source of HOT MUSE NEWS and ART DISCOURSE. \u00a0YEAH! \u00a0We discussed the work of famous artist, Kara Walker!<\/a> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What an informative, prize-worthy, art chat! \u00a0I\u2019m pleased to have spoken with artist, Nancy Baker \u00a0this morning. \u00a0She is an outstanding art thinker and educator, the kind of person who speaks with candor and confidence based on a lifetime commitment to art practice. \u00a0This morning she transformed my understanding of an artist whose work I\u2019ve repeatedly dismissed. \u00a0Baker speaks eloquently on the necessity for political art and on how that singular urgency manifests in her own art practice. \u00a0She is, moreover, an effective advocate for Kara Walker\u2019s work. \u00a0Prior to our conversation I had serious reservations around the Walker\u2019s work (scroll down, see below for more on my initial reaction to Walker\u2019s magnificent achievement was repulsion). \u00a0I thought of it as toxic waste in lacy silhouette cut-outs, to which which I was exposed in 1998 at the Drawing Center <\/a>exhibition in New York. \u00a0The work is famous for its ability to defy critique by being unassailable \u201cart smart.\u201d \u00a0Baker is defending Walker from other artists who, quickly label Walker\u2019s new work as being related to Jeff Koon\u2019s<\/a> puppy pieces in their high polished bling-bling luster, gigantic jewelry, catering to the tastes of the rich and fashionable institutional collectors. \u00a0In other words, work which in my book is industrial scaled commerce and therefore, “NOT ART!\u201d<\/p>\n

In my experience, Baker is a seriously sound addition to any team, I\u2019ve studied her work and visited with her in person during her participation in a group show in Chinatown, Los Angles, several years ago. \u00a0It was striking, today, during our art chat to listen to Baker, an artist I admire; speak with sincere admiration for Walker\u2019s achievements. \u00a0 To hear an artist\u2019s whose work resonates with me, speak with such intense appreciation of\u00a0the more famous artist\u2019s <\/span>oeuvre<\/em><\/span> quickened my heart and invited reflection, pause, and\u2026 I had to rethink my position and wrap my brain around Baker\u2019s more informed and expansive take. \u00a0I\u2019m glad I did. \u00a0Because, now I feel so at ease; like a convert to a \u201cbetter,\u201d religion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Walker, may need no defense, she is her own excellent advocate being experienced in verbal self-defense; possessing master-class public speaking skills, terrific good looks, the prowess, and\u2013\u2013\u2013indispensable\u2013\u2013\u2013 early training in mental acrobatics which are required of any artist whose work is not merely pretty but rather unsettling, disturbing, and like quicksand\u2026 such as Baker, who produces haunting collages of finely cut filigree paper emblems and logos; seductively glittering like a winking whore on speed\u2026have impressed me so on-line that I went out-of-my-way to see them\u2026 to see the little knife slit paper pieces; cut and precise in a unforgettable rather than, \u00a0deadly embrace; one finds the hurt of generations long ago; or the minor nuisance of a broken nail\u2026 or of coagulated pain of others, to whom we are nonetheless kin. Dealing with the legacy of institutional pain to which we all belong; is no individual experience, rather a binding one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The sound of screaming: \u201cThe Horror! \u00a0The Horror!<\/a>\u201d goes both ways, down a hall of mirrors, into the far corners of eternity, the screams of tortured souls; beaten, starved, hurt, and humiliated\u2026 creating work which gives voice to some of the repressed grumblings\u2026 ah, now this resonates on deeper levels and begins to erode my decade-long, entrenched, aversion to Walker\u2019s, MONUMENTALLY SCALED dirty work.<\/p>\n

In other words, Frau\u2019s views were reshaped, chiseled into a new understanding, of Walker\u2019s world class mastering of the symbolic material of language. \u00a0Her use of the ancient, Sphinx<\/a> of Giza harking back to arguments that prove that Grecco-Roman civilization was in large part inherited from Egyptian predecessors; attributing to the African Continent; the source of all advanced Western thought\u2026 being the spot; that some like to say, which was chosen by Napoleon\u2019s troops for target practice\u2026 others blame the Muslims\u2026 for the Sphinx’s missing nose\u2026 who knows? \u00a0 In the context of contemporary art; the \u201cMammy” revived from pancake boxes and early cinema glory; is BACK; which makes perfect sense, when Andy Warhol<\/a>\u2019s work is taken into account! \u00a0The Sugar Babies flanking her are no longer quite as offensive to me; until earlier today I was fuming over the\u2026 sticky melting monstrous vulgar rat attracting mess\u2026 now the Sugar Babies and the White Sphinx blaze in Frau\u2019s freshly washed brain; unmasked and transformed from cocktail banter to\u2026 significant art; no mere catering to the master\u2019s taste for sweet guilt and bitter pills; Walker\u2019s work may be considered national housecleaning. \u00a0Ah! \u00a0Eureka!<\/p>\n

Finally, terms which Frau Kolb can comprehend the necessity for art to cleanse the past\u2026 If SUGAR BABIES are the way\u2026 so be it.<\/p>\n

After speaking with Ms. Baker, I see clearly\u2026 sparkly, even…my view of Walker\u2019s work was previously tainted by my own prejudice, of course, I know that\u2026 Thanks to Baker\u2019s surgical understanding of the methods and motives maybe fueling Walker\u2019s meteoric rise to Art World Alpine pinnacles of recognition and empowerment, Frau Kolb is feeling more enlightened. \u00a0Laughingly, Baker report\u2019s of an anonymous friends comment upon seeing Kara Walker and her white sphinx at the Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn\u2026 <\/a>\u00a0as mirroring the fetid shiny surfaced giant puppies of Koon\u2019s factory output. \u00a0For Baker it was the sugar babies; “melting back into where they came from which,\u201d the sugar factory floor… touched her\u2026 moved her, despite the fact that most of the mainstream conversation has focused on the central \u201cWhite Sphinx,\u201d piece, dominating the exhibit.<\/p>\n

Photo published with permission; \u00a9Nancy Baker, 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ATTENTION TALKINGGRID Heads: artist\u00a0Nancy Baker, Brooklyn resident, and Frau Kolb in California; have met, on-line, and had an intimate and revealing, private ART CHAT of monumental significance\u2026 Baker is an excellent source of HOT MUSE NEWS and ART DISCOURSE. \u00a0YEAH! \u00a0We discussed the work of famous artist, Kara Walker! \u00a0 What an informative, prize-worthy, art […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-muse-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/MP900385468.jpg?fit=1050%2C750&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1218,"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions\/1218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkinggrid.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}