Speaker #1. Last night, South African-based photographer Roger Ballen spoke at the Henry Art Gallery and I missed it. I’m disappointed I did, because his photography makes me curious. It’s a small consolation this morning to note that he has an informative web site with dozens of images, interviews, and articles. Here are a few of his works:

Speaker #2: Last week Seattle had a visit from Dennis Oppenheim that came and went quickly, and left in its wake the promise of large orange traffic cones that will go on display at the Olympic Sculpture Park on May 14. They were formerly in New York City. (Is there much more to say than that they are large orange traffic cones?) I did not catch Oppenheim’s talk, but I got an email the next day from a disgruntled listener:

Mr. Oppenheim’s lecture was dumbed down horribly for the audience of about 30 people, most of whom I have seen in attendance at other more brilliant lectures around town, and who can be heard chatting eagerly with each other before said lectures about what country they were just visiting and what artwork they saw while they were there. Normally I would excuse an artist for giving a remedial lecture to a group of well informed adults simply because it was taking place in a public library. However in this situation it seemed that Mr. Oppenheim, being a local boy-wonder and all, knew many members of the audience before giving this lecture.

What burns me the most about this lecture is how Mr. Oppenheim sounded almost apologetic for creating work that exists in “real time.” It seems that he was maybe going with the flow, doing what the cool kids were doing at the time and seeming to make fun of the fact that he had done it at all. I guess it’s time to take him out the history books. Unfortunately I think that the only reason he gets shortlisted for public art commissions is because he got the MOMA stamp of approval back in the day.

Despite my negative lecture experience I still plan to go see the work at Gallery4Culture, and his earlier works like Annual Rings (1968), and Reading Position for Second Degree Burn (1970) were not ruined for me.

Side note: I just ran into Mr. Oppenheim while he was standing out in front of the sculpture park. He was there taking a look at the potential sites for his traffic cones to sit. I asked him about the cones because he didn’t talk about them at all last night (I had thought that the lecture was meant to educate about the work that is being brought to Seattle). He doesn’t feel that this work is representative of his general oeuvre. Unfortunately he was whisked away by a dude in a Jaguar before I could ask him if he thought the work would play nice with the other works in the sculpture park. He had been in the middle of casually reminiscing about how the work had functioned in NYC in this time of paranoia that we live in. His summation was that they were not received well.