ARTSPIRAL MAGAZINE ISSUE #1

"Negotiating Modernisms: Contemporary Asian Art and The West," 1996
by Thomas McEvilley
The exhibition Traditions/ Tensions: Contemporary Art from Asia, which was originated by the Asia Society and opened at three venues in New York City in October 1996, contains contemporary art from India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea. The work is "contemporary" not only because it is being made today but also because it is self-consciously historicity in a framework that gives some account ofits relationship to the West as well as to its own tradition. I have written

"Sleeping with the Enemy: New York Newsday's Review of Ancestors," 1995
by Joan Kee
On Tuesday, May 2, New York Newsday published a review of the exhibition and its key figures, including Director Robert Lee and several participating artists. In it, multiracial artist Yolanda Skeete was quoted as remarking, "Bob Lee is saying, 'You're [Skeete] a half-breed, but we love you anyway.'" The author, David Garrick also quoted Skeete as saying, "Never before have Chinese held their hands out to an African group like this," despite the fact that the Ancestors show was a joint African American-Asian American effort. Skeete never made any of these comments. The editorial and management leadership of Newsday did meet with Asian American community leaders and agreed to "look into the matter." However, neither they nor Garrick could later be reached for comment. This occurred a few months prior to the termination of Newsday's Manhattan edition. [ read more ]

Click [ here ] to read the original Newsday article by David Garrick.

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"Ethnicity and Abstraction," 1993
by Luis Camnitzer
(This article was addressed at the 1993 College Art Association Annual Conference in New York)
When addressing the abstraction/figuration dichotomy the first question is really is the posing of this kind if absolute binary classification responds to a true intellectual need or is an artificial construct. Whichever the conclusion, one can affirm that the polarity is a devilish contraption which marked and contaminated that part of this century's culture touched in any way by the mainstream and that it did so in all its aspects, not just the visual ones. It was able to mess up any clear thinking about our possibilities for expression since the restriction in the posed options had both political and mercantile origins and consequences. Thus any potentially clear mission for the visual arts in terms of developing ethnic culture has been obscured and eroded. Going beyond these complaints, I also think that any questioning along those lines today, and any excessive preoccupation to find corresponding answers, introduces the danger of blurring a much needed focus on the true needs within the non-mainstream uses of art. [ read more ]