MASS MoCA - Benefit in New York 2009

Celebrate ten years of contemporary art at our 2009 benefit at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York. Enjoy cocktails, dinner, live auction, and a short set by The Feelies. All proceeds from this event will support the creation of new art at MASS MoCA.

If you cannot attend, you can still place bids for the auction items. Download an absentee bid form (PDF) by November 23, 3:00 p.m., for the MASS MoCA 2009 NYC benefit auction.

Endless Bummer and/or Best Summer Ever (Beer Mustache Face), 2009
Acrylic and carbon transfer on paper
30 × 21½ inches
Framed

Andrew Kuo’s paintings are often a riotous attempt to quantify his life and ideas through obsessive data charts arranged in various colors and patterns. As Artforum explained: “If artists like Sophie Calle and Tracey Emin have long employed self-confession for its arresting aberrancy, Andrew Kuo explores a newer, gentler incarnation of self-disclosure, one made familiar by blogs and YouTube. Kuo began a blog in 2005, and his colorful, obsessive graphs documenting his experiences as an indie-rock showgoer attracted enough attention that The New York Times ultimately featured his work in its music pages.” Kuo lives and works in New York, where he had his first solo exhibition in 2001. His work is on view at MASS MoCA (until April 2010) in This is Killing Me, an exhibition of eight artists’ works about the anxiety of art-making. Gift of the artist and Taxter & Spengemann, New York.

“Imagine the prose of Sean Landers’ 1993 book run through graphic-design software—and updated from Gen X to Gen iPhone—and you get a sense of Kuo’s hilarious, confessional, and deeply felt (work).” —The New Yorker

Estimated Value: $4,000

This private Caribbean villa is located in the secluded hills above St. Jean (the village at the heart of the island). With beautiful ocean views and lush vegetation, the villa has 3 bedrooms/3 baths and is stylishly decorated with antiques as well as contemporary furniture by Christian Liaigre. Suitable for families or couples, there’s room to relax and dine in the shade on the covered terrace, under the flamboyan tree, or by the pool just outside your door. Amenities include daily maid service except Sundays and holidays, a/c in the bedrooms, Internet, DVD and ping pong table. Available May 1–December 15, 2010 (excludes Thanksgiving week). Gift of Bobbie Crosby.

“Probably the most elegant and exclusive of the Caribbean islands, St. Barts is the place to go if you’re after peace, pristine white-sand beaches, calm aqua waters, super stylish accommodations and gourmet restaurants.” —Conde Nast Traveler

Estimated Value: $3,900

Robert, 1998
Photogravure on Lana Gravure
Edition 20/48, publisher’s seal embossed in lower left corner (ULAE)
Hand torn paper
28½ × 24 inches

Chuck Close has been a leading figure in contemporary art since the early 1970s, best known for his monumental portraits that he paints with thousands of tiny airbrush bursts, thumbprints, or looping brushstrokes. Dubbed the “mayor of SoHo,” he specializes in portraits of fellow artists, such as the late Robert Rauschenberg, who is featured in this photogravure lithograph.

Both Chuck Close and Bob Rauschenberg (who died in 2008 and whose monumental work, The ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece, was featured in MASS MoCA’s opening ten years ago) have been longtime friends of MASS MoCA. Robert is a wonderful work in its own right, with added meaning for those who recall Bob’s involvement with the museum. Close’s work can be found in over 60 major public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, The Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, and the National Portrait Gallery. Courtesy of Eckert Fine Art/Connecticut.

“What difference does it make whether you’re looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look.” —Chuck Close

Estimated Value: $3,500

Mark Dion tackles the politics of representation in the fields of history and science, seeking to uncover the structures that govern the natural world and man’s categorizing of it. “My work is not really about nature, but rather it is a consideration of ideas of nature,” he says. Much of Dion’s work reveals the absurdity of classification systems and how our subjective understandings of nature become established as history. Visitors to MASS MoCA will recall how, in 2005, Dion created an installation, Library for the Birds of Massachusetts, which featured 12 zebra finches in a 17' tall aviary, along with a tree festooned with ornithology books, bird feeders, and weapons.

Dion has created works for the Tate Gallery and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and has exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Natural History Museum, London; and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Courtesy of the artist and the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

“(Dion is) known for his conceptually sly play with natural and cultural histories.” —The New York Times

Estimated Value: $3,000

Character Sketch for Seductress (from Gravity is a force to be reckoned with), 2009
Graphite on paper
30 × 30 inches
Framed

This drawing relates to Manglano-Ovalle’s Gravity is a force to be reckoned with, a new commission by MASS MoCA opening in the museum’s signature Building 5 gallery December 12. The exhibition culminates in the physical realization of an unbuilt Mies van der Rohe project and references ideas of 20th-century Modernism through architecture, film and literature. The work provides links between Mies’ 1951 theoretical House with Four Columns, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 science fiction classic, We, and filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s unrealized film, The Glass House. This drawing includes a quote from one of We’s central characters, who appears via video phone in Manglano-Ovalle’s work at MASS MoCA.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s films, sculptures and architectural interventions have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and Documenta XII. He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Gift of the artist.

“Few artists are as adept… in distilling such complex ideas into inviting visual metaphors.” —The New York Times

Estimated Value: $12,000

A heady day in Connecticut awaits the winner of this item, starting with lunch in Chester with Carol LeWitt at her federal-period home, which is filled with furniture designed by Josef Hoffmann and Carol’s late husband, artist Sol LeWitt. You’ll see Sol’s studio, which is pretty much the way he left it, down to the mixed paints and a huge bulletin board with notes. The afternoon also includes a tour of the LeWitts’ art collection, which has 6,000 objects by Sol and 3,600 objects by other artists. LeWitt traded art with other artists in the early 1960s — “they were mostly one-to-one trades with whomever I knew,’’ he told The New York Times—and ended up acquiring works by Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, and Brice Marden, among others.

Later that afternoon, you’ll drive down the coast to Southport for dinner with collectors Andy and Christine Hall at their Greek Revival home. The Halls have “about 4,000 pieces in what could easily be described as one of the world’s finest collections of contemporary art,” Mary Boone told The New York Times recently, including works by Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, and Gerhard Richter. At MASS MoCA, the four landscape paintings by Anselm Kiefer and an immense sculpture, Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, are on loan from the Hall collection. Either a curator or Joe and Jennifer Thompson will join the group for lunch and dinner. This rare art adventure is for 4 guests. Courtesy of Carol LeWitt and Andy & Christine Hall.

“Sol LeWitt’s artworks are minimal and precise, but his art collection is vast and unruly.” —The New York Times

A dedicated rower, Andy Hall approaches collecting “with the fanatical dedication of an oarsman.” —The New Yorker

Estimated Value: Hard to estimate

The Nanjing Particles (After Henry Ward, View of C.T. Sampson’s Shoe Manufactory, with the Chinese Shoemakers in working Costume, North Adams vicinity, 1875) — Production stills, Nanjing, China, 2008–2009
8 silver prints
5½ × 4 7/10 inches (14 × 12 cm)
Ed 5/10

For his recent exhibition at MASS MoCA, Simon Starling collapsed the labor history of North Adams onto current global trends in manufacturing. Working with a stereoscope of a group of Chinese workers photographed in 1875 outside a factory once located on MASS MoCA’s campus, Starling literally and metaphorically mined the photograph, extracting two silver particles from its emulsion. These image fragments were photographed under a powerful electron microscope, after which a 3-D computer model was made of each. They were then translated into stainless steel sculptures which the artist had fabricated (one million times their original microscopic size) by foundry workers in Nanjing, China. Bringing it full circle, the prints tonight feature spectral images of the contemporary Chinese craftsmen as they polished the sculptures, their reflections captured in the mirrored surfaces.

Starling currently has solo exhibitions at MAC/VAL, outside Paris, and Parc St. Léger, Centre D’art Contemporain, Pougues-Les-Eaux, France. He has had solo exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; The Power Plant, Toronto; and the UCLA Hammer Museum, among others. His work was featured in the 53rd Venice Biennial. Starling was a finalist for the Guggenheim’s 2004 Hugo Boss Prize and winner of the Tate’s 2005 Turner Prize. Gift of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York.

Estimated value: $30,000

Enjoy seven nights in a stunning 2-bedroom, 2-bath slope-side townhome at the exclusive Cedar Creek in Whistler, British Columbia. The accommodations are architecturally spectacular, with a rock-faced fireplace, terrific kitchen and outdoor hot tub. Right on the slopes of Blackcomb Mountain (home of the 2010 Winter Olympics), Cedar Creek is perfect for ski-in, ski-out luxury and convenience, with extraordinary mountain views and scenery that unfold from your floor-to-ceiling windows. Although Whistler is famed as a ski mecca, the choice is yours as to which season to visit: Whistler is a magnet for outdoor enthusiasts year-round, with the summer featuring terrific mountain biking, rafting, and hiking. (To be used from May 2010 through May 2011, subject to availability.) Gift of Jack and Susy Wadsworth.

Estimated Value: $7,000

Tandem Bicycle
Binding Device, 2009
Pen on hotel stationery
8½ × 11 inches
Framed

This bicycle was featured in Guy Ben-Ner’s “buddy film” (now at MASS MoCA) that co-stars director Joe Thompson and the artist. The film was inspired by a number of iconic duos from familiar literary classics ranging from Don Quixote to The Little Prince. Using dialogue from these tales, Ben-Ner cobbles together a personal narrative as he examines the shifting power balance between master and servant, king and fool, teacher and student, while suggesting a similarly complex relationship between artist and institution.

Over the past decade Guy Ben-Ner has become known for witty films that have a do-it-yourself appeal, though their deceptive simplicity quickly reveals sophisticated cinematic, art historical, and literary influences. In the video, our two protagonists are seen traveling in a plane piloted by Thompson — which crashes — then a car that also wrecks. The pair finally hops onto this bicycle, which they ride until they come upon a dead-end sign on the edge of an empty field. The journey, like life, ultimately goes nowhere. In addition to the bicycle, this lot includes a drawing of the co-stars on the bicycle and a scenic ride over the Berkshires in Thompson’s plane.

In 2005, Ben-Ner represented Israel at the Venice Biennial. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Shanghai Biennale, and the Liverpool Biennial. The artist’s work is in the collections of the Ludwig Museum, Cologne; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Canada; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, among others. Gift of the artist and MASS MoCA.

“What makes Ben-Ner’s art stand out is that he… (is) continually cannibalizing the culture and objects he encounters, trying to make these things work for his art.” —New York Magazine

Estimated Value: $2,500

Fourth of July (Untitled 938P-95), 1995
Portfolio of nine silver gelatin prints, each 3 × 3 inches
Edition of 25
Framed

Petah Coyne has become known for her constant reinvention of working practice and use of exquisitely layered, organic materials and forms. Distinct from many artists who focus on social- or media-related issues, she imbues her work with a magical quality to evoke intensely personal, often female associations. Coyne and Sol Lewitt had a special relationship, which she honored by giving him her largest suspended white wax sculpture, Miss Havisham. (Earlier this year Carol Lewitt donated the sculpture to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.) Coyne’s work is also in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

This lot also includes a tour with curator Denise Markonish of Petah Coyne’s studio (a 10-minute ride from midtown) and the opportunity to see Coyne’s work-in-progress for her upcoming exhibition at MASS MoCA, Everything That Rises Must Converge. Gift of the artist and Galerie Lelong.

“Petah Coyne redefines energy, or maybe defines it.” —Bomb Magazine

Estimated Value: $9,000

Famed restaurateur Jonathan Waxman is cooking dinner for 8 guests at his chef’s table in the kitchen at Barbuto, his West Village bistro. One of the “Top Chef Masters,” Waxman has influenced the culinary world for 30 years (he first came to fame running Alice Waters’ kitchen at Chez Panisse in the ’70s). If that wasn’t enough, performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson and photographer Gregory Crewdson will join you for dinner, along with Jonathan. (And in case guests are tongue-tied, a MASS MoCA curator will join the group.)

Known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology, Anderson has created numerous scores, videos and elaborate multimedia events. She has twice been artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA, where she created The End of the Moon and Happiness. In 2007 she received the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her contribution to the arts. She recently completed a world tour of Homeland, which will be released on Nonesuch Records.

Gregory Crewdson creates enormous cinematic photographs of elaborately staged, surreal scenes of American homes and neighborhoods. Produced on a feature-film scale, his photographs (some of which were shot at MASS MoCA) are highly sought after, and have been acquired by museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Gift of Jonathan Waxman, Laurie Anderson, and Gregory Crewdson.

Estimated Value: The dinner is $2,000 but the experience is priceless.