Aleksandra Mir turns 57 today

Aleksandra Mir | Freddie on the Plinth

Freddie on the Plinth is a proposal/petition and a tribute to two people with an unlikely connection: Queen singer Freddie Mercury and Czech sculptor called Irena Sedlecká. 

While a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Sedlecká was awarded the Lenin Prize for excellence and later created many celebrated socialist realist large-scale commissions. She and her husband fled the communist regime in 1967. After traveling through Yugoslavia, Italy and France, Sedlecká eventually settled in Britain. 

In London, following Mercury's death from AIDS in 1991, she received a commission to create a larger-than-life memorial statue of the rock star. The other members of Queen and the executors of Mercury's estate wished to memorialize him with a bronze statue, in lieu of a tombstone (Mercury was cremated and the location of his ashes was not publicly disclosed). 

The statue depicts the Queen frontman at Wembley Stadium, gesturing triumphantly, where Sedlecká first saw Queen perform, during Live Aid, in 1985. 

The Westminster Council rejected the work, ostensibly due to fears of vandalism (but reportedly the fear of glorifying AIDs and homosexuals). A home in Britain could not be found, and the work was offered to the city of Montreux, Switzerland, where Mercury owned a home and Queen a recording studio. It has become a site of pilgrimage for fans, who gather at the waters of Lake Geneva yearly to mark the singer's birthday. 

In 2010, Aleksandra Mir befriended Sedlecká, leading to a monograph on her work and a proposal to bring the statue back to London on temporary loan, to be exhibited on the famous fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Sedlecká died in London on August 4, 2020, aged 91.

The 2011 book Freddie on the Plinth documented the pair's attempts to relocate the sculpture. Now, Mir is making the title available as an E-book. From an email she sent a couple of days ago: 

"To celebrate all things #freddiemercury this week I am relaunching the Retrospective Press as an eBook publishing enterprise!

My first eBook title is a re-issue of 'Freddie on the Plinth', a tribute to Mercury and the Czech sculptor Irena Sedlecká – an exploration of the convergence between Socialist Realism and Glam Rock, illustrated with 33 photographs of Irena's tumultuous life that mirrors nearly a century of European upheavals

Now in ENGLISH and SPANISH, and with a NEW foreword where I also talk about meeting Queen’s Art Director Richard Gray, who during the Live Aid gala and before the advent of jpegs would have deadline photographs sent from New York to London by commanding: Concorde them over!

Keep obscure Indie publishing Alive and help set this Rocket off!

1/ ENG: https://mybook.to/5rvY6

ESP: https://mybook.to/2SM86p

Search Amazon: Aleksandra Mir Freddie

2/ Spend $4.99 (or $0.00 with Kindle Unlimited Subscription)

3/ Download the Publication: Readable on any Screen. Just get the Kindle app and when you order the publication it will download directly to your device

4/ Feed the beast: Write an Honest Review / Comment

5/ Tell everybody: Queen fans, art students, academic sculptors, art and music historians, and all those who enjoy reading about dramatic historical events through the lens of unique and complex lives

Thanks with all of my Publishing X"

Some reviews of Bad Reviews

Bomb Magazine, from August 24th: 

https://bombmagazine.org/articles/bad-reviews-nick-irvin/

Here, on the 25th: 

http://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2022/08/aleksandra-mir-and-tim-griffin-bad.html

and today, in the Guardian (thanks JC). 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/04/she-paints-with-the-brush-in-her-ass-the-artists-sharing-their-worst-savagings

Aleksandra Mir and Tim Griffin | Bad Reviews

Aleksandra Mir and Tim Griffin [eds]

Bad Reviews 

New York City/London, USA/UK: Retrospective Press, 2022

[176] pp., 32 x 24 x 2 cm., softcover

Edition of 400

Andy Warhol proposed that the best way to deal with art criticism was not to read your reviews, but to "weigh them." His advice functions as an update of sorts to showman P.T. Barnum's axiom “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”, mixed with a little Oscar Wilde wit ("There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about"). 

Almost seven years ago, Aleksandra Mir contacted artists around the world and asked them to submit the worst review that they had ever received (I posted about it here, in October of 2015). 

"I am planning to publish an artist's book called BAD Reviews,” she wrote, "a collection of bad art reviews in the form of quotes, transcripts and reproductions of previously published material. I take the view that the bad art review is a near extinct form of creative writing which deserves to be honored, and who better suited to do this, than the artist concerned?".

Earlier this summer, the title was finally released, covering six decades and featuring a hundred and fifty artists including Carolee Schneemann, Lawrence Weiner, Allen Ruppersberg, AA Bronson,  Susan Hiller, Aram Saroyan, Mona Hatoum, Michael Smith, Laurie Simmons, Robert Longo, Dara Birnbaum, David Rokeby, William Pope L, Cindy Sherman, Jessica Stockholder, Marcel Dzama and many, many others. 

Mir and Tim Griffin, the editors, view it as a collectively authored Artist Book, by a hundred and fifty artists who each volunteered to share the worst published review of their work, or other opprobrium. Ed Ruscha, for example, contributed a now-legendary letter he received from the Library of Congress, who returned his Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations book to him ("The Library of Congress does not wish to add [this] to our collections"). 

Both editors contribute a brief afterword, and in Mir's she describes herself as "raised on Warholian wit and Watersesque camp", slightly inoculating herself from pain of negative criticism. 

John Waters proposed to Lit Hub a couple of years ago: 

“Read the bad ones once, the good ones twice, and put them all away and never look at them again. Of course what you always remember are the bad ones. You can ask people to quote the meanest review they’ve ever gotten and nobody says I don’t know. But you never answer them, because when you answer them they get to answer you again. So all the people who didn’t read it the first time see it the second time. Sometimes you learn from a bad review. Sometimes they’re right – a little.”

One almost feels guilty agreeing with some of the negative comments, but Waters' last observation is true. Sometimes they are right. 

Any fear that the contributors were using Bad Reviews to smirk away valid criticism was allayed by the always brilliant Candice Breitz, who posted about her involvement with the project on Instagram:

"This wickedly fun publication was put together by Aleksandra Mir and Tim Griffin. The book sets out to ‘explore and honour the bad review as a genre’ [...]  It makes for a really fascinating read (at times painful, at times hilarious); especially given the relative paucity of critics who are willing to dole out harsh criticism in the current moment. As Aleksandra writes:

"One could easily assert that art criticism is in crisis today. Bad reviews are a rare breed in those magazines run by a circular economy of journalism and advertising. The autonomy of the critic, who anyway gets lousy pay, is often squeezed between these economic and political ends."

My own contribution to the book is a review of an improvisatory performance piece that I put together in the context of Performa in 2009 (’New York, New York’ was its title). In her review of ’New York, New York' for Artforum, Claire Bishop made short shrift of the piece, memorably describing the result of my experimental approach as ‘an abortion.’

I respect Claire very much, so that stung for a moment. Fortunately, I happen to be very much pro-abortion: It is often life-saving!"

Breitz gives the form its due regard (as well as the great Claire Bishop) while also conveying the importance of being able to ultimately shrug it off.  Additionally, she manages to tie the title to the topical and urgent subject of abortion (something also dear to the heart of Mir).

Bad Reviews is not for sale, but rather the copies are shared among the participants. However, it is available to view at the following libraries: 

Academy of Fine Arts, Gdansk

Accademia di Belle Arti G. Carrara di Bergamo

Bard College, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson

Bennington College, VT

CalArts, Valencia, CA

Center for Art, Research and Alliances, NYC

Center for Book Arts, NYC

Centre National Édition Art Image, Paris

Chert Lüdde, Berlin

Cleveland Institute of Art, OH

Cloud Seven, Brussels

Delfina Foundation, London

Detroit Institute of Arts, MI

DuplexDuplex, Vancouver

École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

École Nationale Supérieure d'arts de Paris Cergy

Frac des Pays De la Loire

Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea, Palermo

Getty Research Institute, CA

Hosmer Gallery, Northampton MA

Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavík

Institut für Kunst im Kontext, UDK, Berlin

International Center of Photography, NYC

Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover

Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg

L’OEil de Poisson, Quebec City

M+, Hong Kong

Modern Art Oxford

Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto

Museum of Modern Art, New York

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

Nottingham Trent University

Ocean Space, Venice

Piet Zwart Instituut, Rotterdam

Pomona College, Claremont, CA

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn

Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

SF MoMA

 

Aleksandra Mir | Keep Abortion Legal

Aleksandra Mir

Keep Abortion Legal

Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2017

18.8 x 9.4 cm.

Open edition

A vinyl bumper sticker produced in an unlimited edition, available for $3.00 CDN, here.

Instagram

 

About a third of the content on my Instagram feed is relevant to this blog. Recent examples include works by Dan Graham, Stefan Calligaro, Lawrence Wiener, Richard McGuire, Jon Klassen, Jon Sasaki, John Cage, Fluxus, Jenny Holzer, Michael Dumontier, Kablusiak, Cary Leibowitz, Aleksandra Mir, Paul + Wendy Projects, Nothing Else Press, etc. etc. 

Follow me at @dave.dyment. 

Aleksandra Mir | I Love Love

Aleksandra Mir
I Love Love
Self-published, 2004
35.5 x 27.5 cm.
Edition size unknown

This week on Tumblr: Aleksandra Mir

Aleksandra Mir | Keep Abortion Legal

Aleksandra Mir
Keep Abortion Legal
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2017
18.8 x 9.4 cm
Open edition


A vinyl bumper sticker produced in an unlimited edition, available for $3.00 CDN, here.

Given the new anti-abortion laws recently enacted in Georgia, Missouri, and Alabama (most without exceptions even for rape and incest), this work feels as urgent as ever.

Aleksandra Mir | Keep Abortion Legal

Aleksandra Mir
Keep Abortion Legal
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2017
18.8  x  9.4 cm.
Vinyl Bumper Sticker
Open Edition
$3.00

While living in New York City in the 1990’s, Aleksandra Mir encountered countless Anti-Abortion protests, many of which included graphic and grisly images of aborted fetuses. The artist's response is a simple message in the Helvetica typeface, in baby blue and pink colours. Not unlike Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace project or General Idea’s Image Virus [AIDS], Mir had the design printed on as many surfaces as possible: as silkscreens, postcards, manicure sets, pen knives, dental floss, sewing kits, cigarette lighters and handbags. Keep Abortion Legal has also appeared in numerous museum exhibitions, often meeting with controversy.

Given the current political climate and the increasing threats against funding for Planned Parenthood, the project unfortunately feels as timely as ever. Three days ago the work was installed as a massive public billboard alongside Interstate 70 in Missouri.

At the Toronto Art Book Fair this weekend, the Nothing Else Press will release a vinyl bumper sticker for $3.00. Stick it on your car, guitar, notebook, laptop, skateboard, water bottle or bulletin board.

Aleksandra Mir wants your bad reviews

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Aleksandra Mir <admin (at)aleksandramir.info>

To: Aleksandra Mir <admin(at)aleksandramir.info> 

Sent: Friday, October 16, 2015 4:26 PM

Subject: BAD Reviews

Dear ​Artist,

I am planning to publish an artist's book called BAD Reviews, a collection of bad art reviews in the form of quotes, transcripts and reproductions of previously published material.

I take the view that the bad art review is a near extinct form of creative writing which deserves to be honored, and who better suited to do this, than the artist concerned?

I know you were subject to many bad reviews in the early stages of your career and so will greatly appreciate your contributions to this book.

Whether you were hurt or amused, affected or not, the creative energy that went into describing your work in derogatory terms stands for a commitment and is a marker of its time.

I will only publish material that has been voluntarily submitted by the artists themselves, so no slander, but a genuine investigation into the nature of criticism.

The more artists who contribute, and the more material there will be, the more of a substantial survey we can collectively create, so please do forward this mail to your colleagues.

All contributors will receive updates and a copy of the book.

Bad wishes,

Aleksandra Mir

"…Aleksandra Mir, from Lubin, in Poland, is another maker of new maps of the USA, across which she declares the Cold War to be Hot Stuff, in the style of a mustard advert in a hamburger outlet…Young America is a bottomless source of the stuff. This entire display stinks of stupidity and an absent education. Has anyone here read a book or studied history or looked at a Botticelli or questioned a technique or patiently thought their way through an artistic conundrum? Not a chance. This is a generation of paint-happy know- nothings brought up on hamburgers and porn, a talentless bloom of post-pop trailer trash that makes our own Brit Artists look like a parade of Einsteins by comparison".

Waldemar Januszczak, Don't want to be an American idiot, Review of USA Today at the Royal Academy, The Sunday Times, London, 8 Oct 2006

​PS. 

The​ co-editor on the project Tim Griffin, Director at the Kitchen in NYC will host a first launch and live reading event when we are done.​ 

We understand it takes time to search through your archives so the project has no immediate deadline. Just let us know if you are interested and we will wait for your contribution.

Please send high res scans of printed pieces, screenshots or links to anything online.

We accept original material in all languages, which we will endeavor to translate to English.

This email has already reached artists of every generation and around the world. We are very excited by the contributions that are coming in from the most established, to the youngest of artists. Everyone who has material to add is welcome. Please spread the word.

admin(at)aleksandramir.info