ARMED N’ HAMMERED
RESEARCH
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well
Nan Goldin’s Hell
“I don’t choose people in order to photograph them; I take photos straight from my life. These photos come from relationships, not from observation.”
“I don’t choose people in order to photograph them; I take photos straight from my life. These photos come from relationships, not from observation.”
Whether it be trust, an indestructible link, or the revered connection between an artist and their muse, sacredness is what creates a portal to a photograph, an immortalized moment generously offered to the spectator. This sacredness, characterized by fervor and authenticity, form the foundations of Nan Goldin's approach. Goldin’s photographs evoke a lifestyle that was visceral, charged and seething with a raw appetite for life and destruction in tandem. In an essay –published in Aperture– marking the thirty-five year anniversary of her magnum opus “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, Goldin reflects on creating an indelible visual record of her life that the spectator may use as a net of safety and understanding. She states that “The book gave a mirror to kids who had no reflection of themselves in the world around them. They knew that they weren’t alone”[1]. Her lush color photography, which portrayed her life, her friends, and her lovers in various bohemian, gender-bending, hard-partying enclaves in the latter decades of the twentieth century, were taken in a kind of snapshot, off-the-cuff style, not especially concerned with either conventional composition or reportorial detachment. It demands that the viewer encounters their profound intensity head on, as the grim subject matters penetrate deep into the psyche.
What distinguishes Goldin is her active presence in every situation she depicts, which is an important component in the microcosm of her community. There is no voyeurism in her work, no vanishing behind the camera. Goldin’s world-building exists to serve her subjects and her in unison. Within this, the intimacy that runs through Goldin's images is formed and nurtured through her interactions, rather than simple observations. Intimacy develops in relationships and has nothing to do with the public eye, as Goldin asserts that friendships become the true art, and it is Goldin's eye that gives her images such a lively quality. Analyzing Goldin's work from a technical or politically motivated standpoint is intrusive, almost wicked. Her and her friends' tales and bodies should have the freedom to exist without the weight of controversy, scandal, or ideological meanings imposed by others. Goldin created for herself and the people she cherished, the early slideshows of the The Ballad of Sexual Dependency frolicked on the walls of clubs, underground movies, and birthday parties solely for her pals, long before they made their way to museums. Her images bloom when viewed emotionally, and they gain radicality when Goldin places them in a specific setting herself.
In her major retrospective exhibition “This Will Not End Well”, which originated at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm and travelled to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and currently on view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Goldin encases that compassion with an extraordinary magnetic quality. The mesmerizing exhibition that acts as acts as a chronicle of Goldin’s life comprises six distinct bodies of work—The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, The Other Side, Memory Lost, Fire Leap, and Sisters, Saints, and Sibyls—all representing the most recent iteration of Goldin's canon. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a dizzying dance between Goldin and her people, the majority of whom she has lost to the AIDS epidemic, containing over 700 hundred images in a 45-minute slideshow.
Full text
Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke
with reference to Hans Haacke
Targets: Hans Haacke
Ongoing research on Hans Haacke’s institutional critique through his work, from the early 70s to the late 80s. This research is part of the literature review for my undergraduate thesis in Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Who are the targets?
Nelson Rockerfeller
Poll for MoMa Visitors, 1970 shown at Information at MoMA, July 2 - September 20, 1970
“In the summer of 1970, as part of the group exhibition “Information,” one of the first major surveys of conceptual art, the artist Hans Haacke presented a work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called “Poll of MoMA Visitors.” Museumgoers were given slips of paper to deposit into one of two plexiglass boxes. On the wall was a sign about Nelson Rockefeller, then in his third term as governor of New York and running for a fourth. “Question,” it read, “Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon’s Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November? Answer: If ‘yes,’ please cast your ballot into the left box; if ‘no,’ into the right box.”
The Rockefeller family helped found MoMA in 1929. In 1963, Nelson’s brother David was elected the chair of the museum’s board of trustees. As governor, Nelson Rockefeller had begun calling for a broadening of the war in Vietnam and a South Vietnamese-led invasion of Cambodia and Laos as early as 1964. That wasn’t the family’s only connection to the conflict. Henry Kissinger, who worked for the Rockefellers in the 1950s and advised Nelson on his presidential campaigns beginning in 1960, was also Nixon’s national security adviser and the chief architect of the secret carpet bombing campaign of Cambodia that began in 1969 and is estimated to have killed more than 150,000 civilians. It led to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, which Nixon announced on TV on April 30, 1970. The following day, students began demonstrating across the country in numbers that would soon reach the millions and, on May 4, the National Guard opened fire on protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four.
Tensions were high at MoMA as well, where “Information” opened that July. Haacke kept the exact content of his work secret until he had finished installing it. Unlike a lot of conceptual art, it was simple but, in looking critically at a figure of great behind-the-scenes power at MoMA from the vantage point of an artist exhibiting at the museum, Haacke had created an entirely new art form. David Rockefeller was furious about the exhibition; Nelson Rockefeller’s office called John Hightower, the museum’s director, to ask for Haacke’s poll to be removed, but the work remained. It was among the factors that eventually led to Hightower’s forced resignation. Haacke would quickly become an art-world pariah.”
Mobil Oil Company
MetroMobiltan, 1985 shown at Unfinished Business at The New Museum of Art, December 12, 1986 - February 15, 1987
“Haacke seeks to connect art to its concrete social context, opening it up to the political. His interest in political questions is evident in this piece from 1985, MetroMobiltan, a title that somewhat humorously combines the name of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with that of oil company Mobil. Haacke is pointing here to the paradoxical ethical position of a multinational corporation that seeks to polish its image – tarnished by certain of its activities – by supporting cultural events, and this with the active complicity of the art institutions that depend on it for funding.
Three banners - like the banners over the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art - hang down from what looks like a fragment of the Metropolitan's front cornice. Two banners include statements from the Mobil Corporation about its involvement in South Africa; the third announces an exhibition on African art Mobil supported. Behind the banners is a photomural of a funeral in South Africa for black victims. Both the cornice and the altarlike platform beneath the banners are Fiberglas. The banners and the Fiberglas create the sense of something trying to lift the weight of the subject matter.”
Charles Saatchi
The Saatchi Collection (Simulations), 1987 shown at Global Marketing at Victoria Miro Cork Street, December 4, 1987 - January 9, 1988
“Hans Haacke's installation The Saatchi Collection (Simulations), which was first exhibited at his show Global Marketing at Victoria Miro Gallery in London in 1987, targeted apartheid South Africa, and specifically two companies that were participating in and supporting the regime: advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi and its subsidiary KMP Compton.
Co-founded by Charles Saatchi, who by the mid-1980s was already on his way to becoming the UK's best-known collector of contemporary art, Saatchi & Saatchi was not only the Conservative Party's official ad agency, but also deeply involved with the South African apartheid government. In 1983, for example, the agency masterminded the government's successful campaign to pass a referendum that would continue to leave the black population unrepresented in parliament. The text of one of Haacke's satirical posters for KMP Compton reads: "The sweet reward of successful marketing is the result of a perfect mix of ingredients", and goes on to boast about the company's relationship to South Africa.”
Full text available in Spring of 2027
Tatiana Trouvé: The Strange Life of Things
John Baldessari: No Stone Unturned. Conceptual Photography
The Venice Collection: Reviews
John Baldessari: No Stone Unturned – Conceptual Photography at Fondazione Querini Stampalia | By J. F. SkipperI spent my January in Venice, Italy as part of the Winter 2026 term to assemble the exhibition Undercurrents at Fondazione Marta Czok as part of the Venice Exhibition Seminar class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During my time in Venice I built a satirical art criticism website originally titled Venice Astral Projection Clinic. I aquired any exhibition catalogue I could find to further assist me in my research while writing these pieces.
What is Astral Projection Clinic?
An online art criticism forum, holding the unique role of a foremost tastemaker of the industry by appealing to the snobs of the world. Established in 2026 in Venice, Italy, it aims to spotlight museum shows showcased across Europe. Through our sleuth of contributors who provide the highest form of criticism, ASTRAL PROJECTION CLINIC manages to become the main reference point for art happening in Europe and soon, beyond. From blockbuster shows to historical gems, ASTRAL PROJECTION CLINIC bridges together art and criticism from all disciplines and eras, providing a holistic overview for the reader. We also go off-site, and interview some stellar people.
I reviewed major institutional exhibitions by building characters under the guise of irony. These were my musings in reverse chronological order. Click any titled to read each review in full:
What is Astral Projection Clinic?
An online art criticism forum, holding the unique role of a foremost tastemaker of the industry by appealing to the snobs of the world. Established in 2026 in Venice, Italy, it aims to spotlight museum shows showcased across Europe. Through our sleuth of contributors who provide the highest form of criticism, ASTRAL PROJECTION CLINIC manages to become the main reference point for art happening in Europe and soon, beyond. From blockbuster shows to historical gems, ASTRAL PROJECTION CLINIC bridges together art and criticism from all disciplines and eras, providing a holistic overview for the reader. We also go off-site, and interview some stellar people.
I reviewed major institutional exhibitions by building characters under the guise of irony. These were my musings in reverse chronological order. Click any titled to read each review in full:
“I never saw this show.
How can I review it?
The great Hal Foster can help me with that.”
How can I review it?
The great Hal Foster can help me with that.”
Manu-Facture: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection | By Jana Onderková
No words needed.
Amazement, Reality, Enigma. Pietro and the Painting of 17th Century in Venice at Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia | By Naima El-Baz
“Visitors to Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia are usually drawn there by the big names: the Carpaccios, Bellinis, and Titians, the enormous Veroneses, the Canalettos, Tiepolos, and Guardis. Here you can enjoy all of the city's joys and pageantry. Three centuries of quicksilver brushwork and shimmering, opalescent light, not to mention the occasional heaving bodice, are neatly contained in one location. There are other pieces here, of course, but they all have a worldly, fleshly aspect. Bosch's apocalyptic visions, obtained by Domenico Grimani in the early 16th century, evoke a sense of overindulgence.”
Robert Mapplethorpe: Le forme del classico at Le Stanze della Fotografia | By Harold Perkins
“After all, the ideal woman is a man...By sterilizing the raw energy that engulfs the female form, the magic is lost. Beauty lies in arousal, and to contest arousal is to contest art itself.”
Tatiana Trouvé: The Strange Life of Things at Palazzo Grassi | By Dr. Liselotte von Berenberg-Gossler
“The outcome is not a retrospective; rather, it is an ecosystem: several temporalities cohabit, with older works relinquishing their original contexts and assuming new identities within this Venetian landscape. Each piece appears cognizant of the others, suggesting that the exhibition functions as a self-regulating ecosystem rather than a sequential presentation.