The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis wishes you a very happy holiday season and a very happy winter!

One week from today is the winter solstice, which means that every day from December 21 until June 21 will be a little longer than the day before. What an exciting feeling! 

However, your days left to see For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there, are getting shorter and shorter! We encourage you to show your out-of-town guests a little bit of St. Louis art and culture and bring them by the Contemporary to view the exhibition. Remember the museum is always free on Wednesday and Saturday and Contemporary memberships include four or more guest passes each year.

If you are in a bind for some last minute holiday gifts, consider the gift of art. You can purchase a gift membership online quickly and easily! Or, come to the Museum to spend some time exploring our Flat Files which holds a sample of works by a variety of St Louis artists. The Flat Files also contains contact information to get in touch with the artists, view additional works and make a purchase! While you are here, stop by MUSE, the Contemporary’s gift shop for exciting, unique gifts! Have a wonderful and safe holiday! We hope to see you at the Contemporary soon!

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Jimmy Raskin / Tessa Rehkop

Jimmy Raskin was born in 1970 in Los Angeles where he currently lives and works.  Since 1989, the artist has been studying, through various mediums, the idea of a universe split between the Poet and the Philosopher. Focusing on the Prologue of Nietzsche’s philosophical novel, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), Raskin interprets Zarathustra’s understanding of how to move forward as the New Being –the merging of the philosopher and the poet into the Philosopher-Poet. His latest multi-media sculpture and video installation, The Annunciation, is part of the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there. In what the artist calls a “fighting sculpture”, Raskin continues his dual mode of expression between the Philosopher-Poet and the Poet with a battle scene represented by black vinyl silhouettes of an eagle-serpent and a donkey reflecting how the artist struggles with art as a form of critical thought while still trying to be poetic. In the past, Raskin has represented this duality through a series of lectures, audio-visual performances, publishing a book entitled The Poet, The Poltergeist & The Hollow Tree, and producing countless texts, drawings, diagrams, sculptures and cartoons.  His research seems to be seeking truth by combining the thinking of the Philosopher and the Poet-in-Part in order to have more than just faith in meaning.

Next week the Contemporary will host two events, one to celebrate the holidays, and the other to explore the topic of curiosity and how it relates to a child’s desire for learning. Holiday Open House will take place on Thursday, December 10 from 6:00 – 9:00. There will be light bites and drinks, a chance to walk through the exhibition, For the blind man… and shopping! MUSE gift shop will offer a 25% discount to everyone and a 35% discount to members on all purchases (even sale items!). There will also be an art and craft sale throughout the evening, making for plenty of chances to purchase unique, handmade gifts. Two days later, on Saturday, December 12, from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm and 1:00 – 3:00 pm, the Contemporary will host Curiosity and Knowledge: the Heart of Learning. This is an event facilitated by The St. Michael School of Clayton, a Reggio-inspired school for preprimary and elementary age children with interactive educational activities for children, adults, and educators. At 2:30 pm, Chief Curator Anthony Huberman and Co-founder of the Cadwell Collaborative Louise Cadwell will end the day with a reflection about “curiosity and knowledge.”

Bruno Munari and David William / Tessa Rehkop

Two artists that truly capture the theme of “not knowing” in the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there are Bruno Munari and David William. Bruno Munari was born in 1907 in Milan. He was an artist, graphic designer, industrial designer, poet, and illustrator. After a seventy year career, gaining the title of “founding father of Italian design,” Munari died in Milan in 1998. In a sequence of twelve grainy black and white photographs entitled Seeking comfort in an uncomfortable armchair, Munari shows a man attempting twelve different ways to sit in an armchair while trying to read a newspaper. The man never seems to figure out the correct way to sit. This reflects Munari’s curiosity about the most common things in life.

David William is a composite name of graphic designers David Reinfurt and Will Holder. David Reinfurt was born in 1971 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He works as an independent graphic designer, writer and critic in New York. Will Holder was born in 1969 in Hatfield. He works as a writer, editor, performer, and book designer in London. Together they designed a game, Towards an Intuitive Understanding of the Fourth Dimension, to help children understand the complex idea of the fourth dimension: time in relation to the other three dimensions. Players are presented with several squares and a timer, but they are given no rules. So by having no previous experience with the game, players must develop their own rules. By not knowing how to play the game visitors of the current exhibition can get an idea of what it’d be like to experience common everyday objects for the first time, like how to sit in an armchair.

Click here to view Munari’s gallery guide and here for William’s gallery guide.

On Thursday, December 3 a slightly modified version of the exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there will open at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. The exhibition will be on view there from December 3, 2009 through January 31, 2010. The For the blind man… exhibition will also travel to an additional American venue, and will simultaneously travel to two other European venues. Click here to see a list of other venues and schedules.

Thanksgiving has passed, so now it is time to really get series about holiday gift giving! Most people don’t think about turning to art museums for wonderful gift ideas, so here is your chance to get in on the secret. MUSE gift shop, at the Contemporary, has many items on sale around the holidays. There is always something fun and unique on the shelves in MUSE. You can also give the gift of museum membership. This is truly a unique gift because recipients will receive membership benefits for an entire year AND the money you spend to purchase the gift goes towards supporting a cultural institution!

Another important gift you could make this holiday season is to New Art in the Neighborhood (NAN) students. This year, the Contemporary is focusing on raising funds for this important educational program. NAN is a pre-professional, scholarship-based program for high school students wishing to gain exposure and experience in the arts. The students spend each Saturday afternoon for a semester at the Contemporary creating and learning about art from museum staff, artists, and each other. One of the things that these students lack in their classroom is technology. In order to create and store artwork and portfolios, students need access to computers, printers, cameras, and more. You can make a difference in the lives of these teens by making a gift! Click here for more information and here to donate now.

The Contemporary would like to wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving! The museum will be closed on Thursday, November 26 for the holiday, but will re-open on Friday, November 27. The holiday weekend is a great time to visit the museum, and is an exciting destination for out-of-town guests!

Eric Duyckaerts / Gilian Rappaport

Eric Duyckaerts was born in 1953 in Llege, Belgium and currently lives and works in Nice, France. Working in the disciplines of both video and visual arts, Duyckaerts employs mixed media to explore analogs like the square and labyrinth, as well as questions of advanced logical analysis. Duyckaerts uses humor to situate his persistent curiosity and exploration into preconceived systems of knowledge. He questions human construction of the world by investigating pattern making and ways of thinking, including functions of symbolism, repetition, process, meaning, and use.

Duyckaerts’ 1993 exhibition, The Hand with Two Thumbs, explored the precise numbers of bones present within all human arms, hands, and fingers. Noting that the human hand has five digits, namely, four fingers and one thumb, Duyckaerts proposes the possibility of two thumbs, totaling six digits, per hand, through a lecture, video, a selection of drawings, and a cast model of a hand possessing two thumbs. The effect is an alluring combination of humor and gravity into a proverbial “Why not?” In For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there, film depicts Duyckaerts posing a seemingly nonsensical argument based on a network of undeniably logical ideas.

For images of Duyckaerts’ work, click here. To view the gallery guide, click here.

Dave Hullfish Bailey / Tessa Rehkop

Dave Hullfish Bailey was born in 1963 in Denver, Colorado, and he currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His work To do with a wide spot along a dusty road crossing a dry channel, between the old end of Old Red and the dead end of the New West is being presented at the Contemporary in the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there.  This project, consisting of a boat trailer with varying types of equipment ranging from a garden hose to a computer scanner, was designed for the purpose of exploring the Colorado River Delta.  Bailey is interested in the idea of a river as something that organizes material, constantly shifting and re-shifting it around in a way that’s not random, but still hard for us to understand.  He describes the work as existing between the gap of organizing things in a rigid, rational way and a more organic, natural way. This gap is limiting but we can also take pleasure from it because understanding that there is a gap, we can develop our own ways of understanding. 

Click here to hear more of Bailey’s explanation of his work and here to view the gallery guide.