Observations on ArtAuthor(s): Cynthia DavidsonSource: Log, No. 3 (Fall 2004), p. 4Published by: Anyone CorporationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41765655 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 18:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Anyone Corporation is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Log.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.214 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:38:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Otto Mittmannsgruber/Martin Strauss, Intervention on the MAK Facade (photomontage), zoo«. Photo: Georg Mayer/MAK.

Observations ok Art

When the MAK opened Otto Mittmannsgruber and Martin Strauss's exhibition "Public Spaces Go Public: Art Projects in Mass Media" this summcr^ the Vienna museum forced the artists9 public art into the kinds of exhibition galleries that thçy generally avoid For them f the public spaces for media in cities are a natural context for art, including billboards and scaffolding tarpaulins, which carry the kind of pant advertisements that disappear once building con- struction is complete. MAK9 s ont concession to the artists9 usually outdoor mrk is the temporary loan of one of its primary facades. Attached to a thin scaffold is a giant tarpaulin that transforms the brick and stone MAK into concrete mass housing. The piece derives from Mittmannsgruber and Strauss9s participation in u Blind Spot: Facade,99 a group poster show in Lower Austria lastyear. Usingthe anonymous architecture of a typical apartment block, the artists subdivided mass housing into three elements: window, window with Venetian blinds, and bare wail. These became modules that, like those used in billboards, could be put together in various combina- tions. The mass-housing billboard focuses on " the dismal reality of htm cheap, mass housing is built even todqy,99 the artists said. But after the wall of these modules comes off the MAK this fall, most likely onb the MAK itself will be changed. - Cynthia Davidson

4

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.214 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:38:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions