With shirts on a rack and John McCracken by the foot, the boundaries between art and fashion are falling away in giddy purveyance at Ed Winkleman’s gallery. Curated by artists Christopher K. Ho and Ivin Ballen, the press release of "The Shallow Curator" states that this is “a summer group exhibition with neither urgency nor depth. The exhibition skims the surface of art-making, buoyed by such concerns as an artist’s sense of style.” Even the word “style” thins away from the consistency and substance of art historical proper names (the clothing is designed by George McKracken, and the John McCracken is a "forgery") and enters the simultaneously more capricious and culturally determined realm of fashion. The shallowness is real - with humor and the guise of sheer laziness there is avoidance of the “seriousness” of a theme. In conversation Ed Winkleman described it as “the smartest, dumbest show ever,” and the artists worried over whether or not a critic could even be interested in this show, laughing at the thought that it might be known in the future as “the show that no critic could review.”
This humorous bemoaning of the absence of critical understanding towards the curatorial project is an art world cliché, and “The Shallow Curator” joins such recent conversations with guffaws. It is still recently that Damien Hirst’s Levi’s line was seen on the Gagosian runway, and that Triple Candie’s exhibition of unauthorized Cady Noland knock-off’s, or the monographic retrospective of a fictitious Lester Hayes, caused a stir. By the time these two extremes - the blatant commercialism of Damien Hirst and Triple Candies’ critique of the object and the role of the nonprofit in the New York art world - reach The Shallow Curator, any dialectic between them has been sapped.
For historical comparison, there is the fictitious John Dogg, allegedly created by gallerist Colin de Land and artist Richard Prince, who in 1986 hung Econoline wheel covers on the wall of Lisa Spellman’s 303 Gallery. Here is Mitchell Algus describing what he valued about the work in 2003:
In blithe retrospect, Dogg's show was casually prescient, anticipating Neo-Geo's evolution into the proactive, materially ascetic mode of institutional critique. This shift in focus— from the accessories of power to the social organization of power—was a moral one. It shed in one shot the congenial complicity of the 80s art world. Dogg's was the smart, "I can live without that," frills-free version. Just right for the then impending bust.
The Shallow Curator is notably without prescience or shift, and avoids altogether the gesture of institutional critique. Gisel Florez’s photographs of vicious dogs ripping apart cheesy but glamorous accessories are made not in order to critique planned obsolescence but to generate more commissions for her work. One can imagine such an image very differently in the hands of Barbara Kruger. Likewise, “The Spirit’s” invocation of John McCracken for “Art Within Reach” is a spoof of the new age nostalgia mystique of Carol Bove. For all it’s shallowness and humor, this show has legible intentions, and the curators conclude, “If there is an argument at all, it is to reconsider the disinterested - or “shallow” - eye of modernism, not in order to critique it but in order to expand it.”
This disinterested, shallow eye of Modernism occupies a space without concern for either aura or effect, allowing humor to fill in the blank. But The Shallow Curator’s appeal to modernity is also made with an interest in beauty and the quality of the work, frankly understood as high end luxury goods. It is for this reason that I became interested in interviewing Ed Winkleman more specifically about his gallery’s identity, known largely through the unmoderated populism of his blog. With thousands of hits a day, it is not the postings themselves that draw the attention but the heated dialogue that ensues. What can occur is that the gallery’s identity is at once subjected to the vitriolic contempt of those who think they know it, and at the same time become lost in the fray. I felt a need to hear more specifically from Ed about his gallery programming and its success in defining an identity. The exhibition described above provides an interesting context for the following interview with Ed Winkleman:
CS: What is at stake in defining a gallery around "conceptual art," and what are its boundaries as you see them?
EW: I am somewhat hesitant to go into into too much detail on the blog because the blog is somewhat polarized between anti-conceptualist formalist and pro-conceptualist, and I’m going to throw this in here, pro-conceptualist-formalist, because the more I think of it I don’t really have much interest in anti-formalist conceptualism... I myself have seen tons of conceptualist art that hasn’t raised the bar for formalism - there would need to be in my idea of conceptual art that it must be visual, it must be compelling visually. I see what conceptualist artists are doing today as very consciously pushing past what’s been done before. What I mean by that is, and this is true for all the artists I work with, and why a lot of what our program turns out to be is art history...you have to know your art history pretty well.
Jennifer Dalton is a good example of this, she has a very firm grasp of art history, her work takes visual achievements of other artists and pushes past them, using their vocabulary in ways that accomplish new things more conceptually. In “This is not news” she was dealing with a topic that she is very well known for which is women and disparity in the arts. It’s very straightforward and clearly referencing Felix Gonzalez Torres, so she’s taking this vocabulary that people know already and what Felix was doing with it was perhaps more poetic than what Jen’s doing, but because it existed as art already she was able to pull it forward.
CS: What’s interesting about it is that when people were first defining themselves as Conceptualists, when Kosuth was first defining what Conceptual Art is he was saying “We are against morphology,” and here you have someone who has this very critical sociological perspective who is reinhabiting this morphology. When people talk about conceptual art sometimes they want to make a boundary, and Alexander Alberro limits Conceptual Art from 1966-1977 and after that refers to it as “post -conceptual.” One of the reasons for at least bracketing off the earlier Conceptual Art off from the present is that they were responding to Modernist art criticism, they were responding to Modern art and we’re no longer responding to Modernism in the way that they were.
EW: I would agree that Conceptual Art has a beginning and ending as a “large C” movement, just as every other 20th century movement did, so I am using small “c” conceptualist. I would also agree with anyone that good formalists are working with interesting concepts - John McCracken is a really good example of a formalist who leans it against the wall and kind of leans into conceptualism. Where I became involved in these definitions through the blog was among the camp who began to argue that “conceptualist” as it was broadly being used is anti-aesthetic, and I don’t think it is. If you look at the progression of formalist art it is often at the edge of an aesthetic that people would call ugly, that people would not have thought at the time were necessarily formalist achievements, even though today we would argue they were, and so my ongoing response to folks who think that the conceptualists are anti-aesthetic is that no, they are pushing the boundaries. The artist is free to say it is art, to define beauty, to define aesthetics. So when contemporary formalists describe the work at our gallery as "anti-formalist" or "anti-aesthetic" my response is to a) feel it’s not their role to define that for other artists and b) conclude that they are perhaps missing something, that they have a closed set of choices or values about art.
CS: Do you feel pigeonholed into defining conceptualism?
EW: No I talk about it all day, but I feel pigeonholed in defending its value in the context of beauty, and again, in coming from Ohio, a rusty bridge to me is stunning, this [pointing to a piece by Ivin Ballen] is actually an exquisitely beautiful piece to me, it’s gorgeously composed, it’s gorgeously painted, and yet it’s referencing graffiti, it’s referencing duct tape, it’s referencing a whole bunch of things that one might not see as beautiful, but this is the Rauschenbergian argument...can you find beauty in everyday objects? Yes you can.
CS: So you also have artists like Jennifer Dalton, Yevgeniy Fiks, and Christopher K. Ho, all people who are doing sort of sociological/ethnographic conceptual work, and some of them, would you say all of them, are engaging in art history?
EW: Yevgeniy is sort of interesting in that he’s not engaging in art history as much as he’s so aware of his art history (he teaches art history) the choices he makes are made very specifically because of that awareness. Here are some paintings where he is positioning them between the Social Realist style and Sots Art, a postmodernist sort of cynical ironic painting, and both of these are sort of kitschy, so he is interested in the middle ground. Painting these portraits could only be done with a full knowledge of the critique of both. Pure formalists will only embrace a movement or rejection of that movement and advance it, he is actually going back in time and situating himself right between two other movements, not because he sees this as an advance, not because he sees it as a matter of rejecting, but because he sees very well what those two movements did politically, and he feels the best way to represent these American communists is to balance these two out.
He’s done something else that I see defining the difference between the formalists and the small ‘c” conceptualist camps which is that he’s not invested in a medium to the point of having to defend it, he’s not a painter, he’s not a photographer, so media serves his ideas - but he is a good painter!
CS: And this is something that the latest conceptual art is now taking full ownership of: a strong return to studio practice. I’m really interested in people like Joy Garnett, I think her paintings are so lusciously beautiful, but that it’s also a conceptual practice that’s holding it together.
EW: Can I say that Joy is a really good example in that where - and I haven’t been able to say this on my blog, only because when I do people take it personally and that kind of disintegrates into bickering and unpleasantness - but Joy is a wonderful example of an artist who is painting because it’s one really solid way to explore what she’s interested in, not because she’s invested in it, she’s invested in ideas, the difference goes back to dumb like a painter, she’s not dumb like a painter she’s a scientist. The difference in my mind between the formalists and the conceptualists is that the formalists are - I’m going to really regret saying this - but they are still stuck in Modernism, stuck in the essence of their media, and the folks who have rejected that and see media as a tool for their ideas are more interesting to me, because I reject the essentialism of modernism, the question stopped being what is the essence of art and became what is art, and that’s the more interesting question.
CS: Marian Goodman started with Broodthaers, but I don’t know that you could say she had a program, and that you could say this about many of the older gallerists, that they kind of just went intuitively for who they liked and lined them up. Do you think it’s different now, at a time of branding and corporate identity, that being known as a gallery that specializes in conceptual art is of an historical necessity bound to a gallery system that has changed?
EW: There’s actually three ideas in that question, one is that the model that Marian Goodman is known for is not being rejected by every dealer, I would say that Zach Feuer is following that, he talks about his gallery as having evolved in the same way, these are the artists he thinks are important and interesting, however I think we are at this point trained in terms of thinking of a program, becoming specialists, and that probably is just a sign of the times, having a specialty is expected in any field, but it’s also a response to an overwhelming amount of information, to have the faith in your own eye, that Marian Goodman, or Zach Feuer just down the street is rare, because it is demonstrating an amazing amount of faith in what you are doing.
Why did programs become popular in the first place? About 35 years ago there were people who began to specialize, Edith Halpert, for example, specifically American Art, but now we are seeing that dealers can write with incredible precision about the artists they are working with, so what led to that are two things: one, they are starting to see themselves in more creative terms, and I think that stems from the fact that a lot of artists, art historians, or critics became dealers, with creative visions, and the number of people who can live as working artists has exploded, and so like every other field when you have that much to process, to organize, specialization becomes really attractive, and so I have admiration for Marian and for Zach. When I began noticing that Marian and Zach were not following that program model it started to make me wonder whether that was a better path, and I don’t know, I think I’ve somewhat been pigeonholed as a conceptualist dealer, and I don’t mind that because I love conceptualist work, and yet I have a few artists who I don’t think of that way and I love working with them, Christopher Johnson is a really good example.
CS: I’m using the words branding and corporate identity because not too long ago there was a posting on your blog about how you used to have this other gallery, and what this gallery was going to be and that you were refining your vision, and you used the word branding,it came up in your writing.
EW: I do discuss it in those corporate terms. But the idea of assessing a gallery as a brand is at first to recognize that each of the artists you carry is themselves a brand, and so your umbrella brand had better never compete with or undercut or interfere with your individual product brands, so it is an awareness that you have an umbrella brand. Of even Gagosian, even Zach or even Marian Goodman, you would say whether Marylyn Minter either belongs or doesn’t belong with those galleries, even if you don’t think they have a specialized brand they do, there is a loose brand that definitely has a place to be discussed as such.
CS: So to be clear, you don’t want your gallery to be identified purely with conceptual art?
EW: I do want my gallery to be identified with conceptual art, I don’t want my gallery to be identified exclusively as a conceptualist gallery. I strongly believe in conceptualism, at the point where we are a lot of the most interesting art that’s happening right now is conceptualist, but knowing that the spiral will continue around, and knowing that artists who have a conceptualist practice at the moment may veer into a more formalist mode, these are artists that I want to keep working with. And the reason I want to work with conceptualist artists is that I come out of their studio visits with my head just throbbing with new ideas and I love that, and I don’t get that anywhere else, this is the most intense education I can get, and it’s not from a book, this is as living, breathing, of-a-second kind of education that I can get, and that’s incredible, that’s the real thrill of working with living artists.
By Catherine Spaeth
Image credits: George McKracken, 2009 Spring line, Available at Bergdorf Goodman and other fine stores, Installation view; Gisel Florez, Exquisite Taste (Olive), 2007,Archival Inkjet Print, 21” x 28”, Edition of 10; The Spirit, John McCracken, 2008, Aquaresin, fiberglass, 39 x 14 x 3, Available in any finish; Jennifer Dalton, This Is Not News, 2006, 5 strings of 100 light bulbs, ink on colored paper, string, Dimensions variable (each string 101 feet), Edition of 10; John McCracken, Gold, 2006, Resin, fiberglass, plywood, 93 x 16 x 3 1/2 inches, 236.2 x 40.6 x 8.9 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York; Ivin Ballen, HEAVEN, 2008, Fiberglass, aquaresin, acrylic, absorbent ground, gouche, 39” x 29” x 6”; Yevgeniy Fiks, Portrait of Jarvis Tyner (Communist Party USA), 2007,Oil on canvas, 36" x 48"; Joy Garnett, Noon, 2007, Oil on canvas, 54" x 60"; Kevin Zucker, The Shallow Painting (conceptual drawing of actual painting...don't have good image of work yet), 2008,Pencil, watercolor, silkscreen and inkjet on canvas,76.5" x 52.5", Courtesy the artist and Greenberg Van Doren Gallery; Ivin Ballen, Speakers (2-Way), 2007, Fiberglass, Aquaresin, absorbent ground, acrylic, gouache, oil, stereo components, Dimensions variable.
97 comments:
Great interview. I'm continuously impressed by Ed: his broader readings and ideas, and the care he takes when engaging with them and his artists.
nice. Its interesting how well his approach (more explicitly expressed here) comes across both on his blog and the gallery program.
I have been on a Johanna Drucker kick this summer and it seems some of the gallery's programing, and this recent exhibit more specifically, parallels her description of complicity, codependence and re-familiarization.
Thinking only of Drucker’s Sweet Dreams, my first response is that I see little resonance with the work she is comfortable with, such as Yuskavage and Rhoades, for ex., and what I see here - which is not carrying excess in Drucker’s sense. It’s more reductive, really. Notice how Christopher K.Ho, the true conceptualist of the group, has vanished into administration. “Disinterestedness” here is a kind of degree zero, people used to write about disinterestedness as a form of “radical passivity” - but they weren’t selling shirts to BG.
I like the way the interview folded back over the shallow curator, as though via Kevin Zucker’s shelving unit (signed by Zucker, Ballen and Ho) the Shallow Curator were devising an umbrella brand of his own.
The word complicity carries a burden from the history of criticism before Drucker - the burden of a crime, and this crime was a contempt for art and collectors alike. But these artists apparently like to buy their shirts at BG, and who doesn’t covet John McCracken? In their shallowness, “complicity” might just be too interested a word for them.
However, while the aim of The Shallow Curator is to withdraw any gesture that would lend itself to synthesis or theme, one could also say that this is a shallow grave, and that the intentional object here is its corpse. Drucker’s words sound broadly diagnostic, and the invitation is open to play out the analysis.
Now that Ed has condescendingly closed comments with a sweeping generalization, based on a self fulfilling prophecy...
I don't think there are very many self described "modernists" alive today certainly none under the age of 40? Will someone do a poll?
"Joy is a wonderful example of an artist who is painting because it’s one really solid way to explore what she’s interested in, not because she’s invested in it, she’s invested in ideas, the difference goes back to dumb like a painter, she’s not dumb like a painter she’s a scientist."
As far as painters using paint to think - well that's kind of the point isn't it?
Using objects as symbolic chess pieces seems a bit dry and dull (scientific/mathematical to me). Once it's codified it's over. Like Apple vs. Windows. What a choice.
That's why I don't trust people who know what their work is about.
It's about the way Dalton - and by extension YOU - think(s) - that's what Dalton's work is about, I think. Is that what she was thinking?
You do the math.
“I don't think there are very many self described "modernists" alive today certainly none under the age of 40?”
This is probably true, but at the same time, I don’t think anyone could say Modernism is over, even if every one over 40 kicks the bucket.
I like your comment about moving chess pieces, and while this is “only a summer show,” and was intended to be taken lightly, it does have the feeling of the chess game. The chess game is a history of art, and sometimes that history accelerates to the point where the game is over and its moves are the winks at the after-party - this is more of The Shallow Curator’s (who is beginning to sound like a comic book character!) tone.
If you go to any good retrospective exhibit of art in the early ‘70s, you can hear from its walls the dialogue going between one gallery space and another in a matter of weeks, one artist’s work speaking to the next inside of the history they know they are writing. It’s fun, I enjoy it, it made John Baldessari’s career, but the art historical gaming can get out of hand at times. Here though, it’s a lightehearted view of the “actually lived conditions” of the contemporary art world scene, and while no insitutional critique, it is incisive.
hmm, is the show against interpretation via humor?
Humor is reserved for the ruling classes. All others must use the side door.
Thank you both! That's a fascinating turn, here is the essay: Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation," (1966).
Writing from the position of the '60s, her history of what interpretation is feels a little outdated. With regard to the shallow curator, what might be important is exactly Zipthwung's worry about the chess game. Here is Sontag on what interpretation does to art: "In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the world of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable."
What if interpretation today is mainly a matter of deploying an art historical narrative? And that there is such a thing as "real art" and "not so real art" in such a context? That is, that art aligns itself with language to the extent that it can be either "quoting" from art history or writing it.
Here is Sontag's ideal work of art: "Ideally, it is possible to elude the interpreters in another way, by making works of art whose surface is so unified and clean, whose momentum is so rapid, whose address is so direct that the work can be...just what it is."
Mark, the shift form erotics to humor is really interesting! The "erotics" was all that phenomenological stuff that I love, let's install John McCracken there.
And zipthwung, thanks for bringing your marbles. Class is very appropriate to think about here, although no one class has ownership of humor. The problem that I (and others) see for the recent emphasis on art historical narrative in contemporary art is that for an emerging collector base with little prior knowledge of art and its difficulties, art historical gaming becomes a form of class identification and sport.
Now that Ed has condescendingly closed comments with a sweeping generalization, based on a self fulfilling prophecy... I don't think there are very many self described "modernists" alive today certainly none under the age of 40?
I was going to stay off this, but the above bit of spittle obliges me to point out that, one, Ed closed the thread because a slew of anonymous twerps showed up and started insulting you, Ed, and me; and two, I am a self-described modernist (no scare quotes) under the age of 40. So while Zipthwung hardly ever knows what he's talking about, the above is a full-blown cranial-rectal insertion.
Most of that interview was nonsense, but explaining why requires that converse with people who are working day and night to turn art into the poorest branch of philosophy.
Franklin, please refrain from insulting zipthwung, who has been my secret crush for months now, or anyone else, if you want to show up here. I have seen how you treat others who do not "stay off" your blog, and find your stated reasons for being here empty, to say the least.
As to the poorest branch of philosophy, as a Modernist you think Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" is irrelevant to contemporary art in 2008? Or maybe you would like to say more about why "dumb as a painter" is degrading to your own practice, without resorting to personal insults and historical inaccuracies? What would your teacher Darby Bannard have said, and why should we still care? I come to you with real questions, I don't take them lightly and neither should anyone else.
So let's give it a whirl, shall we?
If those are your real questions, I'd hate to see the fake ones.
I've already pointed out the circularity and self-cancellation of Ed's statements on the thread he shut down. Those criticisms still stand. Perhaps you'd like to argue against them.
You are a fake, Franklin. Question #2 is addressing exactly what you posted on Ed's blog, and relevant to your "response" to Zip. All you are doing here is spewing your usual bad energy, not a drop of substance.
For anyone who cares, here is Bannard's "The War Against the Good in Art," from Franklin's site. Note the title - the sense of being under siege, and the with the salvation of all humanity at stake. The last two paragraphs:
"It all seems like anarchy, but it isn't. The forms are new but the dynamics are old. As always, there is only one real difference, the difference of quality, the difference between good and bad. That is the way it always has been, is now and always will be. There is no way around. Quality in visual art has belonged to painting and sculpture for hundreds of years. Despite a thousand new materials and methods it still does, because painting on a rectangular canvas and the organizing of a static, three-dimensional object still keep our best talent busy.
If the long-predicted death of painting and sculpture ever comes, it will be because the serious tough-minded artist has abandoned them, and for no other reason. Materials are only vehicles, inspiration is deeply human and ever persistent. It will always come up in the "wrong" place, and it will always be resisted and misunderstood. Great art, new or old, will not compromise, but it is always there, waiting for us to come to it. It is the flower of our civilization and, ultimately, its salvation."
I didn't get to post on Ed's blog, basically refraining because the ideas were too poor. However. I was interested in what other people had to say. Sad it was cut short.
Well, let Catherine and Franklin argue who the real fake is. Neither are I'm sure! I usually don't figure Zip has much knowledge about the stuff that gets shown in galleries, though he has a certain directness when it comes to local cultural awareness, kind of from the street level beat--car factory background sensibility, no doubt. Never figured he needed protecting!
The exhibition you have reviewed by all fathom is a harbinger. Zip said chess, I say checkers--loaded beads that are generally cued to appropriation much less concept-based work that is interesting at this moment. This absence of visual 'displeasure' or 'pleasure', or a conceptual rigor, with a reliance on a bygone era without any sense or try of the unweaving doesn't even register 'light' or 'playful', or 'ridiculous'. Simply, I read presenting a safe game, earnestly so. What sells this even deeper into the quaint is the overtly dull and calculated feel I'm getting, coupled with the almost nonsensical blur from Ed, who is usually extremely articulate.
Ok, this comes from someone who fucks with concept and reduction. There is a death of history to play with, though if you want to get all scientific about it first and foremost doubt. Without doubt, simply no get. I think that is how history gets laid.
c.p.
Question #2 doesn't address the circularity and self-cancellation of Ed's statements, but rather demands that I explain why being called "dumb" is an insult, as if that were some kind of mystery. Excerpting Darby's writing does not answer those criticisms. (You pointedly provided no link.) Calling me fake does not answer those criticisms, although it does provide insight into the self-flattering attitude in play here: you accuse me of being fake and lacking in substance while cozying up to a pseudonym that can't keep basic facts straight. The vector isn't bad energy, but disagreement. This is the primary feature of the postmodernist mind: no testing of assertions for truth or rationality are permitted, and attempts to do so sanction every nasty tactic of argumentation in the book, no matter how low or dishonest.
In Barbara Rose's book from 1967"American Art Since 1900: A critical history" she points out "the Dada belief that art is art by virtue of its context and not of its inherent value" (p.235). "The Shallow Curator" seems to deal with various notions of context as does much contemporary conceptual art. Obviously the context of the art gallery is often examined in these conceptual art works, but other contexts, such as the mass media, also come into play. Would you share some of your ideas about the importance of context in contemporary conceptual art practice?
Gladly, Eric. As always, however, in order to avoid platitudes I need to stick carefully to the object, and will start by saying that to locate this as a Dada belief is off base, and that Giotto, for one, might have as much or more to say. So, here are some words from John McCracken:
“...relative importance is what I’m not sure of. Or perhaps it’s a matter of relative function, with the environment included. And with history included, too.” - 1965
“Everything has a stance. Everything has at least that, and then it can have a lot of other attributes up to an including intelligence. And beyond intelligence, too.” - July, 1968
“In the several pieces I have done recently which consist of entire rooms more or less filled with certain configurations of plywood columns, it has been a pretty simple thing that I was trying to do. I wanted to deal with or construct a whole space, to do a show which would be one specific thing, simply a show rather than a show of of a number of separate things, or to put it more completely, rather than a show of anything else at all. This was my general initial attitude as far as I can really talk about it as yet; to say more gets complex, difficult and confusing and, it seems to me, possibly destructive of one’s effort to simply and clearly see the whole piece, the show itself.” - December, 1968
From “John McCracken, Sculpture 1965-1969, and a Special Installation,” Art Gallery of Ontario, Feb. 8th-March 9th, 1969
"it has been a pretty simple thing that I was trying to do. I wanted to deal with or construct a whole space, to do a show which would be one specific thing..."
I have always related his room installations to 'all-over' painting for this reason, but beyond that he seems interested in removing the frame or finite border implicit in all hung two dimensional work and all stand-alone three dimensional work so that the spaces around the work of art are subsumed into the art object and the art object is in turn swallowed by or integrated into the spaces around it.
I think he is expressing an interest in the coherence and integrity of a single image or single experience and doing away with not so much the typical object/subject split that typically exists between a work of art and a viewer, but wants to integrate the object with space and the environment in such a way that the viewer's alienation from world in general is alleviated. I feel like a lot of conceptual art tries to do this, not so much working in the space between art and life, but attempting to eliminate it, remove the knowing wink to art history, and reenchant the everyday world. Of course many conceptual artists are also interested in recontextualizing this or that aspect of art history in terms of subject matter or formal invention.
"I feel like a lot of conceptual art tries to do this, not so much working in the space between art and life, but attempting to eliminate it, remove the knowing wink to art history, and reenchant the everyday world."
That whole thing was lovely, and especially this sentence - but what "lot of conceptual art" is this? I'm trying to get there...just need a little more help, like a proper name or two? You left me hanging in the "I want to believe" zone!
Sorry some final thoughts about McCracken. I think he completely escapes from Fried's critique of Minimalism, its theatricality etc., because of his completely enchanting use of color and the fact that his works lean against the wall rather than stand upright in a monolithic fashion. By leaning the colored slabs against the wall it is impossible to separate the display space from the object displayed in it.
Hopefully my review of this Nancy Shaver exhibition will satisfy your request. Not all of her works of art deal with this elimination of the line between art and life but I believe a number of them in the exhibition do, or at least tried to. I would also take into consideration not only the work that ends up on display in the gallery but the entire cycle or process that is enacted when objects travel from her shop to the gallery and back again. An aesthetics of recycling takes place.
With McCracken, I agree with you for the most part ("theatricality" is such a tricky word!). The planks, like the one pictured here, emphasize placement and this is not theatrical to my mind. Maybe closer to utterance and tact than to the extortion of complicity in Fried's sense.
Your review of Nancy Shaver weds very nicely to the sentence I plucked out, that was perfect, thanks.
Eric, just for the record, Mccracken does stand alone monoliths, as you call them. He also does things on plinths, a whole range. Theatricality, props, we don't know. They are things that fit in space and perhaps have a dialog. He's into sci-fi too, so there's a connect. More, UFO, I guess. There was a thing in AiA years ago about it, I think. Talks about 2001 too, you know, the monolith.
The Fried thing is kind of interesting, the rack of shirts paired with the Mccracken 'readily made stock', 'tailored and ordered' is something very much on the curatorial plate. It comes up in the image labels, if you notice. I don't know why Ed didn't address that, it's far more interesting, even if it does undermine the whole commercial viability thing. Then Joy starts to make sense, she stores images taken from the internet. Gets this prestige thing called a canvas, already loaded to the hilt, and whips up a product, she admits, in 30 minutes. There is no formal God here. No conceptual twist. We are talking product placement, or its displacement. Another interesting thing, but it didn't come up.
But generally this all leans towards 'strategy', idling on the history of luxury goods that we have come to label as art. God concept us!
c.p.
Thanks for pointing out McCracken's monoliths C.P. You hit on why they are not blunt objects whose intent is to eliminate metaphor, symbolism, interpretation, and whatever else the Minimalist's were allegedly up to (according to critics but not the artists). The reflective surfaces of McCracken's monoliths make them weirdly 'other', as does the weirdly ritualistic placement of them within the gallery space, and the shiny surfaces of Judd's boxes in Marfa generate a hallucinatory experience, via reflection, distortion, and the intensifying and redirecting of light sources. These guys are interested in beauty.
McKracken's "Spring Line" obviously mocks the whole exchange system of the gallery, the display of merch, the creation of an environment where wealthy people will feel good about the merch they are buying. It also acts as a model of the real in the sense that it emulates a certain arrangment of objects in space that everyone is familiar with. It mimics the shopping spaces we all worship or do irrational things within.
Ignore Franklin. He has all the signs of being a troll.
What I found interesting about your interview was the assumed distinction between 'formalism' and 'conceptualism'.
It strikes me as a very arbitrary and limited distinction. Sure, the extension of each term is so wide as to make them almost meaningless, but isn't there a danger in positing things in such binary terms? How useful is it? Apart from extremes, all art is both.
I like Ed's blog and Art Fag City. I'll be checking this one out as well. :) As for the petty anonymous comments, moderate people, moderate.
Against Interpretation is a wonderful essay and ironically, a simpleposie topic just last week!The bit, you quote Catherine,"Ideally, it is possible to elude the interpreters in another way...." is completely apropos.
Thank you, J, I was hoping you'd show up, having witnessed the way your quite serious question about postmodernism was so arrogantly shut down by someone who clearly had no answer and who hid behind the misogyny of his clan to prove it.
Mark actually brought in the Sontag, rather brilliantly, I haven't thought of it in years but it is fun to read now. The urgency of her moment was so real, and her sense of the erotics of formalist modernism needed defending from the art historians devoted to style and iconography. It's very interesting that both you and Mark want to bring it into the foreground today, the context is so different, and a lot can be learned from that.
I find it interesting that shallow and complicit are coming up in pairs. And I agree with Mark, perhaps nothing eludes the confines of explanation like humour.
Bergson wrote a whole book on laughter.
Henri is most excellent.
Oooppps and I meant to say that text is online at Project Gutenberg.
The disection of and emulation of environments and formats in which commodities are sold or advertised has become a genre itself. Recreating or modifying with intent the advertising format (in two dimensional work) and recreating a specific aura that is typical of big box stores and the like combines elements of still life and landscape and portraiture. The hybrid is rampant.
My street level awareness of the art is of concern to me. I do not have access to the gallery staff - I'm reticent to talk to some of them who appear haughty, and sometimes are.
Also, I am loath to listen to a sales pitch, which I have heard. There is a difference between honest conversation and the false positive of the galerist (though who can blame them?).
With regards to the petty squabbling engendered by ...oh I forget. Sorry I drank myself silly in a Saturday night bachanal [sic].
That said, what is it about art that requires knowledge of art history? Certainly this seems a modernist argument (late modernist perhaps but I doubt it).
When I was in grad school I made work that I suppose directly referenced Rauchenberg. After I graduated I realized Artists like Cady Noland, Felix GOnzalez Torrez and Jason Rhoades were way ahead of me. Am I indebted to them psychically? Or DO I acknowledge that artistic process being what it is, that tripple redudancie is inveitable?
This of course called into question any shred of artistic genius engendered in my by the institution and personal ego.
What was a young artist to do?
Having seen more art than many artists - even pedigreed one's, I now know the horrible truth - there really is nothing new under the sun.
Even if you limit your meanderings to reviewed shows at major galleries, you can;t follow "the art world."
Fortunately Art IS just like a language. Artistic iconography - tropes, if you will, fall into genre's and most of these have been mapped.
Mapping the psychogeographical terrain, I find that there is not one conversation, but many - all of which purport to have fallen from the same tree, which they have, if you look closely.
Which is the one true cup?
The clothing rack refferences many of these tropes, not limited to Duchamp's apropriated wine rack, various users of shelves, merchandising racks and vending machines. Indeed we might point to the shows about clothing fashion - as art or as fashion. It's a slippery slope to tearing down the wall of the artificed wall between art and life - the intertextual nature of reality and its discontents.
I get it scrambled - often the readings (I have read against interpretation several times in my life) get mulched.
Mulch is good. That's why I wonder about people who criticize me for not quoting people directly, claim superiority in philosophy (I'll admit taxonomy is not one of my strong suits).
Back to me, though. I made a pinyatta once, as a student. I attest here I had no prior knowledge of other pinyatta's outside the context of the Mexican restaurant variety. I have never been to Mexico.
I filled my pinyatta with candy as a personal symbol of generative creativity. When the kids at the show broke open the pinyatta, they really loved it.
the end.
Or not quite - I made the work half seriously - so I don't know what it means. In fact I knew it wasn't originary, genius, or even profound. EVEN THEN.
Does Ed know this about his show?
It's not checkers, it's tennis. Remember me for my devastating backswing.
I think I'm in love.
Catherine I am afraid you will have to wait in line for the poet and mystic.
Zipthwung is a Paroliste!
Sontag's "Against Interpretation" might be good reading for the class - so long as we are reading Pat the Bunny - and I'd add the painted word as a drink of bathwater for the theory hardened soul.
Zipthwung, have you been hanging out at simpleposie but not signing the book?
and of course, if you are interested in powerful back-swing the project show up @ Deitch has to get a mention when we are talking the indistinguishable between concept and, um, doing. Handsome show!
c.p.
I am psychic. Or crazy. Which is more romantic?
the Deitch show has certain parallels to:
"Foxy Production announces The Infinite Fill Show, a group exhibition of dazzling black and white patterns, curated by brother and sister team Cory and Jamie Arcangel."
But I know it has eerie parallels to some of my jpgs. Probably because teh computer makes you think that way. Pixels.
That floor reminds me of the Tom Petty Video where the girl gets eaten like a piece of cake.
Don't come around here no more.
But the Pattern and decoration thing - is it to pump Vasarley? He was prescient in a way right? Then there's the other op artists, folded into PandD and feminism sort of by way of textile design.
But at Deitch you can't but help to see the connection to the West Coast dude who is up at the Carnegie international right now. We're talking synergy brah!
Barry McGee. I'm down with that dude - though I can't say I'm influenced, (anymore than salt on a slug maybe, where I'm the slug) i'm open to it, you know like a semi permeable amoeba. Lets get the zygote rolling bro!
yeah can picture that, rolling the car to see who goes first. Thanks!
c.p.
c.p. that is an exceptional comparison to be making to the Shallow Curator,and of a group show that aims for what McCracken wanted for his own work in the '60s. I know that there is a strong desire to be rid of the dualism between conceptual and formalist art, but how a show holds itself together may be very different along these lines. Wasn't that Broodthaers' point in the Department of Eagles? No less visual, and moving away from gestalt idealism so in a different place, but pertinent. Regarding decoration, which is dizzying here, what is to be said?
Catherine, perhaps you misunderstood. I didn't want to clog your airways with blather.
I do feel, though, that whether we approach from a formal framework, or a conceptual one, at some stage in the game we have to make it work both conduits [ Ed spells it out].
And how this goes to ensnare, enrage, especially highlight presumptions--get beyond them, is often explored though a play of ideas, and 'excellent play' should remain somewhat, technically, behind the stage. Then it is magic--encouraging the sleuth to chase fresh voice.
c.p.
Oh, and too, talking about decoration, some of the artists in the SUBSTRACTION show don't see the hallucinatory vibrating thingy. In fact, they just see what they do!
Disclaimer: I see the vibration first, ugh!
We have a tremor here now, rocking, so sign out!
c.p.
There are a lot of different voices here, and if you, c.p., meant that you didn't want to 'clog [my?] airways with blather' to really mean something like 'tend to the art historical and weakest branch of philosophy,' well, you did, and you did it here. You can keep it to yourself, but I happen to love excess, the decorative, and all that escapes 'the rational' - as the best of thought. With no attachment to securing transparency, indeed with clear avoidance of conclusion, consensus, or community, I reject the notion that there is any clarity or unity at all to a practice at large," and prefer the world as its is, torn asunder in anarchy. So while you say "at some stage in the game we have to make it work both conduits," I will say that this is why I wanted to interview Ed in the first place, but I will also say that the real interest for me exists not in any happy conciliation, but in the very real questions/noticings of specific incidents as they occur.
I hope no one here is advocating theory over direct experience - that would be tragic. As mucha s I love the printed word, with it's typefaces, I enjoy reading it more than setting type.
In the same way, I would rather not read art like a book, art historical text, Rosetta Stone, Ur Tablet or "Kindle."
Does knowledge of art history enrich us? Only to the extent that an artist must use it to explain their ideas.
Must an artist use art history? No, not unless their art is about art history itself.
Why does so much art have to do with art history?
Because many people are academically trained, and have an idea that history does not repeat itself.
Is a linear idea of history modernist?
Absolutely.
Why do some people cling to this modernist conception of art history?
Because it's tied up to their identity as an artist, to a conception of what art is or can be.
One solution is to make work about yourself - it seems to escape the repetition because your biographical facts are at least temporaly yours and yours alone.
yes, but in an abstract sense the narrative arc of your life is in parallel to many others, who are essentially doing the same thing, as well as those before you, who were part of the same tradition.
So knowing art history is sort of a reality check.
Yes, it is, but also, its absurd to palce yourself outside of art history by the act of referencing art history -a s if you are the lead caboose.
Yes, its pretty funny when some pretentious person like Duchamp skewers the pretentions of the avant guarde - its like the pot calling the kettle back.
But SOMETHING happened, its not just a prlour trick.
yes, but if you look at it sideways, it all flattens out, so I;d disagree, it is a parlour trick - or at least an optical illusion.
SO we are back to op art.
Yes, op art is hard to look at, even for the artist. It's akin to noise music, except it has the veneer of acceptibility - if you reduced the number of stripes, or did a detail, it would become much more manageable - like a chevron painting, or a sqauare - like Malevitch.
So it;s a question of scale and repetition?
Yes, that's what a lot of art about art is about.
But in the world, I mean, don;t artists care about how art functions? Isn't it a bit dull contemplating the difference between the concepts of one and two?
Who does that?
A number of people. You see how that works?
Yes, its like that chess game, with it's op board.
Yes, why play chess at all right?
Yes, I agree. Tennis is much more fun. Did you know that Yeats played Tennis? he loved it!
Oh yes, that's what makes him unique and not a redundant poet. Imagine - a poet who play's tennis!
SO I don't need to know about art history to be an artist.
No. In fact it makes you more of a unique specimen - like a mushroom or a butterfly.
Oh I get the references - Cage and Nabokov or some shit right?
Yes, I do enjoy the game, don't you?
Kind of, but why all the hullabaloo about insider art vs. outsider art? Isn;t that ethnocentric or some shit?
Yes, its a kind of effete snobbery - like you know all the news that's fit to print - the voice of authority - the voice of the master.
Don't lift up the curtain?
Right.
Where does the authority originate though? With the artist? The critic? THe historian?
Well everyone is fighting - that's what history is really - that and a bunch of trivial events.
Yeah, George Bush needs a new act - he sounds like a broken record.
Yep. But politics aren;t seen as poetic or artfull - something about didacticism and anyways, its hard for people to agree, so you narrow your audience.
yes, must art speak to a wide audience? I mean most people don't like duhamp, even if people say he's as good as say, James Joyce.
Well yes, hes priviledging the conceptual over the visual - and that's kind of like priviledging taste over nutrition in food - it doesn't make the chef any happier in the long run. Duchamp was a miserable person.
Really?
I don;t know, it's been a while since I read his bio. I know I wouldn't want to be him. Did he play tennis? No, he played chess.
You don't play tennis. No, but I quite enjoy the idea of it. Did you see that match at WImbledon? It lasted what 4 and a half hours with rain delays and it was gettign dark by the time it ended.
yes, the older dude couldn;t keep up, even though he was smarter.
yes, like the kung fu master who teaches his student everything but the death touch
What style of Kung Fu?
I think it was Something like Death Touch Kung Fu.
Smog Monster vs. the Death Touch Kung Fu Master.
Who wins?
Well Death Touch can't touch Smog, but he gives the Smog Monster a run for his money.
So its more of an effects based ideology you're espousing here, rather than a stylistic one.
Yes, I do tend to ramble.
And Tom Petty, what's that about?
Well it's music videos, which are based on art, which are now influencing art - so its sort of reverse colonization.
And Orchids?
Well these are signifiers for luxury - it;s hard to grow them, and they are expensive. Many galleries have them - maybe one in particular, is being referenced here.
Yes I get that - but is it funny?
I think so, but its not art, unless art is interior decoration.
But galleries should be austere temples to the artist's vision, not coprorate offices with potted plants.
Ah, yes, the institutional critique.
What about the clothing rack?
Its a highly unoriginal idea. SO it;s referencing that, "off the rack" ideas - commerce.
SO but what's the point?
Well Winkleman has fine art pretention - so hes skewering his pretention while at the same time affirming it.
Thats a sort of ambivalence isn;t it?
Yes, thats at the key of the high end art world ideology - certainly the one that is in the history books.
But the books are often hagiographies!
Not the good ones. You must separate the wheat from the chaff!
That is so hard.
Yes, life does place obstacles in one's path.
Like minimalist tank traps?
Indeed.
"Regarding decoration, which is dizzying here, what is to be said?"
I'm pulling this out of context, but I was trained in both fine art and craft, so my ideal object for the contemplation of the future ( as well as the formal vs. the conceptual) is the japanese tea bowl. I can imagine a well made piece of furniture painted by Cy Twombly.
"Well yes, he's privileging the conceptual over the visual - and that's kind of like privileging taste over nutrition in food "
Good one Zip.
Have you read Boris Groy's recent "Art Power"? He has some interesting arguments about the balance of power in the contemporary work of art.
"I feel like a lot of conceptual art tries to do this, not so much working in the space between art and life, but attempting to eliminate it, remove the knowing wink to art history, and reenchant the everyday world."
Another argument for craft - well the beginning of one anyway.
"Another argument for craft - well the beginning of one anyway."
...or for gardening, or architecture, or fashion design. You can't get away from history, of course, but you can try for a broader, deeper history - broader than art history.
There is nothing in art that isn't crafted, the word has been abused by history! But there are strange truths as well - notice what becomes visible in the adjective "crafty" - the difference between shopping at Michael's and being sly like a fox. So the question really is a matter of understanding what is meant by craft - does your being a furniture maker already sum up the answer?
Ivin Ballen went to both RISD and Cranbrook.
...the CONFLATION and difference.
wow, conflation may be a better term than complicity. Along those lines, art history ,to me, is a big box department store full of little doodads and flotsam, and Micheal's is a thick textbook that cost 1000 bucks, is in its 1000th edition, and is full of 1000 plus ideas.The humor arises out of this conflation.
Zip, i would not conflate Sontag and Wolfe. She was talking about criticism not about what artists should or should not be doing.
I played a lot of tennis as a teenager. The body and the mind must work in tandem in that sport, and for art to serve a winner that relationship must work as well, imo. Great conv.!
Good call! Conflation most definitely is a different word than complicity.
A different slant is that David mentioned Groys, who discusses what he calls the "paradoxical object," and yes again, it does seem to be a way out of reliance upon complicity as a defining term. The paradoxical object takes the place of modernist contradiction. (This is not a new idea - it is another version of Althusser's object of knowledge.)
Once upon a time I really loved to sail.
Implicity!
Abuse of power is nothing new.
"Althusser himself claimed not to have a clear memory of the event, saying that, while he was massaging his wife's neck, he discovered he had strangled her. Since he was alone with his wife when she died, it is difficult to come to firm conclusions."
(of mendacious defenestrations!)
Craft is weird. Anti-craft is anti-intellectual - it's is the envy of skill, supposedly "privileging" intellect over "mere" dexterity.
An excuse to do nothing and sit in contemplation while your zombies till the soil!
Evidence for a need for camoflauge, in poor diction, bad posture, terrible hygiene.
Skill is sly sometimes. Look at Radovan Karadzic - who was masquerading as quantum doctor, Dragan David Dabic. Hiding in plain sight.
What are the canonical texts for complicit and conflate? These two words get overused - I like complicit because, if you say so, you know?
Conflate is often used as if it is synergy (the stuff of business and science fiction)
Or hybrid(ity) - who introduced that one? Struck academia like wildfire, still burning bright!
But the definition of conflate is more "to put together" than "to generate" - and generative is preferable to insular.
But enough of these shibboleths. How am I to pay for my catamaran?
sailing's good!
The Mona Lisa = the wind, a shadow on the surface of the ocean. You can tact with that kind of knowledge. Crafty dog shuns experience! Means refuses to be trained.
To confate: My fortune cookie says...
dip the head towards the big red bowl of soup.
I did, and came up a clown! c.p.
One of the things I like about sailing is the sense of the world, different than chess or tennis, in excess of me, but nonetheless sensible. The relation to the field is not defined by a grid, or rigid boundaries - it's open to infinity, even. However,in a regatta buoys serve as markers and the tack IS more like tact. I prefer this to a clowning masquerade, which falls back to the level of the game - or worse.
Where I'm from originally 18 footers did it for me. Tactics, you had to know what you were doing. Out there 35 to 45 knots, you didn't know your craft, it was like suicide. But you had to suicide more than a few times to get to understand. At an art level, an 18 footer in full spinnaker, is how the internal should be running, with such speed and natural elegance that it feels like you are on idle in possession of all possiblity knowing full well that impossibility. In this sense, out of the soup, nosedives are the dare, and part of the ongoing thrill. This drive, alive, acting spontaneously, knowing you craft, the crash instead of the conflate--the rack of shirts. hmm, there is memory too--the after tea-party, Clubhouse Cliffside.
c.p.
Just to check in, for anyone who thinks all of this is off the map - Duchamp is the chess player, Bois's "Painting and the Task of Mourning" brings up the notion of the match, and Daniel Buren did a sailing piece. Masquerade - there's a whole bunch of stuff on Cindy Sherman, but Krauss's response to Mulvey gives it all.
It's interesting that these words used to describe artistic practice extend to art criticism.
The sailing video was great! Note the ads on the sails.
Getting back to The Shallow Curator and Ed's interview, I'm surprised no one has thoughts about branding. This was one of my main interests.
"I'm surprised no one has thoughts about branding."
The examination of branding and the act of creating a recognizable product in a fashion that is not much different from how corporations do it. These have both been around for quite a while in the art world. Art or exhibitions that focus on branding as a process, an analysis or deconstruction of it, and the use of branding techniques used in capitalist markets to create works of art have also been around for quite a while. Making art by using elements of branding techniques or analyzing the branding process in a self conscious or ironic fashion have also been around for quite a while. Art history, art collecting, art connoisseurship, all relate to branding as well. The originality, authority, and authenticity of a work of art must be agreed upon in order for market value to be established and maintained. Branding is the creation of recognizable traits that can be repeated (with minor variations when things grow stale or the market for the item dips) and that are demanded by the customers, who have a static set of expectations when purchasing a particular brand. Branding can last a lifetime. Deviation from the Brand structure (the taste, packaging, look and feel, or life-style offered by the Brand's advertising campaigns) can lead to a collapse of the brand or the need for a repackaging of it. Art collectors can be just as inflexible when it comes to artists. If they make something that does not resmble the work the artist is know for, sales might drop or end altogether (see Rothko).
Sorry I bothced the last sentence.
If they make something that does not resemble the work the artist is known for, sales might drop or end altogether. Rothko proved that these branding issues can cause major anxiety.
Catherine - this comment thread is very rich. Forgive me for randomly pulling quotes out but...
"...but I will also say that the real interest for me exists not in any happy conciliation, but in the very real questions/noticings of specific incidents as they occur." C.S.
Well now that's just what David Hockney said about Turner. We saw Turner at the Met yesterday. My head was reeling from the general bombast. Nevertheless, one did get an appreciation for close observation of the world, and the skill to relate it to another person. My employee is Scottish and grew up near one of the castles that T. famously painted. He said that it was painted as in a heavy mist, just a suggestion of the thing, but it was perfect. But I really had to skip ahead. Those galleries can be such a dead zone if the stuff on the walls isn't agreeing with you. In the last gallery, however, all was forgiven in a room of unfinished paintings. It was the clearest instance I can remember of getting to the end of a show and thinking (as a painter) "O.K., here's where to start."
I haven't seen the Turner show, but know how rare it would be to find in the addenda enough to forgive the entire body of work! I did make it to the Constraction show at Deitch, thanks to c.p., and was not too excited, either - the exception for me was the work by Mitzi Pederson and it was only a relief from the rest of the show, not its rewrite.
You mentioned the Groys earlier, and so I picked it up and read the following from the chapter "On the Curatorship":
"The fetishization of art is taking place outside of the museum, which is to say outside of the zone in which the curator has traditionally exercised authority. Artworks now become iconic not because of their display in the museum but by their circulation in the art market and in the mass media. Under these circumstances, the curating of an artwork signifies its return to history, the transformation of the autonomous artwork back into an illustration - an illustration whose value is not contained within itself but is extrinsic, attached to it by a historical narrative." (p. 47). Groys is putting his finger on the historical gaming we were discussing earlier, and I do wonder if the entry of the branding exercise into artspeak is born of these very specific conditions.
The museum world is different - what I hope for is strong scholarship, whether it's from a private, commercial source or a public and non-profit one, to find the addenda that count in the way that Turner's unfinished paintings counted for you.
Sponsorship! That's what the marks on the sails represent. There is no attempt to aquiline a washing machine with a high speed mono-hull. Catherine, glad you went and took a look at the Deitch show.
And Eric, could you explain the Rothko thing. Obviously I'm in lack! Wasn't such a good book person;)
c.p.
I will do my best c.p. I admit right off the bat that I have not read any Rothko biographies so my opinions might be more urban myth than fact. Supposedly one of the factors that contributed to Rothko's suicide was the fact that he felt trapped by his world famous style or brand, the floating rectangles. He had felt like he had reached a stylistic dead end, had rejected a big commision because he hated the fact that his art would be hung in a bourgeoise enclave, the Seagram's building restaurant. He was a Marxist and after he and his wife went to dine in the Seagram's building restaurant where his art was going to be hung, he was sickened by the bourgeoise trappings and rejected the very large commision. His success did not please him in other words. And the branding of his art, the fact that he had become famous because of paintings that looked a certain way, did not sit well with his philosophical and romantic temperament.
Actually, at the time of his death Rothko was designing a viewing room for his paintings at the Tate, a room that could never be changed, and whose walls were to be painted the same color as his own studio. And there was also the Rothko Chapel. These are hardly projects that hint of any withdrawal or despair about his work but show absolute conviction in his own achievement. No, the anxiety is our own.
Ages ago I went to a retrospective at the Guggenheim, and it was very strange to see all those Rothko's spiraling down to the end. Yves Alain Bois' entry in Art Since 1900, 1947b, does a great job of explaining what he describes as a shift from thre automatic to the autographic, autographic referring to signature style or even logo.
Added to this is the event of Rothko's "alleged" suicide, alleged in that during the Rothko trial suspicions were raised as to Marlboro Gallery's ethics in making a cheap deal for the entire estate of a sick and dying man. Marlboro Gallery was the first big international gallery built on the corporate model. And it was at this time that people began to refer to paintings as a blue chip investment.
While to impose "logo" upon Rothko is to ahisotrically impose a value upon it that the artist himself was far from seeing, the concerns it raises are not irrelevant.
DORE ASHTON: At the very end of his life he did a number of paintings which he did on paper-very large sheets of paper--and he said to me, "The dark is always at the top." A few weeks later when he committed suicide, I remembered his saying that and I thought how ironic, it was really true. He got to the top himself, and that was the darkest place of his life.
(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec98/rothko_8-5.html)
"Rothko, who would complain bitterly to almost total strangers such as myself that he had begun to feel "old-fashioned,""
(Review: Rothko Rising
Phyllis Tuchman
Art Journal, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 110-112)
"The idea that Rothko was murdered was never considered by the court. It was not suggested by the forensic experts who examined his body. The autopsy produced no evidence for it. It was, quite simply, not an issue."
(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7915)
Thanks both, I guess there is never anything hard and fast about suicide, except when successful you don't get to tell.
The last gray, silver, and brownish works are very beautiful. The paper the best. I saw those in a private museum in the countryside of Tokyo, Kawamura. You moved through the rooms. The final one read murky color slowly rising until you reached paper whose back of support faced all the other rooms. These were very clean and light, squarish silver with one horizontal thread. And I though, this is it... that's what it's like, he's letting go!
Right - I made an appointment to see those late papers in storage at the Met - one single horizon line, the whole energy of the painting being how that grey and black should meet - far from being a logo or signature style in this respect.
There is no question that Rothko was a depressed alcoholic and likely killed himself - the point is that there was a bit of stir in the press about foul play, which included conjecture about murder and its motivation.
Feeling old-fashioned or using dark colors doesn't mean that he felt trapped by his style or brand. You were on the right track, Rothko is a superb example of the issues, I'm only adding that anxieties about art and the marketplace became visible to a rather broad public audience - a feature in Esquire, for ex. - around the circumstances of his death.
shit man rothko? Painting yourself into a corner is nothing new - but was that the problem? I don't know - I handled it by not painting anymore - easy. Like changing jobs. Doesn't mean you can't go back to that corner, sit in it and eat your cake.
Unless someone questions the authenticity of your signature - just don't write it in pencil like Dali.
oh yeah, Marxists are a real drag sometimes. If only they smoked more pot, or whatever it is they are getting angry about these days.
About ten years ago or so there was a lot of discussion about the university adopting a more corporate model and the implications of that, and it's widely acknowledged that students for the most part perceive their education as consumers primarily, even to the extent that "If I paid for this class, and I do the work for it, I should get an "A"." There does seem to have been a notable and widespread shift.
I don't think it's a Marxist question to ask about the consequences of thinking about art and artists as a brand. People didn't, and now they do, at the same time that they hang shirts in a gallery. It's just an obvious question. And while it has been going on for some time, it has accelerated to a rather extreme degree. Does the Chanel museumpod mean nothing? How can you not be, if not stunned and amazed, at least curious? Something is happening, and it is not a drag to notice it.
Speaking of branding, we saw the Koons on the roof after Turner. I thought they were quite delightful and meant absolutely nothing. I was intrigued by their making, especially after reading the Art Forum issue last year about fabricators, so I looked carefully at the flawless fabrication, I looked closely for signs of weathering. Then I watched the fabulous post-thunderstorm clouds scudding behind the buildings on fifth ave, and all those trees. It must be the greenest view in N.Y. - Turner and Koons and clouds. A perfect contemporary experience.
Boris Groys: "The field of modern art is not a pluralistic field but a field strictly structured according to the logic of contradiction. It is a field where every thesis is supposed to be confronted with its antithesis."
and,
"And Broodthaers said - when he started to do art - that he wanted to do something insincere. To be insincere means in this context to make art beyond all taste - even beyond ones own taste. Contemporary art is an excess of taste, including the pluralistic taste. In this sense it is an excess of pluralistic democracy, an excess of democratic equality. This excess both stabilizes and destabilizes the democratic balance of taste and power at the same time. This paradox is, actually, what characterizes contemporary art in its totality.
-from the intro to Art Power
It's a little hard to follow all of Groys arguments point by point, but read more poeticly he has a lot of insights to ponder.
Since you suggest a two-fold sense of branding in your original entry let me get back to it. You think that "The Shallow Curator" takes a look at how the boundaries between art and fashyion are completely blurred at this point in time historically, and at how recognizable formats and syles can easily become a brand. Branding in the fashion sense and branding in the sense of creating a recognizable artistic style or product. There is no doubt that although fashion and art have been blurred for a long time now, the present represents a hyper blending of the two. Artists have never been so gung-ho and never so well equipped in terms of resources and money to blend the two. Ben Davis from artnet and the VV labels this phenemona 'Rise of the Superartist'. (http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis7-16-08.asp) So not only are we used to the idea of seeing t-shirts, vacuum cleaners, etc. in the galleries but artists are able to fling themselves whole heartedly into the process of marketing themselves and collbaorating with big name coprorations. This does not tarnish their art historical standing, not at least in the sense that it reduces the amount of press that they get, and as far as the art world goes, there is no longer a need for artists to separate themselves from machinations of capitalism.
Thanks! From that article:
"...appreciation of the work tends to be an appreciation of being part of a collective, as opposed to an individual, esthetic experience, just as the works themselves tend away from personal statements and towards blank social referents -- death, change, media, atmosphere."
But there is a need to spearatethe artist, if not from the "machinations of capitalism" at least from the the totalizing forces of capitalism.
Capitulation in the form of an "if you can't beat em join em" attitude - often rationalized by pretentions of subversion - is a cop out.
I'm not saying you shouldn't - just calling it how I see it.
I don;t think you can "destroy the system from within" like some marxist mole - the system will change you - or at least make you in it's own image, whatever your inner thoughts.
But it;s evolution, not revolution right?
I think it's self serving in the end to style yourself (brand) as a subversive, when in fact you are nothing but another brand in the machine.
Cottage industry - individuals - are on far better ground when branding themselves as rebels, DIY punks, or subversive radicals.
that said I don't think artists like Koons, Olafur Eliason or Dale Chihuly are making subversive art - and their arguments are more about enjoying the phenomenological world as it is.
Shows like shallow curator, the superhero show at the met, the armani show at the guggenheim or the Murakami show at the BAM all have something in common - they pander to the institution - hardly a radical idea, whatever may piggyback in the back door (brand piggyback being a well worn strategy in itself).
I like ikea as much as the next person.
know what I mean?
I read rants about big box stores, economies of scale, branding, intellectual property and so on - what it all adds up to me is that it's much more complicated than x created y and then y created x.
Or whatever I;m not so good with math.
No matter how streamlined and business like an artist's output is, they almost always return to the painting and sculpture formats because those appear to be the remaining safe zones for the creative class, the only formats that unambiguously signify 'art'. All of the "Superartists" mentioned in the Davis essay, with the exception of Eliason who relies on publicly funded spectacles and set designs meant to generate phenomenological ecstasies to determine and define artistic practice, still resort to picture and object making to clarify that they are artists making art. So perhaps it is a question of format. Plenty of artists use other mediums, but even someone like Barney who relies so heavily on film and video, still churns out drawings and recontextualizes props so that they can be viewed and sold as sculptures. So even much art has put forth questions about the activity known as art making there really has not been a clean break from historically determined formats. Again, that is not to say that artists who have made it into the history books have not made art using alternative media.
I didn't mean to leave out photography. But, as Michael Fried pointed out in a lecture I attended at the NYSS, photography is probably carrying forward the art historical dialogue surrounding painting moreso than contemporary painting is.
Shall we talk about deskilling? I think thats more the problem than any particular medium.
I mean deskilled individualism is better than mindless drone clones - or so the american way demands - or is it more there are too many artists, so you have to push them into photography, or video, or web design, or .... I mean at a macro level isn;t it about labor? Function? The hive?
I vote for "The Hive".
Modernism is weird stuff. Did you know nine malic moulds was made in it. The stripped bride on a grid rack was too, by the same spirit. Obelisks are said to travel, rewind, and fast forward. If you have a fancy for the less functional type but still want to learn... provided.
And, Eric, right, costume design was a monstrous regime. Today we are sophisticatedly more throw-away than collective. When the day is done, Victory over the sun, there is one last thing to ponder, 'what are we all wearing tonight?'. Next summer, Sandback, where 'currency' is undressed in a room with the power, expending much less might.
Final up: If there is profit to be had in fun, then is there more to it?
c.p.
Michael Fried is a dinosaur who wouldn't know one end of a camera from another.
cap since I am more interested in the point Fried made than what you think about him why don't comment on that?
Michael Fried is having a conversation with the market as far as I'm concerned with photography carrying more freight or gas or cooking oil or soap or whatever. I'm talking about walk in closets and stuff, not just images of Imelda Marcos posing in front of her shoe collection. I mean real, literal shoes! Piles of them! Pre-owned of course...Welcome to our website. We are a world class wow gold store online. We supply cheap wow gold to our loyal and reliable customers. you can buy really cheapwow gold here. We have mass available stock of gold wow on most of the servers, so that we can do a really instant way of wow gold delivery. We can deliver your gold wow on the order in a short while. We have been an ebay power seller and paypal confirmed seller of wow gold for years.So it is securest and safest to buy wow gold from us. Don’t be irresolute! We are hoping to serve you and helping you to have a wonderful wow life! We are ready now, how about you?
Of all art critics, Fried is proabaly the furthest away from the market you can get - hint: he left art criticism for art history. And as for CAP's comment, perhaps this is also why anyone would refer to him as a dinosaur. The time warp is real, Fried is still reaching for his Diderot, but this is why philosophical art criticism is alive and well. And like a dinosaur, Menzel's Realism sits on the shelves in the library, its fat disappearing in geographical terrain.
Perhaps we should wait until we have read the book - which is not even out yet?
Why wait? I can tell by the famous names Fried probably hasn't reached much deeper than David Zwirner. Unless that's just cross branding so he can sell his book.
Who sponsored his book?
From an artist's perspective, not everyone has access to a large format printer, but anyone could blow up their image and call it art (And jsut as sharp if they had a large format camera with a digital back as well). Digital photography as a process takes less skill than painting, unless you are talking about nuances that most people don't care about nor appreciate.
Certainly Fried doesn't tweak out over the technical aspects of color space - even if he can detect it intuitively? Or will that be in the appendix?
I just can't credit artists for merely having the capital to do something - that's not skill, not intellect - its just positioning and concentrated capital. It's irrelevant to creativity.
Is positioning what history is? it certainly isn't the history of ideas.
I bet that's in the book though.
Most people "confront" photography on the internets- on a screen.
I mean, screens are getting bigger, brighter and more vibrant - what stained glass windows have evolved to.
I wonder how narrowly you have to (keep)define(ing) photography in order to keep writing (sand bagging) these kinds of historical narratives.
I mean printing a book is not the same as writing it. In the same way, I think you have to divorce yourself from the wow factor and look objectively at the means of production and the ideological object as a system.
ace!
Decades of independent research has sponsored this book. As a history of gesture, theatricality, and the beholder it is likely to be a rather scathing analysis of the pose.
Zip, you are just another painter now, bemoaning photography as a technology that has displaced your own. And you are right, Fried is probably not going to take it in that direction - as you see it. Maybe "what is technology" is far more interesting.
ok, that's pretty hysterical, I give in to the tennis charm.
Komrades!
If it sounded like I was defending or praising Fried please forgive me. He came across as a pompous turd when I saw him speak a few years ago; exactly what you would would expect from someone who has been sequestered away in an ivory tower for so many years. He showed contempt for contemporary painting, stating flat out that photography was the only interesting thing going on in the contemporary art world, and managed to put down lowly art critics as well (forgetting his roots no doubt). When I saw Fried speak about Courbet with Roger Kimball at the NYSS more recently he was far more entertaining, mainly because he vehemently disagreed with just about everything Kimball said. He analyzed a specific work very insightfully.
Here is a question. If every work of art being made questions the meaning of art won't the meaning of art completely disappear?
Hasn't it dispersed?
For me, I guess the question is always "What does it mean for there to be this work of art?".
'dispersed'
1 a: to cause to break up (police dispersed the crowd) b: to cause to become spread widely c: to cause to evaporate or vanish (sunlight dispersing the mist)
Do you mean a,b, or c?
Nice. I guess I meant something closest to having the police disperse the crowd. Here's the quote David left behind from Groys, he has more of an answer (I don't really, I need to chew on that one!):
"And Broodthaers said - when he started to do art - that he wanted to do something insincere. To be insincere means in this context to make art beyond all taste - even beyond ones own taste. Contemporary art is an excess of taste, including the pluralistic taste. In this sense it is an excess of pluralistic democracy, an excess of democratic equality. This excess both stabilizes and destabilizes the democratic balance of taste and power at the same time. This paradox is, actually, what characterizes contemporary art in its totality."
Right. Sorry to just plop down a few quotes without comment, but I guess I'm still puzzling it out. If the method of modern art is always to contradict everything else, does this lead to dispersal or dilution of meaning? Maybe. Or maybe meaning is found in spite of the stance of contradiction. Groys point seems logical, and I just pulled a little piece of it out. Maybe this just highlights the difference between what an artist does and what a critic does.
Has anyone seen "After Nature" at the Whitney? I read Peter Schjeldahl's review online this morning and found it colored my whole day black and blue. I am "for" nature, it's my revolutionary stance, my personal contradiction of contemporary art, so the show seems like it might deserve study. Is it just more deskilled assemblage put together by a curator? Schjeldahl seems to think it's serious.
And by the way Catherine, I don't mean for my cheap swipes at academics or the ivory tower to include the likes of you. I know you are an art history professor at SUNY Purchase and I studied art history there under Irving Sandler in the early nineties. I think you make a point of visiting and fighting in the art trenches.
Thanks, Eric, I know that - and I've seen my share of academic pomposity. You have to separate the personality from the scholarship! Someone wrote their whole dissertation on Rosenberg's argumentative personality as his failure.
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