I’m only mildly embarrassed that I’ve been using those gallery give-aways, ubiquitous paper stacks of art, as gift-wrapping paper. These gallery give-aways are a trend that, no matter when they may have actually begun, first took hold in the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. But this sense of there being a hold on something, the force of it holding together a loose pile of candy as the body of a man, for example, has since been lost. Increasingly these give-aways feel like just another promotional item and my using them for my own purposes a do-it-yourselfer’s intervention in a system gone wrong.
Last week I grabbed some paper from the pile of an artist who seemed to be mimicking Christopher Wool and Gonzalez-Torres at once (ie really good wrapping paper, and I wanted it bad enough to take more than one). And only a few doors down I also grabbed a give-away from Meredyth Sparks. This was from a stack of empty paper record sleeves sitting beneath a work depicting a record player - and printed on the sleeve was that same record player - clever. In the course of the day it became jumbled in the messy pile of press releases I was snapping off the counters.
But there was so much stuff for free that day that I was becoming interested again. It wasn’t until I got home and really looked that I discovered the record player on the record sleeve was the famous one that allegedly smuggled in the gun to Andreas Baader, of the Baader Meinhof Group, so that he could kill himself in prison. And it also wasn’t until then that I realized the poster I had grabbed from the pile actually WAS Felix Gonzalez-Torres in collaboration with Christopher Wool.
The difference between Gonzalez-Torres and Sparks is important. Gonzalez-Torres' stacked papers were a reference to the history of sculpture - in his love for a dying man, his lover and the figure of his public, he re-inhabited the continuity of art and removed whatever was left of its autonomous pedestal. Spark’s record sleeve seems to belong to the more jaded present, nostalgic for a politicized moment before the Reagan era, that while having its hold upon the world for a while failed to take hold of history. What does it mean to be offered and to take the gun of a known terrorist and alleged suicide? By posing this question in our hands Sparks is at least pressing upon the role of cultural production in an age of aesthetic ambivalence and withdrawal of judgment.
Martha Rosler, on the other hand, makes vivid the contradictions of our mediated lives while stridently refusing ambivalence. Before entering her show one was forced to put a quarter in a turnstile, providing funds for Artists Against War and United for Peace and Justice. On the far side of this turnstile the art gallery noisily exposed the machinery of the info-tainment complex, where high heels and amputated limbs are of the same economy.
Before you dropped your quarter, however, there was a pile of give-away posters of suit-and-tie pretty boys against a backdrop of scorched-earth fire, marked on the back by the words “please post.” At the entrance, the free give-away and its supplicating call for action was different than the drop of an extorted quarter in the turnstile, marking off a different space completely between one side of the turnstile and the other.
Just across the strreet was Xu Zhen’s “ShanghART SUPERMARKET,” a replica of the 24/7 convenience store promoted by the Chinese Government as a form of resistance against American Capitalism, while appearing in its very form. Here, I purchased an empty shrink-wrapped package of a bar of Chinese soap for $1.50. I tried to buy something that expressed the larger work of art, and in retrospect wished I’d chosen something else and even more. Beyond its literal emptiness - everything in the store is only the empty shell of its packaging - my participation as a consumer was conflicted by the variety of brand identities suspended somewhere between American capitalism and China’s new economy. Even so, the ShanghART convenience store sapped out the contradiction visible across the street of all of its power, neutralizing difference within mass produced offerings of toothpaste and condoms, exposing its emptiness with the joyful assurance of our full participation in its economy.
Joanna Spitzner’s little book, 399.75 hours, I got for free at Eyebeam. It documents the project “The Creative Class,” including the fundraising effort of the Joanna Spitzner Foundation, a non-profit that funds artists. In this case, Spitzner took a summer job as a cashier at the local Price Chopper, and recorded the daily events from this other side of the register. You can put down this book at any time and pick it up at another place without knowing the difference as the world goes by on a conveyor belt. At the same time, the most trivial moments, such as discovering EZ-scan temporary tatoos in a drawer, or knowing it is someone’s birthday, bring into high relief the absurdity and sweetness of the world.
Spitzner aims to render institutions and the economy transparent, and in turn how people are shaped by these. The artists she sponsored, Michael Swatt and Thomas Gokey, record their own labor as well . On the accompanying CD the former is painting energetically with loud music and on stage in a local bar; the latter is listening at length on the phone to a biochemist about how to analyze the chemistry of his tears. Michael Swatt asked for $17.50 an hour, Thomas Gokey $8.16 an hour. In the end, Swatt was chosen for the Syracuse Biennial, and Gokey could barely cover the cost of his materials, but he did get a free coffee mug from the biochemical sales team.
Finally, the real score of the day is that I was one of the last to sign a contract to “Adopt Lenin.” Yevgeniy Fiks rescued Lenin memorabilia, buying 90 of these little monuments to Lenin from eBay auctions, and giving them all away for free under the condition that they never be profited from “in any shape or form.” The gallery contract reads, “I will be the sole holder of this object for the remainder of my life unless I pass it on to someone or an institution without monetary gain or tangible benefit to me, and only after having the recipient sign a copy of this same form. Upon my death the object will go to my heirs with same restrictions attached.”
An interesting comparison is the pencil I bought for a dollar from Phoebe Washburn. Printed with the words “This is not a pencil,” the pencil declares that since it has been ordained as art it must never be sharpened. But the contract does not in fact exist, pencils are inadequate for binding signatures, and her DIY economy is exposed in this, enjoying the fragility of the boundaries between art and life.
Signing Fiks’ contract defines my participation as part of a work whose ultimate stake is in my future death, and the deaths of all of those who adopted Lenin with me. Pinned to the wall in an art gallery, a self-defined community is posed in declaration of something apart from the economy of auctions and back room sales, even while both auctions and back room sales are exactly what have made it possible. Like Gonzalez-Torres, Fiks has re-inhabited the conditions of art and refined a community according to its terms. That this community has retracted from the larger public of the more casual and weakened gallery give-away is what constitutes it, re-trenching value from within the specific form of patronage of the gallery system and making it visible to the public at large.
By Catherine Spaeth
Image Credits: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled", 1993, In conjunction with Christopher Wool,Printed paper, Endless copies,courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery; Meredyth Sparks, from 1977, 2008, Digital scan, aluminum foil, glitter, vinyl, 26.5 x 40 inches (67.3 x 101.6 cm)courtesy of Elizabeth Dee; Martha Rosler, Invasion, 2008, photomantage, 30x53", courtesy of Mitchell-Innes and Nash; Zu Xhen courtesy of James Cohan; Joanna Spitzner courtesy of Joanna Spitzner; Yevgeniy Fiks courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, Martha Rosler, The Gray Drape, photomontage,40x30", courtesy of Mitchell-Innes and Nash.
15 comments:
"pressing upon the role of cultural production"
"render institutions and the economy transparent, and in turn how people are shaped by these"
"enjoying the fragility of the boundaries between art and life."
"re-inhabited the conditions of art and refined a community according to its terms."
"re-trenching value from within the specific form of patronage of the gallery system and making it visible to the public at large."
I guess the problem I have with all of this is what is entailed when the 'public at large' or or 'community' is discussed within this context. I would say that the art world is a very insulated and small community, that the 'public at large' within the art world context is a very qualified entity in terms of their political beliefs, ethical stances, etc.
I also question the possibility of 'transparencey' when there will always be interactions and exchanges occurring 'behind closed doors' within any gallery context and the fact that 'doing business' requires partial or complete concealment.
Is there really any transcedence occurring, any revealing of truth, beyond this ackowledgement of the machinations of business practices and exchanges between artist and audience and staging grounds?
I found this all very amusing. Although I'm not sure it was quite intended to be.
But CS, it seems to me you've rather constructed this comic persona of the dotty, relentless gallery-goer, head packed with sweeping generalisations (as EG notes) hands unable to resist a freebee...
I'm very interested in how specific each of these practices are - what a community is, how it is being defined, is absolutely different in each case. Each artist's "give-away"is completely different, a discrete gesture that delineates its context. Plucking each of these sentences out of their context turns them into generalizations, and they are decidedly not.
By referring to a medium that is over, and in nostalgia for its politics, Sparks does press upon the role of cultural production by putting the gun in our hands.
"This is not a pencil," I argue, does press upon the fragility of the boundaries between art and life differently than "Adopt Lenin," in that it is rather frankly a pencil and it is likely that it will be treated as one by many - signing a contract for the day you die is a very different relation between art and life, don't you think?
I am no where near talking about some ultimate "transparency," I would never even consider it worth spending my time looking for it, it interests me not in the least. All of these discrete give-aways do not lead to one final removal of the veil but are revealing various aspects of different social and economic situations, imagined and addressed in distinct ways.
No there is no transcendance here - but there is acknowledgment of the machinations and the staging grounds. What a community is, what a public is, what constitutes value, where agency lies, what it means to belong to a history of art, all of this is actively contested in some way by each of these artists. It's a matter of there being something at stake in each little gesture, and there's nothing dotty at all about that.
For what it is worth Catherine I read your essay twice more or less and I don't think there is anything wrong or unfair about commenting on parts of the whole. Your essay is a combination of general and specific comments. I can't call into question the descriptive passages, because I saw the same stuff you did.
These kinds of exchanges in the gallery space certainly have a long history that dates back to the 1960's and probably before then, and can be analyzed and the subtleties of each form of exchange can generate different meanings. I would not argue that. I am not convinced that the viewer takes as much away from these exchanges as your essay suggests they do. I am also not questioning your sincerity when you describe all of the things you took away from these gallery experiences.
"render institutions and the economy transparent, and in turn how people are shaped by these" - this is a description of Joanna Spitzner's very specific practice, and not a general statement about the art world at large. As with each of the cited quotations, it is not a general statement.
Your reactions to the art are, dare I say, academic. I won't leave any further comments on your blog because clearly I am too ignorant to understand what you are saying.
"Your reactions to the art are, dare I say, academic."
That was a cheap shot Catherine and I apologize. I understand you were making comments about specific works of art and not making general statements about the art world.
:)
Best of luck.
"an age of aesthetic ambivalence and withdrawal of judgment."
THIS is a general statement, as well as the more art historical interest in how the sense, the spirit, even,of Gonzalez-Torres got lost in the midst of what increasingly began to feel like a promotional item. That descriptive jumble of press releases is a general statement about the art world.
We can now only acknowledge that these give-aways, including Gonzalez-Torres's, are all in varying ways promotional items, so the question becomes, in the promotion of what?
Art is art and everything else pays the bills. At least that is what an old instructor of mine said. I guess it was a knock at the "art is art and everything else is everything else" saying.
I'm in a curious place, one that really surprises me, where these "promotional items" are not so easily parsed out to be either on one side or the other. These give-aways - the amount and variety is rather startling, I think - are interesting to me in that they engage with institutions and the public, within a variety of social imaginations and from a variety of positions. Can one argue here that HOW one thing is a promotional item might have more value as art as opposed to everything else? Is this what formalism amounts to these days, in this context?
I want to say that nostalgic ambivalence (Sparks), contradiction (Rosler), and merely exposing convenient "choice" as spectacle(ShanghART), feel like weak, outdated, overused forms of social thought to me, and I'm looking for better.
Ascending
OK, after watching that video my day is totally consumed by the "iPod revolution" and Lenin's New Economic Policies. A book I'm reading: Christina Kiaer, "Imagine No Posessions."
This is what Saltz thought about the Rosler exhibition:
"Rosler also includes news clippings about Iraq. Most of the articles are from reliably liberal sources (The Village Voice, The Nation, The New Yorker, etc.), so Rosler is merely filtering the already filtered. Worse, there’s an air of self-serving, pedantic preaching. She basically asserts that, while you may be concerned with current events, she’s so concerned she clipped these items and put them in binders. She turns President Bush’s “Go shopping” into “Start clipping.” To gain entry to “Great Power,” visitors must drop a quarter into a turnstile. The show’s press release states that this forces us to make “conscious decisions about how to engage with the work.” This is critique art putting a gun to its own temple. A sign at the door assures us that Rosler will donate all the quarters to antiwar groups. Anyone who thinks any of this is good art, effective activism, or even slightly radical needs to get a grip."
Yes, I mostly agree with Salz, although at both a political and visual level I do like the Gray Drape. And I took a strange comfort in the fact that, while no one else was being explicitly political in Chelsea (it seems to have been contained by the Armory), I can always rely on Martha Rosler.
As someone who is enthralled by 1968, its art and its writing, its politics and its formalism, my interest in how Rosler's exposure of contradiction counts or doesn't count remains driven by desires for political change. I object to Salz's rather sweeping condemnation of anyone who has been a scholar of such material. Here is what he writes:
"Too many younger artists, critics, and curators are fetishizing the sixties, transforming the period into a deformed cult, a fantasy religion, a hip brand, and a crippling disease. A generation is caught in a Freudian death spiral and seems unable to escape the ridiculous idea that in order for art to be political it has to hark back to the talismanic hippie era—that it must create a revolution. It is sophistry to think that everything relates to Europe and America in 1968. The very paradigm of revolution, of right versus wrong, good versus bad, is a relic with no bearing on the present."
Well, it is 2008 now, I know its not 1968, and if the interest is anywhere it is as much in failure. There has been a scad of shows (PS1, for example, for which I wrote here about Polly Apfelbaum in response)that have poorly represented the time and its ideals, seizing the moment of its anniversary as a form of thematic packaging.
"The very paradigm of revolution, of right versus wrong, good versus bad, is a relic with no bearing on the present" is an insight that is not Salz's own, for people interested in '68 and what followed, it is a thought that was driving some of the best writing of the time, and has everything to do with why I do not care for Rosler's continued dependency on exposing the same contradictions.
But I also value that those same contradictions still exist, and Rosler can still do that thing that she does. I am not holding it up as a good work of art, not in the least, but that amputated limbs and high heels make any kind of sense together is still at least worth noisily grinding away at.
Writing about what I got for free is my way of going at questions about "art and politics" from the margins to see what comes up. As an art historian, maybe I'm even a little tickled that Martha Rosler is one of the things that did.
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