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Relax…

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The other day I was having a conversation about the state of the art world. The person I was talking with suggested I should be a little less impassioned about the state of things – “Mark, you need to relax.” The problem is whenever someone tells me to relax, I know they aren’t concerned about my rising blood pressure – they just want me to shut up and take it. OK, art is just art, but it does have some meaning in my life. Art can and does become less of a concern when faced with “reality,” and unfortunately, relaxing is just not an option at the moment. Suddenly the “reality” of life, not art, has made itself known, and I’ve had to find ways of dealing with it – as we all must!

Irascibles

This week the Fairs have come to town, the NuMu has begun the “press” placement for Koons’ curating in the NY Times, and the WhitBi has opened. I’ve decided NOT to participate this year – not that I’ll be missed. Somehow running business as usual while business is anything but usual makes my head spin a bit. No, I’m not trying to be a kill joy for the thousands who will participate. I’m especially not being a crank. I’m just trying to remain consistent. Back in the early 50s American artists actually struck against Museum policies that they felt were arbitrary and unfair to aesthetic advancement. The ABEX artists became famous for the picture of the “Club” members. We’ve all seen that picture. In the 80s there was even a media-friendly POMO reenactment by the EV artists – which you may have seen as well (Christ, even a New New Irascibles in 2000 and a “Next Irascibles” in 2009). But unlike these recent media driven appropriations, the “reason” behind the original group photo was that these artists felt they were being excluded from participating in the larger issues of culture and they were determined to do SOMETHING about it. They were putting a face to the ferment.

“As detailed in the article, the open letter to Roland L. Redmond, the president of the Metropolitan protested that the jurors selected for the December exhibition were “notoriously hostile to advanced art” and the choice of jurors “does not warrant any hope that a just proportion of advanced art will be included.” The letter proclaimed “The undersigned artists reject the monster national exhibition to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art next December, and will not submit work to its jury,” adding “We draw to the attention of those gentlemen the historical fact that, for roughly a hundred years, only advanced art has made any consequential contribution to civilization.” The group also picketed the museum.”

Picketed the Museum! Wowser! I haven’t seen many artists picketing the art fairs of late – have you? As for the concept of advanced art – well, who can say – there really isn’t much of an avant garde – just blue chippers or emergers. Aesthetic issues, theoretical issues really don’t play into the discussion. Right now in NYC there is the #class exploration going on and I’m sure there are many interesting ideas on tap. It seems to be a real attempt at discussing economic and political issues in the art world in some informed fashion. But when I read things like – “an open table discussion about how artists’ identities and backgrounds influence the perception, reception and display of their work. How do factors like perceived race, gender, age, socioeconomic status and sexual orientation affect our experience of the art world?” I fear that we are once again not dealing with the nagging and underlying issues of aesthetics, theoretics and vision. Once again the focus seems to be more on acceptance than on change. Politics/economics is all well and good, but real change goes deeper – real change, especially for artists, starts with vision!

So I will leave you all with this from Dave Hickey from his Revision 4:
“If you look at artworks as I do, against a field of all the artworks you’ve ever seen, this intricate flutter of precedents makes for a bigger and more memorable experience. Lately, I’ve been missing that resonant thickness. Contemporary art, having lost its utopian future, now seems to be losing its usable past. The fashionable opacity of too much new art seems comfortably ensconced at the level of enigmatic decor. The ruthless difficulty to which artists once aspire is now held in abeyance because they dare not be snobs anymore. The art world has lowered its entrance requirements and raised its cover charge so radically that a couple of million bucks and casual acquaintance with Spiderman now gain one entree into the most refined salon. As a result, the contemporary artist’s field of play, once defined by the collective knowledge and experience of cognoscenti, has gone to seed.”

Art should be more than a job, about earning a living, relaxing. What Dave is talking about is something worth protesting about – Vision.

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David Shields

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Reality Hunger is now available! “An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century.” Highly recommended!

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reality_night studio

Friday, February 19, 2010

I’m fooling myself,
Fooling myself into believing you
All these fictionary tales,
You’re telling yourself
Selfish, like a child that’s never heard of no
I watched him everchanging you,
Never find us

It’s 1:37 A.M. on a cold January night. You’re alone in a small half empty club, the walls painted black, thick smell of cigarettes, stale beer and sweat. There are a few young couples sitting close at the tables around you. You’ve stumbled into this place after a long day in the studio, and you’re looking for contact – something human. You throw back a shot of whiskey and cradle the tepid draft beer in your hand. The band has been a bit off through the first few songs. They’re not in sync, stiff, not feeling the moment. Then something happens and they come together. You light a cigarette, glad of the new beat. Some of the other half drunk souls walk up to the riser and start to sway. Your mind slips and you think about that painting that just wouldn’t come together, just wouldn’t gel. No one seems to understand this, not even your other artist friends who are endlessly planning their next photo shoot or set location. To them, you’re just beating a dead horse. No, you’re left in the studio struggling to put it all together for no “particular” reason. It’s a ridiculous situation to be in and you know it, the anachronism of paint in this light speed economy. Meanwhile the band has worked into a groove, the singer’s eyes closed as he croons “goodbye” – holding onto that last syllable, sliding into a falsetto. The rhythm crashes into harsh repetitions and crescendos, the beat tearing the place in two. The club falls silent as the last chord cuts sharp on the downbeat. Everyone understands that something great has just happened. A burst of whistles and applause. Reality?

We continue this series with a bit of life, at least, life that may have been lived and remembered. Life that we construct in certain ways. And it is this kind of constructed memory that we will be looking at because it is exactly this kind of fashioned memory that forms our realities. Now I say this because memory, whatever memories we have, never leaves us, never. They shape our existence as our existence shapes them. They haunt our outcomes and give our lives form, form that we may not fully comprehend. We react to our memories in such visceral ways. We try to share them, we use them to find common ground with other people’s realities, and we find, at times, that we have to come to terms with some of memories that may not be our own. We must regard the consequences of remembered “reality,” because they too, shape the life we create in our minds. Consequences fashion the choices we make, the emotions we feel, the other lives we impact, big or small. We create our true fictions in order to better explain our lives to each other and to ourselves. And these thoughts always seem to bring us back to the night studio, throw us back into our painterly realities. How does memory play into vision, how does it exist in paint, how does it exist in Art? We’ll discuss these things in this series of posts, and maybe we’ll get a bit closer to something felt, something real in our work.

Disconnect
Right now as you are reading this, the program is reading you. Right now as I upload these words, I am being watched and documented. This is not paranoia, it is the nature of the reality of being in a program, the nature of our new “memory.” As you graft yourself onto the ethernet, it grafts itself onto you. For instance, the memory above, the one altered through my fleshy perception, is now part of the larger collective memory. It will be picked up by search engines and categorized. It will be filed in various data streams waiting for the right keyed sequences. Then it may appear on someone’s screen, altered by the categories of the program. But this memory will not simply be a tale of a “day in the life,” a painter’s moment. No. It will have been keyed by the program to a certain type of economic experience, a certain purchasing demographic locked into a specific consumerist outcome. (For instance, the music above by the fabulous Them Crooked Vultures can be purchased and downloaded immediately, and that makes this post a portal for commerce, tying these words and that “memory” to that shopping experience.) For each memory there will be other cues, other outcomes, not intended by me, that will lead you somewhere with the express purpose that something, everything is for sale.

The video on the left of a rainy night in Times Square is filled with the beautiful, speeding light and color of commerce – a kind of perpetual agonistic light show in which programs create “desire” for machines that will allow us to consume things that only the machines creating that desire will be able to translate into “things.” Or to put it more succinctly – the programmed “desire” leads us to a vast shopping mall for our consciousness. As more and more of our corporate economics have infected the collective electronic memory, the malls and the big box stores have moved directly into our homes, into our hands and into our minds, guiding and shaping our experiences, interactions and memories. When we upload our inner lives we become goods to consume; we become product. Our fleshy memories, our realities disconnect from an authentic moment, take on a different inflection online. But in the night studio life is a bit different.

For many of us who work in studios, we continue to do so in the same old ways. This is neither good nor bad, it is simply a fact, a reality. What we are after is not necessarily the work in front us, but the work inside of us. How many times have I destroyed good work trying to get to something better, something deeper. Christ, if I had a nickel for each time I’ve done that I’d be as rich as Koons. Those late nights or early mornings, those hours and days of living with the thing, those slight differences in hue or value are all part of the endless need for control that we try to exert over the thing. And this is part of the myth of the artist seeking perfection. Many artists perpetuate the idea of “control” as being a sign of their striving for something deeper, more refined or more real. But the truth is this is also a sign that we are unable to understand the full reality that we are trying to express. What we should be trying to get to is a state of being out of control. It is my experience in the studio that when I’m barely hanging on, when there is no “control,” then something is truly happening before my eyes, a reality is being made without me, in spite of me. I mean, nature, the thing we have no control over, happens in those moments when we aren’t pressing the keys or fiddling the knobs. Our physical self somehow gets ignored, or worse, becomes the outcome for some issue of conscious control. We head to the surgeon to remove the bump in our nose, or suck the fat from our asses, or enhance our peckers with pumps and hydraulics. We think that we have control over nature, that the plane won’t crash, that the island won’t collapse or the hurricane won’t swallow our home, that age will never ravage our beauty or our stamina. Yet Life, nature, reality, continues along in spite of us, in spite of our “control.”

Matisse

We see this myth of control being exerted everywhere – from the buttoned down businessman’s hair gel all the way to the financial projections in a prospectus statement. We see it in shiny balloon dog sculptures, computer lens rendered paintings, or in the way we choose to speak of our lives on public programs. We see these things as reality, we believe that they are, and we rush to purchase them, to exhibit them, to proclaim them the “truth” of things. But in the night studio something else happens, we have to wait for life, for the moment when we begin to recognize a more insidious reality. And it’s never what we thought it would be, never the way we expect it, because in reality, not everything is possible, not everything bends to our control. Unlike Georgina, I’ve never been one that falls for the possiblities of things – I hope for them. Everything may be possible, but not everything makes itself real. When everything is possible we still believe in control, we fall in love with the camera, the lens, the program, with our own take on what we’ve come to understand as real, but none of that is “real.” In the art world today, everything is possible and nothing is real, and again, we are faced with something else, something we brought up in the last reality post – authenticity. What is authentic, what seems real, what feels real? Those are the hard questions we must face in the studio.

David Shields makes a similar point about the realities of life when he’s discussing a video that captured a fight in a restaurant.

“What’s remarkable about the video is that you get to see how people really fight. In real life, as opposed to movies, it’s never fair. The guy has no chance. They’re breaking chairs and tables over his head, sucker-punching him, and then there’s that last kick to the face. The guy who kicks him is either really mad about something or just evil. It’s the most awful thing to do: kick someone like that when he has no chance. You really feel this restaurant fight. Scorsese can’t come close to matching this realism.”

Reality is not fair. And no matter what you may believe, it will have its way with you, and this is why it is exhilarating.

reality will continue…

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reality_the camera

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

…But there is something about making a movie…
when you are in the reality of the film set, anything is possible.
…because the truth of it is, I love the camera….

Massive AttackOn Massive Attack’s web site there are a number of links to short movies scored with music from their new album, in other words, videos. They are all very good, but the one entitled Paradise Circus by Toby Dye brings up a few of the issues that we will be looking at in this series. The short is an interview with Georgina Spelvin. What is fascinating about this interview is her impassioned discussion of the intimate relationship she developed with the camera. This relationship, as she describes it, is a way to liberation, a way to create a reality through desire. When she is intimate with the lens she becomes both the object of desire and the creator of images of desire. And in making that reality of desire she finds love – with the camera. All things become possible for her in front of the lens.

“When there is a camera running it is so thrilling.
God help me, I love the camera.”

We live our lives through the lens and the program. The intimate world, our interior world has collapsed through the ubiquity of the lens – we have no secrets. The details of our private lives, those physical and emotional moments that defined us have become the “reality of the set” where all things are possible. We live to act out, to display, to provide evidence of our interiority for an unseen, unheard audience. This “play” is similar to a religious experience formed by the trinity of the invisible audience, the lens and the program. When we confess, when we reveal ourselves to the lens we are cleansed, we become free. What are we seeking? Is it redemption, freedom, understanding or fame? What part of this lens capture of our confessions is “real” in the sense of our everyday lives? When do we stop constructing our realities and allow “reality” to construct us?

As we’ve allowed our lives to be captured in our technologies, we have given up something of the intimacy we are all seeming to crave in larger and larger amounts. That lost intimacy is connected to something that we used to known as authenticity. For instance, in the Toby Dye video it is clear that Georgina Spelvin in both manifestations of her “self” is acting. In the images from the movie the Devil in Miss Jones she says that her expression is “deliberate.” In her commentary she defines these fleeting intimate moments of joy or humiliation with a rehearsed delivery about that intimacy. In the meantime the music builds behind the commentary and the edited images moving us into her desire, building that desire and that reality within us. It is a construct, and this “reality” is made to highlight the fact that in front of the lens “anything is possible.” We, too, come to love the lens as Georgina does, but as we do, we lose the authenticity of those moments. We are involved in a passing fiction even as Georgina reveals her truth, her reality. We can not truly participate in this constructed reality, we remain desirous. This world, no matter how easily manifested, will always be hidden behind the screen.

“We are our own devil.”

The link to the video is here. There is graphic sexual imagery in the piece, but it is a masterful music video and better than most things you’ll see in a gallery. Toby Dye is a magician, transforming the banal into something beautiful.

reality will continue…

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Guilty Pleasure

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The French have their own ideas about space adventures, and they are always Postmodern cool. I have to admit that this movie, The Fifth Element, is one of my guilty pleasures. A trip to Italy in the 90s was rife with TV advertising and kiosk posters for Il Quinto Elemento con Bruce Willis – heavy on the Italian accent. This small pop culture moment mixed up with a cheap pensione in Roma has burrowed into my head like a tic on a fat dog. I really enjoy the clever way the script weaves together the 3 subplots into a continuous collage of question and answer. One character in a subplot will ask a question and the answer comes from another character in another – it’s smart movie editing, and for something as silly as a space adventure done up as an old fashioned Euro-Western, it is fun high POMO exuberance. Sandwiched into the plot is a small pivotal character played by the out-of-control and OTT Chris Tucker. Ruby Rhod steals the entire movie! One of my favorite moments is when he takes the stairs into the simulacrum of “… the most beautiful concert hall of all the universe! A perfect replica of the old opera house! …BUT WHO CARES!” For Ruby, everything is background – people, places, and especially things. His personality keeps rising into view, the center of the universe, and we are all satellites caught in his gravity. From the wig with the phallic cone all the way to the ridiculously pointy shoes – Ruby is a character born of POMO exuberance. I guess it just goes to show that not everything Mannerist is bad….

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Cracks

Friday, January 29, 2010

Yesterday was a day of nudging reminders and grudging to-do lists. The upshot of all this mundane ephemera has been a new focus in the studio. As a good friend of mine said yesterday – it’s time to get out and about mate. So let’s see where that will lead and I’ll keep you updated as I go.

The wonderous Michael Zahn forwarded on to me a couple of articles discussing the end of Postmodernism, and I thought I’d share them with you as well. The first is by Duncan Alexander on Fan Culture. The premise is that with more individuals participating in specific (online) fan groups dedicated to specific types of cultural activities new forms of art will emerge out of the plurality. “As the transition from a standardized popular culture to a fandom culture has occurred, fine art has wavered between supporting one or the other. Because of Postmodern art’s current obsession with its endgame, it loses its ability to examine culture because it becomes its own fandom.”

In the Endgame of Postmodernism Matthew Nash sees an exhausted Postmodernism feeding on itself. “Words, as ideas spoken, can have their power inverted through the subversion of reflection, distorted into new meaning by a change of tone or context. Art of the Postmodern era has increasingly relied on this strategy, and here the telling signs of the endgame of Postmodernism begin to betray themselves.”

What we are beginning to see in the artistic community is a sustained critique and outcry against the Postmodern monolith. What will come next, what can we do? Exciting things to consider!

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Buchel-ed Up

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Wow! Lots of legal stuff going on these days. Buchel’s case against Mass MOCA was reversed in the appellate courts. Donn Zaretsky mentions the decision as a win for artists. “The Court forcefully held that VARA applies to unfinished works, and clearly rejected Mass MoCA’s “contention … that the unfinished installation might constitute a joint work of Büchel and the Museum.” A good day for artists’ rights.” Martin at Anaba also gives us another fantastically linked history of the case. Martin you are the MAN – fantastic research! I don’t know where you find the time and energy to do all the heavy work that you do – amazing!

VARA exclusively grants authors of works that fall under the protection of the Act the following rights
right to claim authorship
right to prevent the use of one’s name on any work the author did not create
right to prevent use of one’s name on any work that has been distorted, mutilated, or modified in a way that would be prejudicial to the author’s honor or reputation
right to prevent distortion, mutilation, or modification that would prejudice the author’s honor or reputation

(OK, I’m having fun with the NYPost style headlines – you’ll just have to deal…)

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Winter Doldrums

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

It is deader than dead here in NYC – as far as art goes. The biggest story this month has been that some poor woman accidently fell into an early Picasso at the MET, and now, everyone seems to have an opinion on how to fix the painting. I’ll tell you the truth it isn’t one of my favorite Picassos so I don’t really have an opinion. A linen patch on the back side and a bit of unobtrusive cosmetic work on the front (if needed) and presto! Right now there are restoration experts dropping bricks about that last bit, but really, it ain’t rocket science. As for the woman who fell into the painting, she must be mortified. I mean put yourself in her position. A day at the MET, a tour of the galleries with some docent prattling on about the works, a few pithy bits about how rough the artists were living, no lunch, nothing to drink, legs are heavy, the room starts to sway a bit, and the next thing you know, your elbow went through the Picasso. Awful! I also don’t believe for one auction house minute that a painting considered this important would suddenly lose half its value. Tear or no, the painting’s irreplaceable and as far as I know, the MET has no intention of selling the work – EVER. I guess the auction houses will just have to deal with the fact that some commissions will never come their way.

Then there’s the real estate conceptualism about to happen at the Guggy. Tino Sehgal has determined that a tabula rasa Guggy, white cube on steroids, would be a grand statement at a time when millions of Americans have left their homes empty as they lost their jobs. The idea of a major art museum cleared to the bare walls sounds like yet another sensitive project for the people. Supposedly something’s set to happen in the space – I haven’t a clue, but I loved this bit of art jargoning in the press release:

“Sehgal’s singular practice has been shaped by his formative studies in dance and economics, while using the museum and related institutions—galleries, art fairs, and private collections—as its arena.” What they don’t tell you is if his formative studies were Jazz, Tap or Classical Economics – Milton Friedman in tights. If any of you can make sense of the rest of the Press Release maybe you could enlighten us. I mean what, exactly, does this mean? “He considers visual art to be a microcosm of our economic reality, as both center on identical conditions: the production of goods and their subsequent circulation. Sehgal seeks to reconfigure these conditions by producing meaning and value through a transformation of actions rather than solid materials.” I think this means he prefers the stage to the studio. And on top of that I never considered that I was making “goods” when I finished a painting – I guess it’s all about context. As for the show, I’ll go for the Pina Bausch in Costco kinda thing. Who knows, we all might get to walk out with some circulating goods!

We are about to begin our series on Reality shortly and I’ve been looking for some interesting angles. I thought this clip was interesting simply because of the fact that “reality” is being discussed in one of the most unrealistic films I’ve ever seen. It’s almost as if the “reality” of this film bends and blends into the “reality” of the other films discussed – it’s pure Postmodern context and critique in that sense. The simulacrum is the basis for “fact,” and we are left with nothing but the idea that narrative and film are the basis for a “reality.” Add to that the tropes of photographic “reality” – the blurring of space as the lens refocuses – the TV screen fuzz that places another context on the image – the breaks in the edit that allow us to focus on the deliberate symbolic actions of the character (clipping and lighting the cigar etc.) It’s all designed to convince us that what we are seeing is “real,” that these characters are, indeed, part of our existence. Reality? – stay tuned!

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TFU – Fairey Dust

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

That’s right – Totally Fucked Up. OK, I went for the NYPost kind of headline, but I couldnt resist.  Shepard Fairey is facing a bit more trouble with his case. Donn Zaretsky at the Art Law Blog (fantastic blog for real world issues in the art  world) has been following the case, and it seems that Shepard’s problems just got a bit more hairy. Now, instead of a civil suit, he’ll have to deal with the state of California and a grand jury. The other day when we posted about this we knew things would get tough with the civil suit, but we weren’t looking at criminal charges then. Ouch! His lawyer must have dropped a brick when – “Following today’s hearing, the AP published a report stating that the judge revealed the grand jury probe in a handwritten note denying a request by a Fairey attorney that a hearing relating to a copyright lawsuit be closed.” Handwritten by the judge – talk about TFU!  The copyright case which was specious and vindictive at best, would have been easily won by Fairey if he hadn’t freaked out and covered his tracks with “misrepresentations” and “misstatements” (legal terms for prevarications.) Now his problems are in overdrive for a lot of reasons not related to the use of the image. And if you’re prone to good conspiratorial stuff, there may be a political urge behind going after the guy that created an iconic image of the man who unseated the Republican government. I hope Shepard gets himself a really good litigator – he’s going to need one. In the meantime maybe he’ll be able to settle with the AP and put that part of the case behind him. We wish Shepard all the best and hope for a quick end to all of this bullshit. As for the rest of us remember this bit of wisdom Ice Cube imparted to one and all, “Check yourself before you wreck yourself!”

”Credibility is probably the most significant issue,” the judge said. ”Credibility is a very important factor and you can’t go into credibility without going into the destruction of evidence.”

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Another Adjustment to Reality

Friday, January 22, 2010

IN our recent Color Series (which we will continue throughout this year) there was a lot of discussion about Reality. And I thought that this might be something to explore as we move forward into 2010. Maybe 21st Century abstract painting can become a new “realist” movement? How great would that be? Anyway, I thought that we could explore some issues that keep arising about “reality” – what is real, what isn’t, what defines it, what suspends it – all those sorts of things. So, let’s begin with this piece by Doug Glanville, a former major league basball player, whose career was impacted by the “steroids of 99.” I think that this is a straight forward account of some distinctions between what one believes or wants to believe and what is real or seems to be real. The further parts of his discussion are the moral and ethical implications of the choices that one makes – what becomes real as one chooses, and how long those realities may or may not last. Reality it seems is constantly in flux, always shifting beneath our feet, and what we believe to be real, may indeed, prove to be a lie, and conversely, what we do not see or experience as real, very well may be.

“…the problem is, too many players made a different choice than McGwire did in the face of similar situations. I can’t claim to know exactly what he was going through during the time he decided to take steroids, but I am confident that there were other players who dealt with the same challenges and played clean.”

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