The Forty Part Motet (A Reworking of Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui, by Thomas Tallis) creates a stunning fourteen minutes of interdependence between music and visual art. Although the work is frequently installed in a cathedral-like setting, I found its simpler placement at TAM, in a white-cube room residing behind a single, burgundy wall, ideal. Normally, the white cube strikes me as a Modernist tendency overused and misapplied in contemporary installations that beg for a rethinking of gallery installation procedures (for example, during the 2002 Whitney Biennial, the white cube arrangements often detracted from works more than it let them “exist” as they were). In contrast, at TAM the white walls emphasize the Minimalist aspects of forty single speakers on stands arranged in an ovular formation.
Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet / Rideau Chapel, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, CA, image from CardiffMiller.com
Janet Cardiff, Forty-Part Motet, 2001 (British Edition), image from the Tate Liverpool
Visually experiencing the work’s relationship to Minimalism is essential to seeing The Forty Part Motet’s representation of the creative process most directly. The audio track begins with casual conversation and preparation among singers; this mechanically reproduced soundtrack exposes the piece’s living aspect, on some levels, more overtly than the polished performance typically revealed to a concert audience. Similar to how Minimalism utilizes basic elements of art such as color and shape, breaking A Reworking of Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui into the The Forty Part Motet on forty freestanding speakers separates a highly complex composition into the aural elements that become indecipherable from one another when one physically moves from the perimeter into the work’s focal point: the center.
It is in the focal point that Nietzsche’s theory of the interrelationship between the Apollonian and Dionysiac arts can be experienced to some extent, if only briefly. In The Birth of Tragedy, the merging of the plastic, visual arts of Apollo and the lyric, unrestrained arts of Dionysus created the Greek Tragedy that brings an audience beyond traditional consciousness:
“When speaking of the peculiar effects musical tragedy we laid stress on the Apollonian illusion which saves us from the direct identification with Dionysiac music and allows us to discharge our musical excitement on an interposed Apollonian medium. At the same time we observed how, by the virtue of that discharge, the medium of drama was made visible and understandable from within to a degree that is outside the scope of Apollonian art is elevated by the spirit of music it reaches its maximum intensity; thus the fraternal union of Apollo and Dionysos may be said to represent the final consummation of both the Apollonian and Dionysiac tendencies.” (The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. by Francis Golffing, 1956, p. 141)
The moment of “maximum intensity” in The Forty Part Motet can easily be interpreted in terms of religion and divinity when in an installation of the piece that focuses on a church setting (and, I suspect, if an exhibition titled Illuminating the Wordis in the next room). However, this is not a period piece. The history behind A Reworking of Spen in Alium Nunquam Habui has its moments, but I did not have the desire to recall any of them while standing alone in the simple, white room.
Image: Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet, by Janet Cardiff (A Re-working of Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui 1573, by Thomas Tallis). 40 loudspeakers mounted on stands, placed in an oval, amplifiers, and playback computer, 14 minute loop with 11 minutes of music and 3 minutes of intermission. Courtesy of Galerie Barbara Weiss and the artist. Photo: Markus Tretter. From Tacomaartmuseum.org.
Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui has a complicated history that includes errors (the “40″ was supposedly once mistaken for “30″), a possible relationship to Queen Elizabeth’s 40th birthday, and words from the Apocrypha’s Book of Judith (see Wikipedia for a quick summary). I am most interested in experiencing the interplay between this historical piece and the technology controlling it in Cardiff’s creation.
I still mourn the loss of (illegal) downloading service Audiogalaxy because of the way members could send songs directly to their friends’ music queue after initial permission was granted. Few experiences are more exciting than coming home to a computer full of new music someone else found for you. This weekend Or Gallery reconsiders the social aspect of the digital music exchange through Ear to Ear, a “temporary, non-virtual community interested in popular music” (from the event description on Or Gallery’s website). Bonuses at the event include mixed CDs created by Pacific Northwest art personalities, a conversation on the project (Saturday at 5 PM), and an essay by Jordan Strom.
As Jen Graves notes in her review of Dario Robleto’s exhibitions in The Stranger, “…[Robleto] brews homemade remedies from plants and powders” (link to article). If pop music is anything, it is a homemade (by “homemade” in this instance, I mean “mentally reconstructed”) remedy for myriad emotional moments and stages of life, regardless of how many would prefer to deny this fact. In other words, Michael Duncan’s talk should be fascinating.
In the June/July issue of Art in America, Irving Sandler contributes a strong article arguing against a revisionist understanding of the Abstract Expressionist movement being largely motivated by the Cold War ( “Abstract Expressionism and the Cold War” 65-74). Some of the article’s most poignant arguments emerge when Sandler discusses the apprehension, and often antipathy, American institutions felt towards this movement of work often too distinct from what they had seen previously to fully comprehend.
I was very excited when the 7th Edition of Janson’s History of Art was published a few years ago ( I would link to the New York Times article announcing a few divergences found in the 7th Edition but author Randy Kennedy describes the book as a “doorstopper” and makes the absence of Louis Le Nain out to be scandalous simply because his work is in the Louvre, the museum that displays 35,000 works of art in its galleries). Like most, I agree that it is important to reconsider academic disciplines in light of new understandings and think that the existence of this book in a series of traditional art history books is valuable, even if I don’t support every omission and every addition.
Janson’s History of Art, Seventh Edition, image from Pearson Education.
In contrast, I cannot support “revisionist art history” when the revisions are made on faulty arguments, as is the argument Sandler so effectively advocates against in Art in America. When considering the idea that Abstract Expressionism was a form of American propaganda in light of how long it took for Abstract Expressionism to even be recognized in the United States and abroad is quite difficult to support with facts, as Sandler demonstrates. I.A. Richards’s term “critical dogma” from essay Practical Criticism comes to mind when considering the revisionist argument:
“Most critical dogmas…have almost exactly the intellectual standing and the serviceableness of primitive ’superstitions.’ They rest upon our desire for explanation, our other desires, our respect for tradition, and to a slight degree upon faulty induction. (Practical Criticism 299-300)
Interestingly, this notion of critical dogma applies to both the revisionist view of Abstract Expressionism and those who outright rejected Abstract Expressionists during the 1940s and early 1950s. Now considering those who were against the movement at the time of its prominence, Sandler explains,
“Attacks by the likes of [Congressman] Dondero led to federal censorship of works that were unconventional and/or by alleged subversives. This began in 1946 when the State Department organized a show titled ‘Advancing American Art,’ which consisted of 79 works of modern art…In the middle of a well-received tour, canvases in the show were attacked in Congress as Communistic and made by Communists…In 1948 the paintings from the ill-fated show were ignominiously auctioned off as war surplus for $5,444…Guilbaut mentioned ‘Advancing American Art’ only twice, for a total of 10 lines, and concluded incongruously that ‘despite disappointments connected with this show’–the disappointments not specified–it ‘demonstrated that the American government was willing to involve itself with the international art scene.’”
This instance of critical dogma has a significant history with two Seattle institutions that began in divergent ways but now bring challenging contemporary exhibitions to Seattle: the Frye and the Henry Art Gallery. The Frye almost immediately came to mind when Sandler began his discussion of the rejection of Abstract Expressionism because of they way their collection of “representational art” began. The term “representational art” has myriad meanings and references in an age of photography, film and video, as evidenced by the term’s recent removal from the Frye’s mission statement. However, when Walser Greathouse became the director of the Frye in 1952 and had to interpret the Fryes’ preferences and intentions for the museum, representational art was, in part, defined as reaction against abstract art, implying a certain level of identifiable subject matter. For a period of time, the Frye could have been described as a museum of the non-abstract art that was more acceptable as “art” in mainstream America during the 1940s and 50s.
Returning to Sandler’s inclusion of the Advancing American Art exhibition in his argument, it was the eventual auction of those “controversial” Modern works that also contribute to the Henry’s history with “the art of our time” (their current mission). As Hankblog notes, the museum acquired works by then-contemporary American painters such as Stuart Davis and Robert Motherwell for $269 total (you can see an image of the Davis on Artguide Northwest) through the sale of works from Advancing American Art.
Now, the Henry is completely dedicated to contemporary art, and the Frye has moved towards a contemporary focus as well, with their new(ish) mission:
“The Frye Art Museum is dedicated to artistic inquiry, a rich visitor experience, and civic responsibility. A primary catalyst for our engagement with contemporary art and artists is the Founding Collection of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century art by Munich-based artists.” (”About the Frye, www.fryeart.org)
Although Sandler’s article begins on the premise of negating someone else’s argument, the need for doing so is made clear through its relevancy; I look forward to engaging with the full book Rethinking Abstract Expressionism.
I can post this image, just as it is, because the Smithsonian recently published a group of photographs from their archives on flickr. They did this while recognizing the fact that these images have no copyright restrictions. This may seem obvious to anyone familiar with copyright laws and the notion of the “public domain”, but it indicates a grand stride in the museological realm. Those who have never worked in or with a mainstream American museum may not realize how many hours go into the credit lines audiences typically don’t even notice beneath images from an exhibition or from the collection. If you ever wonder why a museum doesn’t have more of its collection or exhibition images online, it may be at least partially due to fear of copyright law, or perhaps simply a fear of losing authority over their objects.
The Smithsonian’s project is revolutionary because it admits that there are works in the public domain, and that the museum is willing to relinquish their authority over those images. Authority is often the matter at hand in the museum, perhaps even replacing the financial values found within for-profit institutions. While museums do have authority as serious research institutions, there can also be another dimension to that authority that creates friction in the age of the Internet, where information exchange is at the forefront of daily life. Copyright cannot maintain its ultimate rule the way it did in the world of exclusively print media. Museums often forgo Internet advances such as providing digital versions of their collections, podcasting, blogging and social networking for fear of losing their audiences once the images of their objects escape their control. This is clearly irrational and prohibitive.
Are there really people who would prefer to look only at digital images online over seeing the actual art/historical/scientific object? I find this doubtful. The Internet is valued for its international information exchange, making small museums that would otherwise only exist as resources to their immediate communities suddenly become valuable to the country or world at-large through their online presences. Shouldn’t this be what every museum strives for, rather than being overprotective of the digital reproductions of their objects?
And yet, most institutions do not put all of their collections online. Clearly there are complications such as artists’ rights and donors’ wishes, but what about all of the works already in the public domain- why don’t we see them on more museum websites?
At Museums and the Web this year (debatably the most progressive North American museum conference on integrating web applications with museum practice), the hot topic was the mash-up.
This is a mash up of The Muppets and Pulp Fiction:
This is a mash-up of light sabers and The Princess Bride (via Boing Boing):
But the mashing up being talked about at Museums and the Web 2008 by innovators Sebastian Chan and Frankie Roberto was about the possibility of mashing up all museum objects (”all” as in every museum object that exists) into a single web resource, in order to make those objects and their information more accessible to the world (I suggest reading their papers, which are fully available here and here). While the Smithsonian’s flickr site is just one museum, it signals a movement towards sharing information and authority on a universal web resource not managed by the museum providing the images. This is one of the largest steps I have seen towards the grand resource Chan’s and Frankie’s papers imply as a possibility; it is a welcome sign of hope, as I continue blogging in a city where few museums have substantial portions of their collections online*.
*The Wing Luke and the Burke have the largest amount currently online of which I am aware. The Henry also has a project in the works, though I am not clear on the breadth of the final result that will be available to the public.
Article: “Kiddie Orientalism” by Brian T. Edwards in The Believer (June 08 )
Book: The Book on Vegas by Lisa Eisner, Roman Alonso, Noel Daniel, Dave Hickey (intro)
Blog: “I will see where it takes me from here: A conversation with Ed Ruscha” by Arcy Douglass in PORT
The desert has routinely been linked to particular notions of wasteland, absence of life or romantic exoticism through artistic representations and popular culture. This week, the relationship between the desert and decay has seemed particularly prevalent, perhaps mostly because the sun has been so noticeably absent from this bitter Seattle June and I am seeking a merging of fiction and fantasy myself.
In the latest issue of The Believer, Brian Edwards considers a family trip to Tunisia in terms of his intentions to use the site in this country where Star Wars was filmed as enticement for his two children. His ultimate reason for taking the trip, however, was to try to introduce a different perspective on the Middle East and North Africa to these children from a generation introduced to 9/11 as what he describes as “fact”, rather than through experience; Edwards explains,
“When George Lucas made his way to the subterranean homes of Matmata and the desert villages around Tataouine, both of which inspired him deeply, he was following a path well worn by American filmmakers and novelists who had imagined frontier tales set in North African locales…Star Wars, I’d decided, might be another key to those emerging attitudes about the Arab, the imagined look of evil.” (25)
Edwards’s account is particularly interesting because the generation of his children is one that relies so highly on visual culture for information and yet images of what is actually going on in the Middle East are almost entirely absent from the media. In effect, the questions he raises in this article may have more powerful implications than one might think when first considering what Star Wars still can tell us about society and new generations’ understandings of relationships between the Middle East and North Africa and the Western world.
On a somewhat lighter note, The Book on Las Vegas examines this city in the middle of the desert though the works of some of the best artists working in reproducible media, including Thomas Struth, Larry Fink, Doug Aitken, Andres Serrano, and others, as well as screen shots from films by Scorsese and Coppola, drawings by R. Crumb, and archival images taken by the casinos.
Not surprisingly, Dave Hickey contributed the book’s brief introduction “Deciding About Las Vegas.” Although some this essay is a bit obvious for those who have visited the city with a vague level of consciousness for their environment, Hickey astutely notes,
“If you [photograph Las Vegas], it’s easier because Vegas is ‘America Concentrate.’ All the soft places, the cushions, and the distances between the nuggets of fact and fantasy have been frozen out. It is all content.” (27)
Thomas Struth. Las Vegas 1. 1999.
This quickly becomes apparent while perusing the pages of this book, through images of prosthetic breasts, casino exteriors, strip club and brothel interiors, lavish pool scenes, and the most fleeting celebrity moments. Paralleling the elimination of the distance between fact and fantasy Hickey references is the very prominent destruction of Walter Benjamin’s aura in these images, which Benjamin defines as “…the unique appearance of a distance, however near it may be” (Work of Art in the Age of Reproducibility, Third Version). Themes in The Book on Vegas are reminiscent of subjects traditionally found in painting: nudes, exotic landscapes, and social scenes. Yet in the works created in the city in the desert, the appearance of a distance is completely eliminated, leaving viewers with suprisingly revealing (and aura-less) images .
Moving towards a more theoretical vein, the desert emerges in a conversation between PORT’s Arcy Douglass and Ed Ruscha as they discuss the deterioration of the image as it is seen through works in the Ruscha exhibition opening at the Portland Art Museum today. L.A. County Museum on Fire (1965-66) has always been one of my favorites by Ruscha, but Azteca/Azteca in Decline (2007) introduces new implications for the deterioration of the image, as Ruscha moves from a painting of a larger scale, dramatic destruction through the institution in the 60s to a gently sagging image seen in terms of temporality (image of Azteca/Azteca in Decline on PORT blog).
Edward Ruscha.The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire 1965-68.Oil on canvas, 53 1/2 x 133 1/2″. Image from the Hirshhorn Museum
These ideas come back to the desert through one of the simpler pieces featured in the discussion: New Wood/Old Wood (see PORT for an image). New Wood/ Old Wood is a small, print edition depicting a piece of wood Ruscha found in the desert in two states, in a perfect and a less perfect form. This project again reminds me of a more drastic piece: the Royal Road Test project Ruscha completed in the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in 1967 (images included in The Book on Vegas). Royal Road Test involved photographing a whole typewriter at the beginning of the trip and then documenting its destruction after being thrown out the window through shots of its broken pieces strewn across desert sand.
Playing with the concept of commodity in art can undoubtedly be a dangerous endeavor. Having a personal affinity for classical theory, I frequently find myself coming back to Kant’s contention in his Critique of Judgement that art should be “useless.” I understand this more in the sense that the artistic design on a Greek krater is not useful in an earthly, utilitarian sense, and hence can be considered “useless” to the function of the krater, rather than the idea that whole krater has to be useless in order to be art.
“There is a ‘true’ simulation and a ‘false’ simulation. When Warhol painted his Campbell’s Soups in the Sixties, it was a coup for simulation and for all modern art: in one stroke, the commodity-object, the commodity-sign were ironically made sacred…But when he painted his Soup Boxes in ‘86, he was no longer illuminating; he was in the stereotype of simulation. In ‘65, he attacked the concept of originality in an original way. In ‘86, he reproduced the unoriginal in an unoriginal way” (in The Conspiracy of Art, p. 108 )
Koons’s work has a relationship to commodity in terms of the role “value” plays within its meaning. Critique and criticism may have been the concepts behind this use of value, but as Artner’s article suggests, Koons may be better remembered for the inherent presence of commercial value in his pieces rather than its absence. In response to this, my question is how will we remember objects such as this:
The Limited-edition “Neverfull bag”: a Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami collaboration, Photo courtesy of Takashi Murakami, Kiki Co., MoCA, and Louis Vuitton; image from Out of the Way
And this:
” Joke Bag”: a Louis Vuitton and Richard Prince collaboration; image from bagbliss.com
Have Murakami and Prince succeeded in achieving Baudrillard’s true illusion, or are they empty simulations of simulations, commercial creations that can be traced back to the kitsch Artner identifies in Koons’s practice; the same kitsch Baudrillard saw as a definitive component of postmodern art and as instrumental to contemporary art’s “death.”
While the purses of Murakami and Prince can be argued as making art accessible to the masses while critiquing the commercialization of both art and present lifestyles characterized by mass consumption through shopping excursions to both high end retail facilities and street knock-off sales, I see their outcomes as questionable.
In comparison, I have an affinity for editions and coin-operated art purchasing. PDL’s Earl art vending machine at The Hideout, Art-O-Mats and 20×200.com all bring one’s interaction with art within the same plane as buying candy bars and books from the ultimate superstore amazon.com. When purchasing from an Art-O-Mat, one exchanges $5 for a token and then exchanges the token for a cigarette-box sized work of art. Somewhere in this process (as well as when using Earl or shopping on 20×200.com), the act of purchasing art becomes more about accessibility than commodity. In contrast, it may seem as though Murakami has permanently transformed the museum store Vuitton bag in the art world’s eyes at the present moment, but will this image persist independently of its product in twenty years as the Soup Can image does now, or will we reflect back on these handbags the way some have begun to look back on the work of Jeff Koons?
The Walker’s series of miniature golf course installations looks like a fantastic experience that can appeal to the general public in a way museums often strive for through their exhibitions. This year features a focus on “the senses”, which is an intriguing avenue to take something historically kitsch in order to give it a level of substance. In miniature golf, the senses seem to bear a distinct relationship to emotions, as both are felt through competition and, as adults, the nostalgia of childhood popular culture. Minneapolis does seem be a bit under-touristy in comparison to hosting the installations somewhere like Florida, where the audience and their expectations of putt-putt courses would differ significantly. However, I still find the prospect of exploring art through sports an interesting impetus, as both audiences of each of these disciplines frequently consider themselves distinct. Of course, in an ideal work of mini golf art, I would expect there to be an artist-designed set of rules for the hole, linking the piece more intimately to the artistic process through physical exertion.
You Complete Me considers the role of the viewer through participatory art. While others have already written about the exhibition, one contention I am uncertain about is found in the article “You Complete Me at Western Bridge Invites Visitors to Interact with the Art” by Gayle Clemans in The Seattle Times, which links the works in the show and the Dada movement while faulting the exhibition on the absence of pieces that reflect political and ideological components found in other participatory art works. The Dadaists certainly challenged passivity, but the wording of Clemans’s review suggests a relationship between You Complete Me and precisely what defined the Happenings of the 1960s, particularly those by Allan Kaprow. In Tom McDonough’s analysis of Allan Kaprow–Art as Life in the March 2008 issue of Art in America, he notes,
“Whatever Kaprow’s break with the postwar consensus (and the McCarthyite repression that guaranteed it), this social accord left its mark on Kaprow; there would be no ideology, no ‘politics,’ behind Happenings, and certainly no Marxism, which was to be categorized for its rigidity. Like the New Left he preceded, Kaprow embraced a down-to-earth, participatory, humane worldview that stopped well short of taking up an explicit ideological position.” (130)
While Dada clearly bears some relation to the work Kaprow began in the 60s, the rejection of ideology inherent to Happenings was, in part, what separated performance and participatory artists from their predecessors. This is the aspect of audience involvement I see most prominent in You Complete Me.
You, the Living is described on SIFF’s website as “A darkly comic symphony shot in 50 stunning segments devoted to the meaning (or meaninglessness) of daily human existence.” The aspect of the segments I found most interesting was the way the ordinary occurrences they portray only become comical with an audience. In typical daily life, the moments depicted in this film would be experienced by their participants by as frustrations or irritations, but before a living body of people watching, they become strangely, and lyrically, hysterical.
The Getty Center’s California Video is an amazing retrospective considered through the lens of a place intimately involved this medium, both artistically and in the mainstream. Walking through the galleries painted black and lined with primitive and contemporary televisions showing a collection of highly influential works by artists such as John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Nancy Buchanan, William Wegman, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, and so many others is the video art history lesson impossible to achieve in a classroom setting on the same level. When juxtaposed against one another, these carefully selected pieces achieve a startlingly complete look at the way themes such as humor, linguistics, authenticity, and technical experimentation interact within video art and continue to influence current video works.
Jennifer Stienkamp. Oculus Sinister (left eye). Image from the Ventura County Star
As I wandered between video stations (most videos were playing beside 4-ft. posts containing text , two sets of headphones, and two headphone inputs for viewers who brought their own sets), I was reminded of Western Bridge’s Multiplex (on view 1.31.08 - 3.29.08), described on the organization’s website as “…an anthology of projected work in projected video and video installation from the first half of this decade.” Overall, both exhibitions were successful in their respective impetuses. However, the one thing I missed in California Video that I distinctly remember as present in Multiplex was darkness.
“Darkness automatically reduces our contact with actuality, depriving us of many environmental data needed for adequate judgments and other mental activities” (Sigfried Kracauer in Theory of Film, 159)
“….what [appreciators of film] really crave is for once to be released from the grip of consciousness, lose their identity in the dark, and let sink in, with their senses ready to absorb them, the images as they happen to follow each other on the screen.” (Kracauer 158-9)
Film and video art are not the same medium (and arguably, video installation and traditional videos also may not necessarily be considered identical either). However, Kracauer’s classical analysis of the role of darkness in projected media is still relevant. In the crowded galleries of California Video, I missed the dark isolation so overt in the way Multiplex’s individual pieces were installed in separate galleries, allowing for the simultaneous collective and independent experiences of each. While headphones and stations were likely the best solutions for showing so many videos in a single exhibition, the immersive, projected-identity aspect of a video piece seen individually in small, black room was lost in the reshuffling of visitors that occurred whenever a pair of headsets became available or another Getty tram arrived at the complex with a handful of visitors.
The External Flame. T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm, Image from Leap into the Void
The one exception was The External Flame by T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm, a full living room environment installation reminiscent of a 1970s room where one might have been watching the small screen when their “Artist President” was originally created. Despite its inherent relationship with the bizarre, The External Flame achieved what is often done by the black box: a forgetting of one’s self in exchange for a procession of images. Resting on a stiff, peach couch, I couldn’t help but fade into the background as T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm overtook my mind, just as they should.
“It is now widely accepted that the art history of the second half of the 20th century is no longer a history of artworks, but a history of exhibitions.” (Harald Szeemann, via Art History Newsletter)
I thought of this quotation as I plan a quick excursion to Los Angeles this weekend and realize I am most looking forward to this:
The mixed reviews have clearly been influential, but I question whether it has more to do with Szeemann’s contention that art history has shifted over the last century and has become oriented around exhibitions rather than individual pieces.
In terms of individual works of art BCAM is supposedly among the best. Extraordinary pieces by Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and many others are clearly things to be seen. Somehow, this is not my priority. The draw of a retrospective exhibition such as Allan Kaprow: Art as Life or a group show like California Video have more temporal implications, simultaneously having the potential to be more fleeting and more timely than a melange of independently noteworthy objects like those at BCAM. Likewise, most audiences hold curators accountable for the arrangement of works in a space, rather than simply the overall selection of works; it seems more forgivable to have a well executed and organized exhibition of lesser known artists than it does to have a poorly organized building full of work by some of the US’s greatest contemporary artists.
In contrast, we are currently in age where iTunes has encouraged a focus on singles instead of albums, and the ability to customize the Internet encourages a pick-and-choose process of information exchange over reading, for example, a single newspaper or magazine that has been put together consciously as a single whole. Gastropubs and small plates are all the rage in the culinary realm, rather than the “bel canto” 3-course meal selected by the chef. Yet I cannot help but agree with Szeemann. Whether it is a formal review, passing conversation, or quick blog perspective, most art conversation is in terms of exhibitions. This was a primary reason Roberta Smith faulted the BCAM in her review:
“I don’t mean to disparage the many impressive works of art here. They represent artists of some or much importance, among them Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Ellsworth Kelly, with a richness that will be both entertaining and informative to the general public. The problem is what they add up to. The ensemble conveys very little in the way of curatorial shape or imagination, or historical perspective.” (The New York Times, 15 Feb 08 )
Perhaps it is that context is also more privileged now than it was in the past. It is possible that the pre-photographic art Benjamin defined as “auratic” and suggested as being appreciated for its authenticity and original existence may require less context for viewing. I suspect it is more than this, but I may have more to say about this after visiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology this weekend as well, which I anticipate offering the most fascinating insight into authenticity of any of L.A.’s organizations.
Last weekend, I was in Michigan not seeing any art. My plan had been to delve into the Art in America from May still waiting to be broken into, but I absentmindedly forgot almost all of my reading. I came across Bringing Down the House in the paperback section of a Sea-Tac bookstore and remembered a recent Art-to-Go post about the movie adaptation of this book (thank you to Regina and to Carolyn Zick for recent posts on Peripheral Vision, by the way).
So, I picked up the book, but en route to finishing this quick read (not the highest quality of writing, but at least more accurate in terms of race than the movie), found myself wishing for the February issue of Art in America, which included a report on the Las Vegas Art Museum’sLas Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland, an exhibition curated by Dave Hickey that includes work from 26 of his former students from UNLV ( “Report from Las Vegas: Sin City Slickers” 63-67).
Christopher Knight briefly discussed the exhibition (now on view at the Laguna Art Museum through June 1), highlighting Tim Bavington’sStep (In) Out, a piece outwardly reminiscent of neon signs. However, he notes:
“The studies show how Bavington orchestrates his pictorial compositions. Musical scores are used almost as found objects, with the colored stripe pattern following a dispassionate logic worthy of Conceptual master Sol Lewitt. The results are anything but cool and common-sensical.” (”Around the Galleries”, LA Times, 21 March 2008, Part E, p. 20)
False appearances are key aspects of representing the seemingly utopic Vegas. Bavington’s seemingly random bands of bright colors are in reality entirely systematic and methodical, created by transposing musical compositions into stripes varying in hue and width based on the notes of the song being translated. Oddly similar to the way the MIT students of Bringing Down the House created false appearances of frivolous, drunk gamblers as they signaled across the casinos to one another and in coded dialogues while counting six decks of cards at a time, both representations suggest (as does author of the Art in America article Kirsten Swenson of UNLV) that there is something more to Las Vegas’s contemporary art scene than one expects from fake Venician canals and 1990’s American excess.
The similarities between these two disparate works bearing relationships to Sin City bring to mind the book I did remember to bring on my flight, The Conspiracy of Art by Jean Baudrillard. In his 1995 essay “Aesthetic Illusion and Disillusion”, Baudrillard argues,
“In coming to pass, all of the utopias of the 19th and 20th centuries have chased reality from reality and left us in a meaningless hyperreality, since any final perspective has been absorbed, digested, leaving only a residue of a surface without depth.” (120)
Las Vegas typically appears to be the perfect place to find an absence of depth. However, the artifacts and representations of this bizzare place may in actuality be worthy of further pursuit; perhaps they are even as faithfully deceptive as the images and ideas found within the city’s portrayal that take on the questions of underlying truths.
erin l.