These Objects are Loved

12Oct09

“Vortexhibition Polyphonica” is an intimidating exhibition title.  A vortex is a swirling mass, coming from the Latin vertere, meaning “to turn.”  A polyphony is a vocal texture derived from multiple independent voices.  How this could be applied to an exhibition was perplexing.  It sounded like it could be a psychedelic journey of sorts (at least metaphorically), or a perhaps just a concept impossible to grasp.  My biggest concern was this title sounded impersonal, something an exhibition of a museum’s collection should never be.

E.V. Day. Cherry Bomb Vortex (detail). 2002. Red sequin dress with monofilament and turnbuckles and stainless steel base. Image from E.V.Day.net

But, I went to the Henry, wandering into the galleries knowing only that Vortexhibition Polyphonica (V.P.) is a collection-based show in which objects will change periodically. When entering, I used the large, cascading staircase overlooking the space.  From above, the exhibition was noticeably interdisciplinary and immediately felt robust: photographs, paintings, dresses, an historical rug and red stilettos were among the curious objects filling the Stroum Gallery’s vast landscape.

At the bottom of the stairs, I was expecting exhibition text; instead, I immediately was drawn to a curtained video gallery and encountered Gary Hill, emphatically throwing his body against the wall.  Pained, disjointed sentences physically combine with an intense strobe effect (both a filmed strobe in the video and a physical light the room of the installation), heightening the impact of the repeated collisions in Wall Piece. The work can be seen as a direct confrontation and dissolution between the artist and myriad forces: the creative process, language, the mind, the physical being.  All the while, the altercation is displayed prominently on the wall for us to see.

Gary Hill. Wall Piece. 2000. Single-channel, video/sound installation with strobe light, 2 min. 17 sec.

In a video created by SFMOMA , Hill discusses the active role of the viewer in Wall Piece because of the nature of the images in the video as what he describes as “verbs.”  While this idea is certainly essential to experiencing this particular work, it is also an idea that V.P. as a whole appears very conscious of, in the best of ways.

Modern Art Notes recently examined questions related to permanent/semi-permanent collection displays in contemporary art museums.  Collections-based, temporary exhibitions are similarly complicated in that a museum’s permanent collection is more than a series of objects; there is also a community of people who are invested in the objects, often in a highly emotional regard.

In essay “Collecting: Body and Soul,” Susan Pearce notes,

“A number of studies carried out in America unite to demonstrate how significant possessions are to the self-image… and interestingly, these [studies] tend to suggest that the critical factor is the extent to which we believe we possess or are possessed by an object: control, one way or another, is what makes an object become more a part of the self.” (Museums, Objects, and Collections 55)

Although a museum’s collection is not a possession of the public in the traditional sense, individuals can feel a certain sense of ownership and intimacy with the objects as resources within their communities.  As Pearce suggests, the feeling of ownership can include a desire for control. Vortexhibition Polyphonica excels in its reverence for the relationship between a museum’s collection and its community by incorporating interesting shifts away the standard format of an exhibition during its “polyphonic” moments, which come through the exhibition text as much as they come through the works on view.

Curator Sara Krajewski’s voice is acknowledged in the text she wrote through the use of bylines, which has become standard practice in many institutions as of late. However, Krajewski also incorporates the subjective “I” in a way more forthright than most wall text I have seen.  This approach highlights the way exhibition text in general is written from someone’s point of view rather than from “the institution,” with a greater call for active viewing among visitors as they consider and compare their own perspectives.  The subjective statements also emphasize the more emotive aspects of art, including a curators’ close relationship with the organization’s permanent collection, which can be put at a distance by the “institutional voice” of standard text.

The rest of the polyphony stems from a letter from the donor of one of the objects, graduate student writings, external scholars’ responses and re-used exhibition texts (some with notation of the original author) comprising the majority of the extended labels.  Some of the writings are factual and lengthy while others display their objects’ histories in such a way that the texts seem to become part of the works rather than merely a form of presentation.  Even the physical way these objects inhabit the Henry’s building and its multiple entrances to the Stroum Gallery (center staircase, cascading staircase and elevator) is represented: the introductory text invites viewers to begin from any location, ultimately enabling them to take ownership of the process of interacting with the art.

This summer I visited a collections-based exhibition at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art featuring new acquisitions that happened to be seminal works from the last seventy years of art history. I expect to remember seeing some of those works for most of my life.  However, I do not anticipate remembering the exhibition: a white cube display of objects that relate to one another in terms of an institutional mission, as told through an institutional voice.  The art was impactful, but Louisiana itself kept a traditional role as the distanced keeper of this art. There is nothing wrong with this. However, there is a particular value in creating a dynamic presentation of a permanent collection in a way that contextualizes works of art within a greater dialogue of timely perspectives.  Exhibitions like Vortexhibition Polyphonica facilitate the rethinking of objects that are already loved by creating a “verb” experience and inviting the viewer into the conversation.

Filed under: contemporary art, exhibition, interdisciplinary, local, museology, museums, peripheral vision   |  2 Comments
Tags: collection, community, contemporary art, gary hill, henry art gallery, louisiana museum of modern art, love, museum, polyphony, verb, viewer, voice, vortexhibition polyphonica, wall piece

The IKEA Parody

22Sep09

It is nearly impossible to access a kunsthalle in Scandinavia in late August, particularly before 12 pm.  I learned this quickly while traveling there as of late.  Art spaces are also not always in the most accessible locations. In Helsinki, a former cable factory/Nokia headquarters called Kaapelitehdas is inhabited by various disciplines of artists  “from morning to night”, but navigating public transportation in Finnish while traveling on a tight schedule was a challenge I could not overcome.  Summer hours, changed locations, and late opening times prevented my seeing Magasin 3, Bonnierskonsthall, Charlottenborg, Gl Strand and Nikolaj. I eventually made my way to Liljevalchs in Stockholm and was thrilled to find it open. And then I realized the focus of the one major exhibition I was about to see: IKEA AT LILJEVALCHS.

IKEA AT LILJEVALCHS exhibition poster,  designed by Mattias Frodlund, image from Liljevalchs

IKEA is an important business for Sweden. It is largely the reason many contemporary Americans own affordable furniture of a Scandinavian aesthetic and are aware of the lingonberry’s existence.  My preconceived  associations of the chain with disposable college wares made the realization that I was about to walk into an exhibition about the history of IKEA somewhat of a disappointment.

The show at Liljevalchs was what one might expect an IKEA exhibition to be based on shopping in the store.  The first gallery was a “marketplace” that contained a cafe with cheap pastries. There were children’s toys and play zones. Blue and yellow arrows on the floor directed visitors to the next gallery, which contained images of IKEA catalogs from the beginning of its existence in 1950.  There was a tornado-shaped sculpture of black ÖGLA cafe chairs that evoked the whirlwind of guitars in Trimpin’s If VI Was IX: Roots and Branches at the Experience Music Project, as well as some of the elements of multiples in Lead Pencil Studio’s Retail/Commercial.  Another gallery featured spotlights on various designers over the corporation’s history, similar to the IKEA 2010 catalog I recently received in the mail highlighting specific designers under the heading “Great design comes from open minds and a tight budget.”

IKEA AT LILJEVALCHS (installation shot), image by kj.vogelius

One of the more intriguing spaces in the exhibition focused on IKEA’s brief experimentation with questions of authenticity and reproduction in the 1990s: the “Gustavian” series of furniture from 1995. During this project made at the request of the Swedish National Heritage Board, IKEA designers were invited to select specific objects from the Medevi Brunn historic site and recreate the works using inexpensive materials, to be sold in IKEA stores as a means for raising awareness and money for the original collection.  The new items were  stamped with the term “ORIGINAL COPY” and now, according to the exhibition text, fetch high prices at auctions around the world.

“The Gustativan Room,” IKEA AT LILJEVALCHS, image from Liljevalchs.

Through this exercise in re-creation, IKEA separated the museum object from its originality; the Gustiavian pieces once only available at the Medevi Brunn historical site became common in homes across Sweden and the world. Yet, the use (and monetary) value of the “authentic” object was also impacted through this action, creating the Gustavian line’s unusual status as “original copies” of museum-worthy designs.  The intertwining  of authenticity,  commodity and utility within these pieces of furniture illustrates the parallel nature of the IKEA store and the museum.

Inside IKEA, one can touch, use, purchase and consume.  Inside the museum, one can watch and experience. Yet IKEA and the museum overlap in myriad ways. IKEA AT LILJEVALCHS is provocative through its success in seamlessly merging the two, to the point where one is forced to question whether the entire exhibition is a moment of shopping or one of high art.   When I found myself following the arrows on the floor as though I were navigating an IKEA store in search of a bookcase or kitchen wares, I thought more about the Jewish Museum Berlin’s structure than I did about shopping.  The Jewish Museum’s floors are covered in a line of red arrows because the layout of the installations within Libeskind’s twisting mass would otherwise be extremely difficult to follow.

IKEA arrow; image by Prof Michael Stoll

Although there is reason to believe stores such as IKEA are created to be confusing so as to encourage more time spent in the store (and ultimately more shopping), it may not be surprising that one of the largest and earliest IKEA buildings was modeled after Wright’s Guggenheim building in New York.  IKEA’s diorama-like displays of fully assembled rooms within their stores also bear striking resemblances to the rows of taxidermy settings that line institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History.  Ultimately, stores strive to keep their customers from leaving while museums aim to create a comfortable learning environment. Somehow, these goals both lead to similar structures and spaces.

IKEA showroom/diorama, image from Josh.ev9.org

Diorama at the American Museum of Natural History, image by Dom Dada

Most noticable in the IKEA AT LILEJEVALCHS exhibition was the absence of criticality directed towards the IKEA corporation.  The text and displays completely ignore the negative aspects of the company, such as the disposable decorative arts and design culture IKEA has created in a way the world has not seen before. While it is easy to say that an exhibition about a single corporation would never be allowed to happen in a US museum (which may or may not be true), the history of museums demonstrates a similarly edited exhibition structure in the museum enviroment.  In Museology courses, we referred to the Smithsonian’s 1994 Enola Gay controversy as “the dead horse” because it was a constant topic of discussion in relation to the persistent lack of critical discourse in contemporary American exhibitions.  Like the retail entity that avoids controversial subject matter in advertisements in their stores, museums in America often take the quiet route on exhibitions, avoiding some of the most relevant political and social issues in the process.

As the exhibition of IKEA began to seem more and more like a parody of contemporary American museums, part of me wished that Liljevalchs had included empty shopping carts for visitors to push between the galleries as a means for heightening the similarities. Then again, bringing the store and the museum together too closely can be disheartening; if the events leading to the current state of the economy are any indication, shopping is not a challenge, nor a meaningful experience for the public. In this respect, it behooves the museum to step outside its comfort zone and introduce truly challenging exhibitions that go beyond the banality that plagues the passive presentation of experiences.

Filed under: authenticity, commodity, contemporary art, critique, exhibition, interdisciplinary, museology, museums, peripheral vision, popular culture, visual culture   |  1 Comment
Tags: commodity, criticism, decorative arts, design, furniture, ikea, ikea at liljevalchs, kunsthalle, liljevalchs, museums, reproduction, scandinavia, shopping, stockholm

Conspicuous Consumption: Food TV and the Louvre Experience

17Aug09

“Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch” is an essay by Michael Pollan recently published in The New York Times Magazine.  I am the “couch” part of this article. Top Chef, Chopped, Iron Chef , Ace of Cakes, The Next Food Network Star, and Hell’s Kitchen are shows that regularly consume my time and conversations.  It is easy to justify this behavior with the notion that food television is educational; I am learning about the existence of ingredients, cooking techniques, and general food-related vocabulary. Not surprisingly, I rarely cook anything more complex than pasta with store-bought Cabernet marinara sauce.

Judging round, Burger Quickfire Challenge, Top Chef Masters (Bravo)

I learn very little from food television in terms of  actual cooking. The majority of my “participation” comes in the form of debating how the “Top Chef Master” will inevitably be Hubert Keller or the merciless inclusion of grape jelly in the Chopped appetizer basket.   Pollan’s article suggests I am not alone:

“What we mainly learn about on the Food Network in prime time is culinary fashion… these shows take the fear — the social anxiety — out of ordering in restaurants… Then, at the judges’ table, we learn how to taste and how to talk about food. For viewers, these shows have become less about the production of high-end food than about its consumption — including its conspicuous consumption.” (New York Times Magazine, 02 Aug 2009)

“Conspicuous consumption” implies a changed role of the viewer, who now behaves as a spectator or voyeur rather than as a direct participant. We are invited into the creative process, the eating, and the critical response.  The presentation of a final product once reserved for the end of a cooking show is now a constant focus across “reality”-based food television and often occurs multiple times throughout single episodes.  Aesthetics also takes an increasingly important role.  This is likely because the visual appearance of a dish is one of the only judging criterion viewers can participate in from a distance; taste is a lost sense in the television world.

Dessert round, Chopped (The Food Network)

Thanks largely to the editing process characteristic of reality TV, cooking is now a  spectacle with a narrative arc that more closely resembles drama than instructional education.  The Food Network is known for over-saturating the coloring of its programs to heighten the aesthetics of the food; why wouldn’t we want to turn off the lights in the room while watching?  Theater-level silence during judgment sessions on these shows is also key; it would be disappointing to miss criticism of the cooking demo that prevents someone from becoming “The Next Food Network Star.”  Most importantly, it would be devastating to be unable to relay one’s opinions about the outcome of the food contest in the office/among friends the next day, either in full support of or total disagreement against the winning dish that no one participating in the conversation has even tasted.  Such debates are ultimately ones of conspicuous culture consumption rather than actual food consumption.

The concept of “conspicuous consumption” resonated in my mind as I was reading “At the Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus,” the widely circulated New York Times article by Michael Kimmelman.  Kimmelman articulates a well-known concern regarding the amount of time visitors spend actually looking at and analyzing art while visiting a museum.  He postulates that the reasons tourists visit masterpieces are more about the self than the art:

“…tourists now wander through museums, seeking to fulfill their lifetime’s art history requirement in a day, wondering whether it may now be the quantity of material they pass by rather than the quality of concentration they bring to what few things they choose to focus upon that determines whether they have ‘done’ the Louvre. It’s self-improvement on the fly.” (The New York Times 02 Aug 09)

Entrance to the Louvre, Image from Igoyougo.com, by pointofnoreturn.

Quantity is a clear priority at the Louvre, to the  point that the museum acquiesced, to a certain extent, by providing a map with images of the museum’s best known works embedded within the gallery renderings; one can beeline to each without the aimless wandering that enables one to happen upon lesser-known pieces. While I agree that it would be ideal for Louvre visitors to spend more time looking at the art, I do not know that using the bourgeois Grand Tour of the 17-19th centuries as a model is useful during a time when world travel is accessible to a broader range of people, including those without the time and financial means to study the arts to the fullest extent.

As something that was once done primarily by slaves and servants, cooking has a history opposite that of art museums in terms of its relationship to the general public: visiting a museum was originally only available to the wealthy while cooking was primarily done by the working class.   Yet both disciplines intersect in the act of conspicuous consumption.  At the Louvre, culture is again selected for consumption over content.  The culture of the Louvre is the experience of going to a renowned arts institution, visiting popular culture icons and sharing that experience with others.

Flickr and Facebook are filled with images of art historical sights such as the Venus de Milo and the Parthenon.  In the same way that a non-culinary individual like myself talks about cooking through the vehicle of food television, those without a solid visual arts education use the experience of places like the Louvre as a way to talk about the more universal aspects of arts experiences.  Few would deny that the plexi-glass and guards surrounding the Mona Lisa are part of experiencing the painting; these are the reality of the work of art and its cultural status.  There is almost no way to avoid seeing the Mona Lisa this way, and consequently a common debate is whether the painting is as noteworthy as we learned in grade school or if we thought it was entirely too tainted by its present surroundings.

The Mona Lisa experience, The Louvre, Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Sergey Meniailenko

If social media has demonstrated anything, it is the current desire to share experiences and initiate a dialogue with others.  While those of us who work in art museums  encourage such discussions to be focused on the content of art, a conversation that provokes critical thinking and debate as a result of a visit to the Louvre should not be undervalued.  I do not think that every tourist who snaps a photo of the Nike of Samothrace is having a worthwhile discussion about the art, the experience of seeing the Nike, or otherwise.

The reality of the current state of arts education dicatates that most who enter the Louvre do not have a significantly more masterful grasp of  visual arts vocabulary than I do of Gordon Ramsay’s technique terminology; however, this does not mean those who do not linger at specific works are not having a meaningful experience, either.  Many Louvre visitors are there for the conspicous consumption of the experience of going to the Louvre. Likewise, I go to the Louvre to see and linger with specific works of art, even if it means I see almost nothing there.  Yet, I am on my couch to consume the dramatic battles of food television and argue vehmently, but thoughtfully, against others who speak this cultural language.

Filed under: contemporary art, critique, interdisciplinary, museology, museums, popular culture   |  2 Comments
Tags: art history, chopped, consumption, Culture, food, food network, food tv, icons, louvre, masterpiece, museums, popular culture, spectacle, spectator, top chef

Naughty Teens, Garbanzo Beans, Rancho and Language Games

21Jul09

The gaze is everywhere in Eric Yahnker’s installation Naughty Teens/Garbanzo Beans. It is behind the shades in low-lying plaster sculpture John Wayne Dressed for Tennis. It floats above our heads when projected from the large-scale graphite drawing Her Happiness Scramble. The naughty teens from the title piece stare us down, as does the viewer’s own reflection in the mirrored surfaces of Analogous to the Fall of that One Empire (Moby Dick), despite being obscured by the letters of Moby Dick stacked in cocaine-like mounds in the round.

Eric Yahnker. Naughty Teens/Garbanzo Beans (installation detail). Image from Ambach & Rice.

Eric Yahnker was a journalism major, so his gaze is not a wordless one.  We know that Dorothy Gale’s shock arises from the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and that the cup, toothbrush and Preparation H on a pedestal comprise Helen Keller Joke #4 from reading the images and labels.  Reading <0-101 also reveals Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations tucked between 25th Hour and 27 Dresses.

Ruscha and Yahnker play aggressive word games with their viewers. When I think about Naughty Teens/Garbanzo Beans in the context of Ed Ruscha, I keep finding the liquid word paintings at the forefront of the way to connect the two.  Rancho (1968), for instance, successfully demonstrates how the banal pleasure of looking and reading can be transformed into something visceral that comes from the interaction between image, word, and connotation. An instinctive knowledge is essential because the only way Rancho can be interesting is if we have associations with the word and color of the painting and of how the liquid depicted would look if it were not a painting.

Edward Ruscha. Rancho. 1968. © Edward Ruscha, image from EdRuscha.com.

This is one of Ruscha’s many manipulations of language. Lyotard considers language games en route to his understanding of the postmodern narrative:

“Great joy is had in the endless invention of turns of phrase, of words and meanings, the process behind the evolution of language on the level of parole. But undoubtedly even this pleasure depends on a feeling of success won at the expense of an adversary– at least one adversary, and a formidable one: the accepted language, or connotation.” (Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge 9).

Ruscha is an obvious master of the processes Lyotard describes, and Yahnker’s work has clear links to its pop art predecessors. However, the manipulation of phrases, titles, and meaning in Naughty Teens/Garbanzo Beans is most interesting in the outspoken relationship it evokes between work and viewer.

Eric Yahnker. WE ARE THE WORLD/WE ARE THE CHILDREN. 2009. Colored pencil on paper. Image from Ambach & Rice.

In addition to playing with associations, pieces such as WE ARE THE WORLD/WE ARE THE CHILDREN physically “pop” within the viewer’s mind.  This sensation is a multi-step process including, but not limited to: a recognition of familiar images, a realization of the satirical juxtapositions, and the moment of informed understanding of the image/word game at the end of our gaze. In the case of WE ARE THE WORLD…, disembodied, hand-drawn heads become the words describing a live musical scene frequently flashed across television retrospectives and memoirs, particularly as of late.  Yet in this context, it is no longer about the death of Michael Jackson or the latest way to raise money for Africa.  Instead, the image/word game is all the viewer sees. This is true both within individual works of the installation, as well as between works.

The greatest success of this game is the critical perspective such an experience provides.  In many ways, Naught Teens/Garbanzo Beans puts popular culture in the white cube, affixing the most valuable components to the wall so that we can see the humor, the stereotypes, the ridiculous and the essential, all typically obscured by the saturation of everyday life.  Although subtler and less serious than the endeavours of the pop artists, Naughty Teens/Garbanzo Beans is in many ways similar to the relief of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report: clever, poignant, and the best way to end the day.

Filed under: Artists, art theory, contemporary art, critique, exhibition, interdisciplinary, local, peripheral vision, popular culture, visual culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: ambach & rice, association, connotation, ed ruscha, eric yahnker, gaze, humor, image, installation, jean-francoise lyotard, language, language games, moby dick, pop art, popular culture, rancho, sartre, satire, text, the postmodern condition, visual culture, we are the world, words

Authentic Objects: Rhinestone vs. Glove

10Jul09

When I saw the largest rhinestone in the world at the Liberace Museum, I was surprised at my own disappointment. It sparkled as much as one would expect as it rotated on a black motorized base, but the impact of physically seeing this object was strikingly minimal.

World’s Largest Rhinestone, the Liberace Museum, Las Vegas; image by Jason M., Yelp.

Not having seen any photographs of the rhinestone prior to my visit, my expectations were based on its power as communicated by Dave Hickey in Air Guitar essay “A Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz.”  He named it the keystone of the museum and the pinnacle of authenticity when juxtaposed against the antique items Liberace collected.  This reading was certainly true; the rhinestone embodied Liberace’s contributions and personality more than any other  in the museum. However, this was a more cerebral affect than I expected.  The sort of “authenticity” I anticipated and could not find  related more to the physical encounter with the rock. The absence of that highly addictive “wow” moment of seeing “the real thing” was the source of my struggle.

This evening I left work for an exhibition I thought would either elicit an extreme sense of wonder or would fall inexplicably flat in a display beyond the level of spectacle even I can enjoy: a tribute to Michael Jackson at the Experience Music Project.  Despite pursuing a master’s degree in Museum Studies in the city of Seattle for two years, I had never been to the EMP prior to today.  Immediately upon entering I was confronted by the building’s interior labyrinth of fluorescent walls and staircases converging into a mysterious core of museum galleries.

Northwest Passage, Experience Music Project. Image from the Experience Music Project.

I decided the best approach to this foray into popular culture was to “happen upon” the MJ tribute.  While wandering the chrome hallways the second floor of the museum, I noticed the constant spectacle inherent in the presentation of objects. The galleries were noticeably dark, heightening the glossiness of  instruments perfectly suspended in their cases. In the “Northwest Passage,”  gluttonous collections of grunge memorabilia were thickly montaged across the walls; by the time I reached the Nirvana spread, I was ready for a booming voice from above to proclaim, “You have arrived at Kurt Cobain’s guitar.”

I started to see that my plan was flawed; I wandered past Trimpin’s IF VI WAS IX: Roots and Branches guitar-tornado sculpture multiple times before asking for assistance.

Trimpin. IF VI WAS IX:Roots and Branchces. Image from Travel Japan Blog.

I found a guard at the end of the Jimi Hendrix memorabilia hallway, and she directed me back to the dark gallery containing the guitar-tornado.  She said “the glove” was there and suddenly I wondered if a single glove comprised the entire tribute, if this journey were going to lead only to disappointment.

I reentered the dark gallery and saw a small, freestanding plexiglass  case off to the side, facing away from Trimpin’s sculpture.  As I approached, the back of a black garment came into view, its dulled sequins offering a muted reflection of the gallery lighting: the famed jacket from Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever.  Immobile, the jacket was far from the stunning piece I remembered from its image on TV.  But as I came around the front of the case, the glove was immediately very present: white, illuminated and covered in crystal sequins.

The plexiglass surrounding the jacket and glove was covered in fingerprints.  The only other objects in the case were a black mount and a small, modest text panel containing a brief overview of Jackson’s musical accomplishments and ultimate demise.  In comparison not only to the excess of the EMP’s other displays, but also the entire process of Michael Jackson’s death, the understatement of this display was perhaps the most appropriate tribute to his life I have seen to date: the glove brilliantly glowing in the dark gallery, allowed to speak for itself.

Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”, Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever.

Staring as it reflected specks of light through the plexi and across my shirt,  I was engrossed by the realness of this object I had assumed would look no different from any other time I had seen it in photographs, on MTV and, most recently, in the Hollywood-style memorial service for the King of Pop.  But it was the way I had always seen this glove as an image that made its authenticity so tangible when I encountered it in person.

The transitory moment from an  exclusively two dimensional, media-based relationship to one in three dimensions instigates the wondrous “wow” response, during which we see an aspect of an object and its context that is not visible in reproductions. Although it is intuitive to think that something as hyper-real (and generally hyped) as Michael Jackson’s glove cannot possibly offer anything new to experience, seeing the realness of this object differs distinctly from seeing it on television or in a magazine; in use, it focused eyes on Michael’s movement, but in a dark, quiet corner of the EMP, its concentrated command of attention creates its own plane of existence.

Similar to pop music itself, the glove is easy; it is easy to like and easy to think of as the object that would embody Michael Jackson best.  Yet like Liberace’s rhinestone and its own facet of authenticity, the glove, in its understated display, provides insight into the intricacies of how reality interacts and slides beneath the surface of the images that replace it.

Filed under: art theory, authenticity, excess, exhibition, local, museology, peripheral vision, popular culture, visual culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: authenticity, billie jean, dave hickey, display, experience music project, glove, liberace, liberace museum, michael jackson, museums, objects, rhinestone, wonder

Spectacular, Spectacular: Venice, Vegas, and the A-Y-P Expo

17Jun09

On Artsbeat, Randy Kennedy recently recounted a Kafkaesque experience receiving his press credentials at the Venice Biennale:

“The words ‘grande confusione’ are often heard. They were running through my head as a woman told me I was in the wrong place and that I should walk to the Arsenale, the other site for the event, several blocks away. They were in my head again when a woman at the Arsenale told me I was at the wrong entrance and needed to walk to the other end of the blocks-long building. Here, they could discover no record of my existence – but they looked me over warily, eyeballed my credentials and grudgingly wrote out a pass for me anyway.”

Out There: Architeture Beyond Building, Venice Biennale 2008, image by dysturb

Not being a member of the press, I don’t know how common this feeling might be; in my mind, it evoked one of the most memorable press check-in scenes in modern literature:

“My legs felt rubbery. I gripped the desk and sagged toward her as she held out the envelope, but I refused to accept it.  The woman’s face was changing: swelling, pulsing…horrible green jowls and fangs jutting out, the face of a Moray Eel! Deadly poison! I lunged backwards into my attorney, who gripped my arm as he reached out to take the note.” (Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 23)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998).

Hunter S. Thompson’s vividly drug-induced scene is the most appropriate way to begin their spectacular journey to the Mint 400 race in Las Vegas. If nothing else, an experience on the Las Vegas Strip is one of pure spectacle, burying the spectator in disproportionately large hotel facades, casino-specific air scents, and flashes of LED screens (or neon in Old Vegas). It is inevitably Dave Hickey who captures the essence of Las Vegas-brand spectacle best in an introduction to the photography-focused The Book on Vegas:

“There is…this gorgeous life you feel in the pit of your stomach as you step out onto the Strip in the cool midnight air. I call it the “Vegas effect. It is all about colored light in atmospheric space–extremely vivid colored light in a very large, dark space, a little bit like stepping into the middle of an acid-drenched constellation–and photographs can’t do that…They can capture the space at the expense of the color or the color at the expense of the space, but if you want both, you have to be there.” (“Deciding About Las Vegas” 27)

In other words, Las Vegas is the obvious culmination of spectacle.

Although distinct in many respects, including content and intent, biennials typically have their own forms of spectacle; elements of unexpected scale, and the extreme are some of the vehicles for spectacle I recall from works in New Orleans’s Prospect.1 and the Whitney Biennial.  Although such events do not always make for astute journalism, it is rare to have a noteworthy spectacle without the presence of the press.

The Mint, Downtown Las Vegas, 1970, image from Photos Las Vegas.

As the first on the scene, the press can signify the beginning of a journey into a spectacle, which may offer some insight into the unique press credentials experiences described by Kennedy and Thompson.  After this period of initiation, the spectacular occurrence begins.  In the instance of multi-day events such as an art biennial or a weekend in Las Vegas, this can become a pilgrimage of spectacle: a series of stops, sites and way-finding amidst a saturation (or over-saturation) of the senses.

This summer, Seattle is reconsidering its own historical spectacle: the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909.  Similar to its previous incarnation, the current A-Y-P event requires a pilgrimage around town to various sites, including 4Culture, the Museum of History and Industry and the UW campus, the original site of the A-Y-P  Expo (a journey itself for Seattle’s residents in 1909).

Display of Southern California fruits, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, 1909, image from Wikimedia Commons

Expositions were a regular source of spectacle for late 19th and 20th century citizens.  The A-Y-P Exposition had its fair share of this, ranging from a race of 55 Model T’s from New York to Seattle to the disturbing use of indigenous people as scenes in the fair’s displays.  Eventually becoming the buildings for some of America’s museums, including the Museum of Science and Industry and the Pacific Science Center, expos impacted the viewing of objects throughout American history, and to a certain extent, continue to do so; this is demonstrated by traveling blockbuster exhibitions that rely on spectacle through perceived exoticism (King Tut), shock (Body Worlds) and mainstream popular culture (Titanic). Not surprisingly, two of the three blockbuster shows listed have semi-permanent homes in Las Vegas casinos.

Grand staircase replica, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, image by sgurr.

Thus far, the only location of the current A-Y-P exhibition I visited is Gallery4Culture, which houses 100 years…For better or worse, featuring the work of lead artists Dawn Cerny and Patrick Holderfield with Doug Keyes, Lisa Liedgren, Carlos Ruiz, Clara Sims, Daniel Smith and Brent Watanabe. Cerny’s recreation of A-Y-P souvenir flags was a highlight, showcasing an overt criticality of the exposition though appropriated kitsch.  Almost as interesting were the two sheets of text entitled “Souvenir Flags Inventory.”  There, Cerny comments on the contradictions, offenses and general strangeness of the A-Y-P Expo in brief bouts of cynicism.  A favorite was, “How American to think that history is most impressive when measured in stone,” which was written in relation to a flag that read, “Over 10 tons of prehistoric stone relics.”

© Dawn Cerny, We hate you, Silk, felt, fringe, 26″ x 33″, 2009, image from 4Culture

Ultimately, Seattle’s current A-Y-P Expo is important because it is doing what is rarely done in museums and exhibitions: it is critical of something from the past that was once championed and loved.  Whether it takes the form of a gambling mecca, a biennal or an exhibition, it is always easy to love spectacle.  The new A-Y-P emphasizes the need to get beyond passive viewing and enter a more challenging arena, whether we are the presenters of objects or in the role of the spectator.

Filed under: contemporary art, critique, destruction, excess, exhibition, interdisciplinary, local, museology, popular culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: a-y-p, alaska, blockbuster exhibitions, casinos, dave hickey, dawn cerny, exhibitions, exposition, fear and loathing in las vegas, hunter s. thompson, journey, kitsch, las vegas, pacific, pilgrimage, popular culture, press credentials, randy kennedy, seattle, spectacle, venice biennale, visual culture, yukon

Entering the Pod: Ann Lislegaard and 2001

12May09

It is easy to forget the elevator at the Henry Art Gallery if it is not typically essential to your visit.  The elevator’s history may not be as rich as the wall dissected by Jen Graves, but this structure has encased its own share of memorable, often subtler works.  Currently, Ann Lislegaard’s sound installation Science Fiction_3112 (after 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick) inhabits the space, serving as a portal between the outside world and Lislegaard’s three large scale video installations below, in the Stroum Gallery.

Image from Crystal World (after JG Ballard). Ann Lislegaard. 2005. 2-channel, 3-D animation with sound, two leaning screens.  Image from Ballardian.

Although I always appreciated the effect of finding art in the elevator during the time I spent working/interning at the Henry (And Deer and Trees and Things by Cat Clifford was one of my favorites), this use of the space strikes me as the most effective, ultimately enhancing my experience of the exhibition overall.  Particularly as someone with a limited history with science fiction (both in terms of film and literature), the elevator became my point of entry for Ann Lislegaard: 2062.

The year 2001 has played an intermittent role throughout my life. The first time I was really aware of its images was when the opening sequences were projected across the doors of my high school before a senior party.  I graduated in 2001, so the group of faculty members and parents planning the event found 2001: A Space Odyssey’s prophetic insight appropriate for such an occasion even though many among the graduating class had never seen it, myself included.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2qNR6XHbs8

Trailer for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

This year, 2001 finally made its way back to me, when it was the most appealing movie available “On Demand.” The film’s level of impact on visual culture and its anticipation of our current dependence on images almost goes without saying by this point, and that became obvious after seeing it once.  A few weeks later, I returned to 2001 again inside the pod-like environment of Henry’s elevator. This time, it was in the form of Ann Lislegaard’s Science Fiction_3112, without any images; instead, the two and a half hours of Kubrick’s carefully selected sounds and silences are distilled into less than nine minutes of concentrated reverberations, instrumentation, and utterances, all contained within the elevator as it moves (or remains closed and motionless) between the museum’s three floors.

The theme of circularity permeates 2001: A Space Odyssey, and those were the images I clung to while in the elevator.  The view of the flight attendant walking along the wall and ceiling in a spiral as she delivers a tray of liquid dinner to Dr. Floyd and the rotation of the Discovery 1 as an astronaut exercises inside the perimeter were two moments that readily came to mind.  Likewise, at the back of Ann Lislegaard: 2062, a leaning black monolith, installed among the sounds of another film influenced by 2001 (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), brings us back to the references inside the elevator at the front of the exhibition. The focus of Ann Lislegaard: 2062 resides between these two 2001-related points of entry; yet the frame of Kubrick’s film reworked facilitates a deeper engagement with the main video works for myself, the non-sci-fi inclined, ultimately demonstrating the relationship science fiction maintains with universality through manipulations of time, sound and image.

Filed under: contemporary art, exhibition, film, interdisciplinary, local, peripheral vision, popular culture, video art, visual culture   |  4 Comments
Tags: 2001: a space odyssey, ann lislegaard, ann lislegaard: 2062, elevator, henry art gallery, science fiction, sound installation, space, time, universality, video art

Arts Writing and “The New Thing”

03May09

Last week’s much talked-about Art Klatch, hosted by Scott Lawrimore at Cafe Presse, briefly touched on the question of whether online media prevents non-arts inclined members of the community from happening upon arts coverage and criticism (summarized on Translinguistic Other).  Based on my graduate work in the online realm, I knew I very much disagree with this concern but had not completely formulated why.  Fortunately, I discovered that diacritical already articulated many important aspects of the matter:

“The reason the critics were at newspapers was because that’s the place that supported them. As something else rises to take their place, the critics will go there.

I’ve recently come to feel that the new thing (whatever that is) won’t have a chance until the old order is disposed of. Newspapers are sucking up all the oxygen in the room, and the startups won’t have room to flourish until newspapers get out of the way.” (Douglas McLennan, “Creative Destruction and The Critics”, diacritical)

McLennan does not directly address the question of how the general public will interact with arts writing, but his advocating for “the new thing” is of utmost importance during the transition from print to online arts coverage.  Online arts writing is exactly that: a new thing.  It is a new medium that is still as public (or more so) as printed communication tools.  In turn, the public interacts with online writing differently than the media of the past.

The metrics of this blog provide some insight into how and why people are visiting Peripheral Vision (PV) as an arts-related blog. The most popular entry I have (this entry has around 1000 page views; the next most popular has about 400) according to WordPress* is “Dangerous Commodity.” This entry has never had an external link within the art blogging community and was published almost one year ago, during a time when PV had a smaller audience.  According WordPress’s statistics on search engines that lead Internet surfers to PV, “Dangerous Commodity” is viewed almost exclusively because of an image of a purse designed by Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton posted within the text (it comes up as one of the primary images on a Google Image search for the bag).   Ultimately, an image is leading unsuspecting shoppers to a blog full of quotations from aesthetic and postmodern theory.

“Arts writing” as defined by a Google Image search.  Image from Mrs. Allen’s 3rd Grade Classroom, Davenport School District.

This instance of writing on the arts intersecting with another aspect of popular culture suggests that happening upon an art blog en route to purchasing a handbag is as possible as happening upon an art review in a newspaper en route to the business section.  However, the methods for “happening” upon something in the online realm are entirely different from the methods for doing so in printed media.  While a physical structure enables a sort of spontaneity in newspapers, the Internet has its own set of structures in place for such interactions to occur.  In the case of the “Dangerous Commodity” blog entry, an image search is the mechanism that enables shoppers to use Peripheral Vision as a resource for their image needs.  Similar effects can happen as a result of tagging, another search mechanism that exists only on the web.

I have my suspicions that most seeking a Louis Vuitton handbag on the Internet do not actually read Peripheral Vision during their visit to the page.  However, the second most popular entry on PV is “The Raft of the Medusa and the Potential of Prospect.1″, primarily due to the tagging of The Raft of the Medusa.  This gives more hope that web search mechanisms and other unique aspects of the Internet will lead to the increased visibility of arts writing within broader communities, as well as among the general public.

The new capabilities and potential uses for online-specific tools reinforce the importance of seeing online arts writing as a “new thing” not yet brought to full fruition.  Although it is of value to acknowledge the aspects of printed media that initially seem “lost” in online formats, it is more important to explore the creative offerings of online arts writing.  Most critically, online writing is a medium in its own right that requires rethinking and re-imagining how we define communication, in order to expand beyond what know from the past.

*WordPress is certainly not the most accurate metrics tool, but I am hoping it is mildly accurate in terms of relative statistics; for more on metrics and how they also must be redefined, read “Towards New Metrics of Success for On-line Museum Projects” by Sebastian Chan of the Powerhouse Museum

Filed under: contemporary art, critique, interdisciplinary, local, peripheral vision, popular culture, technology, visual culture   |  7 Comments
Tags: Art Blogs, art klatch, arts writing, communication, diacritical, image culture, image search, metrics, seattle, tagging, web 2.0, writing

The Auction as Wunderkammern: Michael Jackson, Nan Goldin, and Liberace

11Apr09

Michael Jackson’s entire life was published in seven auction catalogs, five of which are available for free public viewing on the internet.  The objects up for bidding are organized into simple disciplines: garden statuary, outdoor furniture, decorative arts, antiques, paintings, amusements, arcade games, “Disneyana”, career memorabilia.  Individual lots offer a surprising range of objects: framed Asian textiles, an Indiana Jones pinball machine,  a “Billie Jean” fedora, an American Music Award for “We Are the World,” patio furniture, “Original artwork by Macaulay Culkin,” a mutoscope from 1910, and life-size wax figures of Jackson himself.

Julien’s Auction catalogue for the Collection of Michael Jackson.  Image: Shaan Kokin/Julien’s Auctions; from The Guardian.

In Paris, Nan Goldin put her own trove of curiosities up for sale (via MAN and Modern Art Obsession).  Her dildo is the most talked-about object of the more modest 25 lots (Jackson’s auction includes over 1,000), but Goldin’s collection also presents a fascinating range of objects; ciabachrome prints by the artist, taxidermy pigeons, nineteenth century European medallions, and  intricate pieces of twentieth century Dutch furniture are among the most noteworthy.

“Deux Pigeons Naturalises”, from Nan Goldin auction, image from Christies.

Browsing through the digital pages of the auction catalogs, I was struck immediately by the rawness of these collections.  Although Jackson’s auction is grouped categorically, for the most part the objects are presented in a haphazard way.  A fairly classical piece of American furniture entitled “Victorian Cheval Mirror” is one page away from the very 90s-stylized (and strange) Playmates for a Lonely Child painting by David Nordahl.

Although formal curation plays a role in many personal collections, most still represent the dynamic nature of the human personality; objects likely to be considered a judgment lapse if found in a museum will still be collected by an individual, for reasons such as ample funds to purchase frivolously and the desire to express identity through objects.  Institutional collections, on the other hand, are expected to represent a specific mission and cannot be purchased ”on a whim.”

Celebrity collections such as Jackson’s and Goldin’s have an interesting appeal when put up for auction because their display is commodity-driven: we see them as a full collection that has not been edited for a specific audience or integrity (although it seems plausible in Jackson’s case the collection was edited for PR purposes).  In this absence of curation during a time when “curating” is highly valued (I recently saw a box of various eyeshadow colors that attributed the combination to a “curator”), the online auction catalogs of Michael Jackson and Nan Goldin can evoke the classic wunderkammern, or curiosity cabinet, from which museums originated.

Lawrence Weschler reconsiders the concept of wonder in his book on the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder.  When discussing curiosity cabinets with Director Emeritus of the Getty John Walsh, Weschler notes Walsh’s response:

“… in the earlier collections [wunderkammern], you had the wonders of God spread out there cheek-by-jowl with the wonders of man, both presented as aspects of the same thing, which is to say the Wonder of God.’” (61)

Although there is much to be learned through thoughtful juxtapositions and displays of objects, there are also certain truths revealed when seemingly unlike but equally fascinating objects end up together within a single space.  One of the best museums to experience this effect is the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas.  Although Liberace famously plotted his museum’s existence for the later portion of his career, going through the organization’s two sites (both within the same strip mall) was similar to perusing the auctions of Jackson and Goldin.  All three collections contain overly elaborate furniture scattered among representations of their respective careers and personally distinct objects.  Seeing Jackson’s extreme use of rhinestones and crystals in his performance clothing beside his candelabras, ornate pianos, self-designed limousines and unusual decorative pieces was particularly reminiscent of walking through Liberace’s belongings.

Jacket from Michael Jackson’s Victory Tour (1984), Image: photograph by Shaan Kokin/Julien’s Auctions; from The Guardian.

Although going through such collections may initially seem more comparable to reading Us Weekly than experiencing a meaningful mediation on wonder, Dave Hickey found substantial insight into American culture and authenticity through Liberace’s objects:

“Everything that Liberace created or caused to be created as a function of his shows or of his showmanship (his costumes, his cars, his jewelery, his candelabra, his pianos) shines with a crisp, pop authority.  Everything created as a consequence of his endeavor (like the mega-rhinestone) exudes a high-dollar egalitarian permission–while everything he purchased out of his rising slum-kid appetite for “Old World” charm and ancien regime legitimacy (everything “real,” in other words) looks unabashedly phoney. (“A Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz”, Air Guitar 53)

The Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, NV.

Michael Jackson and Liberace are certainly distinct in terms of how they have impacted popular culture and mainstream America.  Furthermore, many consider Jackson to be the last true megastar of popular music before digital formats changed mass music consumption dramatically.  I find myself wondering what would be revealed about Michael Jackson’s America were his collection to remain as it was at Julien’s Auctions when it arrived in the 10 semi trucks: an unlabeled, unsorted feast for the curious.

Filed under: art theory, authenticity, commodity, excess, interdisciplinary, peripheral vision, popular culture, visual culture   |  2 Comments
Tags: air guitar, auction, auction catalog, authenticity, curation, curiosity, dave hickey, display, lawrence weschler, liberace, liberace museum, michael jackson, mr. wilson's cabinet of wonder, nan goldin, objects, popular culture, rhinestones, wonder, wunderkammern

Mr. Peanut and the Imaginary Mayor

24Mar09

Dan Savage’s recent post on Slog announcing the possibility of his running for mayor of Seattle couldn’t help but evoke this image in my mind:

Mr. Peanut, artist Vincent Trasov, image by Bob Strazicich, from Megaphone: Vancouver’s Street Paper

I unexpectedly met the Mr. Peanut suit from Vincent Trasov and John Mitchell’s 1974 Vancouver mayoral campaign at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria about two years ago.  After moving from the deflated costume to a small screen showing black and white footage of a debate in which Mr. Peanut hand-wrote his responses (his entire campaign was executed in silence) I recall being struck by the immediacy of Mr. Peanut’s presence as a form of living art.  As Western Front Society’s website explains, William S. Burroughs endorsed Mr. Peanut with a most poignant statement:

“Since the inexorable logic of reality has created nothing but insoluble problems, it is now time for illusion to take over. And there can only be one illogical candidate: Mr. Peanut.” (via The Western Front)

Although Mr. Peanut ran his campaign in Canada, in retrospect, it is difficult to avoid seeing the work in light of the resignation of Richard Nixon and the surrounding events the same year.  Baudrillard identifies Watergate as a primary example of the final stage in the transformation from image to simulacrum in essay “Simulacra and Simulacrum.”  He notes,

“Watergate tend[s] towards scandal as as means to regenerate a moral and political principle, towards the imaginary as a means to regenerate a reality principle in distress.” (Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Second Edition 176)

The absurdity of a non-speaking commercial mascot (or pure simulacrum) running for a government office resonated with 3.4% of Vancouver’s voters during Mr. Peanut’s race.  However, I do not think a reality principle necessarily regenerated (in the United States, at least) between 1974 and the present.

There is a similarly absurd aspect to a mayoral election that lacks meaningful competition and representation, so perhaps a Gay Sex Scandal is less a simulacrum than the Watergate Scandal and a 24-hour monorail proposal relates more directly to the actualities of politics than Seattle’s other options.

Filed under: art theory, exhibition, performance art, peripheral vision   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: baudrillard, dan savage, john mitchell, mayor, mr. peanut, performance art, seattle, simulacra, vancouver, vincent trasov, watergate