contemporary monkey

Felix Gonzales Torres, "Untitled", aka flaccid light bulb thingy

“In 1992, he commenced a series of strands of low-watt white lightbulbs, which he strung along walls or vertically, from ceilings.  Alluding to purity, spirituality, and enlightenment, these delicate and flaccid garlands, which willfully surrender to the forces of gravity, are also a campy commentary on the phallic underpinnings of numerous Minimalist creations, particularly Dan Flavins’ rigid light sculptures.”

Um, OK…get much sleep last night?

If you want to get to know the inner workings of someone, the part that allows you to walk in their shoes,  take them to a museum and make them stare at the most inexplicable art piece on the property.

Dan Flavin's electric rods of...sensual-ness-ity-ish?

It’s a difficult job, art analysis.  It’s what binds the middle-men of writers, critics, PR hacks, gallery marketing assistants, museum curators, and most confused art insiders charged with the Herculean effort of decanting contemporary art.  In the end, nearly all share the same results: irrelevance, confusion, disorientation, muddiness, bewilderment  If nothing else, they’re a consistent lot.

I think the quote above was written by someone aching to forget last night’s experience of one-too-many rigid phallic “sculptures”?  Placing the comment back in context - if that’s still possible, because, well, we’re all now thinking about rigid light sculptures - it originates from the Guggenheim Museums’ web site identifying an installation from the works of Felix Gonzales-Torres called Untitled (Arena), 1993.  Gonzales-Torres was considered a pioneer for what was “the next ism” in the 1990s: Relational Aesthetics.  Relational, in that you and a community of people like you as viewers, are creators of the artwork, along with the artist.  In Untitled (Arena), 1993, it works like this: there you are, with a friend that you dragged along to the museum, and who probably didn’t really want to be there in the first place.  Instructions are given for you and your new partner to dance within the confines of the “flaccid garland” of low-wattage light bulbs.  At the time the Guggenheim show took place, in 1993, a walkman was available with dual headphones so the two of you could keep time without looking like goofy white people.

Anyway, that’s Relational Aesthetics, and the point made by Gonzales-Torres was to participate.  His art has absolutely nothing to do with comparing it to a previous, minimalist artist whose chosen medium was fluorescent light tubing.  I know, I know, contemporary art is personal, so maybe someone does see a relation to another artist, and can visualise the comparison of rigid v. flaccid.  But doesn’t that make the Guggenheim complicit in adding more smoke into the fog bank of contemporary art?

On the other hand, it’s OK for you and I to take a guess at meaning, because we’re not art professionals.  According to the Relational Aesthetics people, we’re artists, and we add meaning to objects.  Any creation found in a MOMA, SFMOMA, COMA or even OKLAHOMA was set forth by the artists’ hand, but now it’s our turn.  We don’t need a referee from the Guggenheim to witness the man hug of artist to artist.  It’s our turn to attach some twisted, shape-shifting, amorphous meaning to the still-oozing object/painting/creature we see before us, and hopefully we don’t embarrass ourselves on verbalization.  If the artwork that is currently furrowing your brow says to you, “Ah, clearly  a canonical correlation via plasticity between the Manson family and Paris Hilton,” well that’s fine by me.  It’s probably a passive aggressive tendency with a side order of Reaction Formation, but good for you.  Whoa, look at the time, let’s pick this up next week.  That’ll be £100 Bubba.  Please pay the museum guard on your way out.

Art, if you haven’t noticed, doesn’t pretend to know boundaries. I’m pretty sure it couldn’t find them if it had night-vision goggles, taped up with sonar-enhanced earplugs, connected to Scoville Chili Pepper Heat Index tongue extensions.  The common law of physics that applies to everything else we know, anything within the upper limit of the planet’s atmosphere, is just a bothersome, trifling annoyance for art.  Art doesn’t adhere to science, doesn’t care about it, doesn’t bother listening to it.  Or does it?

The other world, Science Inc., seems to play the game nicely.  The unambiguous world of science throws off a division of itself called Theoretical Physics.  Scientists who are Theoretical Physicists are the comedians of their dull, pragmatic, un-humorous industry.  Forget what you hear about popular stage comedians, these wacky revolutionaries are truly our comic geniuses.  They think of bizarre realities, and try to interpret what life would be like inside this unconventional city.  What’s the distance of the British coastline?  Infinite, say theoretical scientist, because the more you magnify the rough edges, the more undiscovered gaps will appear.  How about days with 25 hours instead of the earthbound, rotationally stuck, 24 hours we usually complain about not having enough of.  We could simply ignore the bothersome planetary rotation thing and make up our own arbitrary rules and abide by a new, albeit flaky, order.  We’d get to see fireworks in the middle of the day.

the art of science

Sean Carroll is one such Theoretical Physicist at California Institute of Technology.  What he thinks about, he admits, isn’t science, and some of it isn’t even theory.  It’s just a different direction in which to take the messy business of reality.  His new book, “From Eternity to Here” wonders why it is that we can remember the past, but can’t remember the future.  In space, we can go up or down, left or right, forward and backward, but time is a dimension with a one way street.  The arrow of time, despite what Hollywood tells us, goes only forward.  It never moves toward yesterday.  Even heavies like Newton and Galileo wondered this, and suggested that we could remember the future, if we only knew everything there was to know.  In theory, the events in our half-baked, unhinged blue marble of a planet could be determined because we’d know fully why things happen in the order that they do.  Say you lose your wallet every twelve years.  You’d plan on carrying no money and credit cards in your wallet on the day you were due for a shocker.  On the other hand, it wouldn’t be a shocker because you would have been prepared for it.  Oh this damned warping of space-time is so confusing!  Someone get Michael J. Fox on the phone.

But you see what I mean about the art of science.  Science at least gives the sinister “other” a go.  A close example from the Art Camp is Anne Truitt, who creates minimalist sculpture.  To sum up her work in a brutish and not very kind phrase, think of very colourful, tall-as-a-woman, square-ish, wooden posts.  Art Forum claims that photographs don’t do the pieces justice, but as I try not to listen to the pretension of Art Forum, I’ve included one of her pieces here.  Art Forum also warns of danger when categorizing Truitt’s style as Minimalist, because, well, categories are for doormats like the scientists, and not for the gallant artist. They don’t like leaving their safe houses, these artists.  Struggling onward into the wooly world of science, however, is Anne Truitt’s concept of life as a sculpture.  Not a life as a sculptor, but that which sculpting begets - the mysterious 3D spawn of artistic invention.

pillars of the community

One morning, while standing in the front room of her house, probably wondering, as all artists do, just what the hell she was thinking graduating with an art degree, Truitt was focused on passing shadows as the sun continued its formidable and inevitable slipping into sunrise.  To paraphrase Truitt’s quote from Art Forum, it is we people, as sculptures, who stand firm, while the sun continues forward.  In that sense, we disarm time; and while we’re not subject to it, we are illuminated by it.

OK, a neat trick, you’re thinking, and we should applaud the metaphysical breakthrough for art in escaping its earthly white cube, and into the chilling cosmos of scientific law.  Scientifically speaking, of course, what she said is not true, but it lends itself to thoughtful poetry, and certainly useful to Truitt as a devisor of art.  You can imagine that a stationary person waiting patiently for a bus, might notice more of life, and therefore time passing, than someone running for that same bus, falling down, spilling a double latte on themselves, with the stationary person not helping at all by laughing loudly.  By the way, this didn’t really happen to me anytime, ever.

decode: oneDotZero

Surely, this means War!  The Victoria and Albert Museum, the traditional bearer of arch conservatism in London, the safe-house for fine arts and antiques, has fired a Victorian cannonball at the young, art-drunk pirates across the river at Tate Modern.  So, it is with pressed trousers and starched, button-down shirt, I managed a clean and not so proletariat taxi to the West End.  My initial reason for a V&A visit was a view of the new Renaissance Wing, otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought to visit the Big Shed of Old Man Art.  At the front door, however, I was spirited in a different direction by the V&A’s latest design show, “Decode” which is a collaboration with the digital arts force: oneDotZero.  So, in the forefront of the V&A’s normally dusty, historical collection, was a lively contemporary show, which, normally, is released on DVD, to a select group of art futurists, technology enthusiasts and general digit heads like myself.  How very dare they assume righteous enthusiasm for the art of our time!

I say war, but really I mean sneaky, underhanded. tunnel-building, get ‘em while they’re not looking, volley of contemporary art flung mildly (West End style) in the face of the young thugs on the south side of the Thames.  While Tate Modern were busy building massive empty steel boxes, reminiscing on mid-century Pop sentimentalism, and gearing up for a 100 year, look-back on the glorious days of de Stijl, those ruthless ninjas at the V&A caught us off guard with their own digital stealth.  What happened to knowing one’s station in life?

digital use of non-digital media

These sorts of easily-consumed shows are usually a museum’s amuse-bouche for the main course further inside, so I wasn’t expecting complex or deep.  Watching others wander in and out of “Decode”, however, was like watching stag and hen crowds coming leaving a Broad Street bar.  While none of the exhibits were overtly deep, all were engaging enough to divert attention away from other sections of the museum (if not other museums).  Every Tom, Dick and Harry, not to mention Jane and Joe Bloggs, seemed to be occupied with a sense of joy and play.  As regular V&A attendees know, merriment is a word that is rarely put to use in an official brochure.  But then, such human impertinence is invariably closely shadowed by its arch enemy: The Fun Cops.

William Wiles, in Icon magazine says of the show, “Decode is a lot of fun, but is it anything more than that?  There’s plenty of sideshow candyfloss (cotton candy to Americans)  - where’s the design nutrition?”  He says that because people in attendance are having a rollicking morning interacting with the exhibits, and apparently that isn’t allowed in his particular land of art.  Children, mind your manners.  Need I remind you that you are a guest of the Victoria and Albert Museum?  Tut-tut.

Wiles goes on to say that, “the text refers more to art than to design… But really the work is in a new field; digital crafts.  It’s the 21st century equivalent of William Morris wallpaper.”  So what if it is?  Is van Gogh the 19 century equivalent of William Morris because he was adept at working paint?  Is Michelangelo the 16th century equivalent because he saw his final figure in the marble before arming himself with hammer and chisel?  Craft is only dull if the final product is dull, and as far as I could tell, nobody in Decode was laughing and cavorting from dullness.

From mid-20th century, most art was created with one person in mind: the artist.  Toward the end of the 20th century, about the same time the world wide web broke down social barriers, Relational Art synthesized what was already known by the technologists.  If you don’t involve people, they’ll come anyway.  The V&A seems to understand this, and, every once in a while, reminds itself not to take itself too seriously.

Anyway, if sensing joy is a sign of candyfloss, then Anish Kapoor is the fast food captain of carnivals.  Most Kapoor exhibits draw a crowd of smiles and worthwhile chatter amongst the groundlings and commoners.  It doesn’t have to be cryptic, profound, or ironic.  Sometimes effective art simply makes a difference in people’s daily lives.  Otherwise, why do it?  More importantly, why engage with it?

lots to say, not enough wood planks

Let’s say you’re trundling along to work on British Rail on a weary weekday morning, about 8:30, pressed up as politely as you can, to your like-minded human brothers and sisters, and you’re counting the stops to your final destination because, well, you can only hold your breath for so long.  Just as you’re quietly pronouncing judgement on the other sardines in the tin, out burst the words of wit from the mouths of one or two of your previously targeted victims.  Something random comes up in a conversation, like, “Why don’t they just do their job and fire me?”  Or possibly, “Standing at 30 mph will be the fastest I move all morning”.  But more probably, “Is your hand supposed to be there?”

And what happens, do you write these things down?  No, you don’t.  And you know why you don’t write these trophies down?  Because you’re not an artist (you’re on the 8:30 after all, while the whole of the artist-class is still happily dreaming during that avoidable part of the day).  Writing down, or even painting down, life’s found easter eggs is the job of the curious and enterprising artist….once they wake up, that is.

Take, for example, Bob and Roberta Smith, who are in this case, one artist/person.  Already the Human Resources people would have a problem with him…her…whomever, so the evidence of pure artist-hood is unmistakable.  Bob and Roberta Smith paint signs of anecdotes and slogans heard from the rest of the world.  Bob (to avoid confusion and lengthy copy, let’s use the masculine gender for reference) isn’t even a very good sign writer - he makes every mistake in the graphic design bible, such as not enough contrast between foreground and background, using enough type fonts to employ a London agency creative staff for ten projects, and the use of unwanted, cheap and not very “brand friendly” materials (banged up 2×4 planks, joined together).

He’s prolific, Bob, with his capturing the moment on oil and wood. At Beaconsfield Art Gallery, Bob’s finished up a year-long effort of sign-painting and sloganeering.  Beaconsfield is located in the Nine Elms part of London, and in their specific case, also physically supporting the 8:30 British Rail every weekday, along with every other late-running train that travels over the gallery.  Beaconsfield is 50% gallery, 50% cafe, filled with 100% wise-cracking artist customer base.  After grabbing a coffee, and feeling the sneer of the natives, one must endeavor to find the artist’s work.  In a first floor, disused theatre, about the size of a grammar school venue for a Christmas play, Bob’s made nine panels nailed (probably with rusty nails) to the wall, which are all part of a larger written story.  The artist has copied the content from a Guardian columnist who specializes in the tennis scene .  Steve Bierley was, at the time, on a somewhat alien assignment, covering something he normally doesn’t cover: art.  In his interview with the artist Louise Bourgeois, he summed up the difference between his familiar subject of sport, and art.  “You look at sport, you think about sport.  You look at art, and you think about yourself.”  A nice gem.  This sloganeering media might have some legs after all.

In another room which Beaconsfield has labeled “the Arches”  because it inhabits a trestle’s arch under the rails, Bob appears to be having a boot sale.  About a hundred signs are planted at every angle, on various made up pedestals, including staged on ladders, chairs, desks, and anything else happened to be in Bob’s way at the time.  Each sign itself is really not much to get frothy about, or even particularly noteworthy.  But painting slogans on lots of signboards, displaying them all together in a ramshackle under-the-tracks, hideout is something else.  Audibly layered with discordant and random, percussive music, played by Bob of course, the physical space you’re in becomes the art.  If there were comfy sofas and bar tables, this would be a vibey place for an after-work drink-up.  Maybe all misunderstood artist should think this way.  If an art piece means absolutely nothing to 102 % of the world, just make loads of similar pieces and amass a treasure chest of glory.  Even if it doesn’t work, think of all the cool party places we’ll have.  When I win the lottery, I’m going to buy one of these poor man’s cafe and art bar.  Forget the diamonds and flashy cards, think of all the strange and weird friends you could hang out with in your new art space?

olde worlde graffiti(e)

Some art galleries are better designed than others.  Indeed some are so well designed, they’re more appealing than the art presented inside.  Take the London’s Saatchi Gallery.  When it first opened, I wasn’t impressed much with the random pieces that Charles Saatchi called art, but the building’s flooring was visually and vastly impressive.  In fact, the Saatchi’s front desk at the time provided brochures featuring the flooring maker.  It was probably the most memorable thing to come out of the Saatchi Gallery since the Big Room of Oil.

The Wallace Collection in central London is another example.  The collection itself seldom gets any press.  “Hidden gem” is the tag usually attached to it, Odd Bag of Camp might be another phrase for it, but either way, it’s not always on one’s tour of contemporary art galleries and museums in London.  But as Damien Hirst has just moved in, art lovers are suddenly interested.  The Wallace Collection is a hodgepodge of bombastic Rococo style furniture, mantle pieces, French porcelain, and other collectibles, most from the 17th and 18th century.  If you’re interested in modern or contemporary art, you’d hate this stuff.  More than Jeff Koon’s basketballs, you’d hate this stuff

The gallery is filled with olde worlde trinkets that appeal mostly to 80 year old grandmothers and 8 year old granddaughters.  To the rest of us, it’s the Las Vegas of the art museum world.  It’s not my cup of tea, but to house so much of this eye candy in one place is impressive.  Whomever Wallace is, his or her collection is exhaustively consistent…and eye splitting.  I give it due credit, though, as it’s much more focused than the family collectors featured in Art + Auction magazine, who seem to hammer together a variety of styles and periods of history into one collection.  With the Wallace Collection, there is no doubt: the older and bolder, the better.

Dutch + Bacon + Hirst = Dull

Which is why the Wallace Collection is a peculiar place for Damien Hirst’s new attempt at creating art through his newfound friends, the paintbrush and the canvas.  Possibly he sees The Wallace as an inspiration to historical standards and now’s the time to shed the burden of putrefying animal carcasses.  Every one of his paintings, however, is a direct retrograde of somebody or something else: Francis Bacon’s chalk lines, 1990’s digital compositing, Dutch historical vanitas symbolism.  Running out of people to copy, Hirst even remakes himself using his own shark jaws, dots, and skulls from previous sculptures.  The whole scene felt more like an art school critique room than any sort of mature work by an established artist.  I guess that’s Damien, done.

Beyond the paintings, however, and much more importantly, is a Hirst contribution more profound, more substantial, and ultimately more significant to the art world.  In his effort to hang his canvases, Hirst has had to hang fresh wallpaper behind them.  The silvery, silky Victorian fabric fits the style of the interior perfectly, but also introduces a modern take on an old idea.  I found the wallpaper to be more visually absorbing than any of Hirst’s work.  It’s a damn shame most of the fabric is covered by someone’s mediocrity, but I suppose that’s the price of seeing new art.  We all have to do our bit by enduring the desperate in order to get at the quality.  I don’t care what Hirst does in the future, but whatever it is, he can show his next exhibition in my apartment if he needs a venue.  (Note to Hirst: the interior style of my apartment is mostly modern minimalism, and the wall colour could do with a little warming up.)