contemporary monkey

Palais de Tokyo: where caring goes to die

Thank the Art Gods on High for someone in the universe who is watching over each and every one of us gallery hustlers and museum freaks who just don’t have enough time in the day. Enough time in the day to pore over, wrestle through, sneer at and wonder through as much contemporary art as our brains can digest (if that’s what brains could actually do). It can’t all be absorbed by one man on a stiff budget in an average lifetime of wine, art and song. No one person can do it all; gallery-hop like they’re an escaped banker, buying airline tickets like its beer on a Friday afternoon. For that, we are hereby and forever in your debt, kind sir or madam, M. Curator, for what is probably the least impressive collection of art in the known and unknown universe: the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. You have killed my soul. Prepare to die.

I give you, the fellow art traveller, full permission to strike it off your list of places to see before you leave this earth. I can confidently state that the Palais de Tokyo is not part of any travel diary with the words “un-missable, must-have, once in a lifetime”. Or, if it must remain on your bucket list, surely its just and true place is behind the largest sisal twine ball in Darwin, Minnesota. It might then all make sense, this crazy life of yours. Ball of string: check. OK then, we’re off to Paris for the one cultural dustball that will finally put me six feet under. Who wants whiskey?

Having just returned from visits to both the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville De Paris and the Palais de Tokyo (they are separated by only a cafe - of course they are, it’s Paris). The difference couldn’t be more stark. French roast on one side, decaf on the other. On the Musee d’Art Moderne side: a thriving art hive of busy public-ness, of well-intentioned learning for French and non-French alike, of well-lined walls and floor space with, well, modern and contemporary art. Administered by friendly locals throughout (are we still in France?), I am amongst the coherently curated thread of an argument, an idea, a point posited by the curator, using pieces from the Musee d’Art Moderne’s collection and non-collection alike. Fortune has looked favourably upon me, for I have used my depreciating roll of money wisely. I shall eat this evening.

Musee d'Art Moderne de Paris: warning, contains more life

On the other hand, and the other side of the cafe, there’s the Palais de Tokyo. A static storehouse of forgotten and rotting art pieces, watched over by what appear to be three former bank security guards on holiday; standing, smoking, chatting with each other in France’s most ill-fitted suits. They look more at home inside a Metro underground station.

And of course, there’s the art - sort of. While the programme title promises a solitary thought by way of its title, “Dynasty”, the truth is the pieces appear to be more “We give up, see what you can do with it”. The video and wall lighting installations are either not working, or possibly that’s the point of the show: the ‘dynasty’ of 21st century western values, slumped to an unworkable heap of electrical cords that someone has pulled from the wall. Nobody is even trying here. Alongside the pieces are the lazy curator’s old friend, the unhelpful and completely worthless label, “Untitled. Mixed Media. 2010″. Gee thanks, now I completely understand where I am in the universe of modern man. The continual struggle for meaning and identity.

The Palais de Tokyo itself, the building that is, not the vacuous anti-life inside, is a promising space. It’s not polished, it’s not shaped like a former power station, and it’s not designed by a 21st century starchitect. It’s simply a beat-to-hell space, and a very large one at that. Unfortunately, the space is so large it reveals the weakness of whomever is supposed to be upholding the responsibility of public service. Unless you count driving foot traffic over to the Musee d’Art Moderne as a civic duty. Which, in this case, I’m willing to support.

Primary competition for the average museum

Lately, the over-busy mega-populated, push-to-shove city of London has been overloaded with single artist shows at the Tates; Arshile Gorky and Van Doesburg at the Big Smokestack, Henry Moore at Old Tate.  After being blitzed through the eyeballs with a supermarket full of Pop artists a few months ago at Tate Modern, it’s a relief to have a quiet rendezvous with an individual artist while nobody’s looking.  The solo artist exhibits are especially useful, not to mention more interesting and comprehensible, for those who have few chances to visit museums and galleries because, well, the pub is just that much closer to work.  But hear me out, denizens of the Lamb And Flag.  Discovering the early life of the artist, along with their first works, their collection of weird and debased friends, and the scrapes with the law and/or disease that accompany a lifestyle so destitute, is not a million miles away from the danger inside The George and Dragon.  If nothing else, it’s a mysterious window into a fighter’s life.

The Pop Art show presented earlier by Tate Modern, by comparison, was merely one big jug of Kool-Aid after another.  While enjoyable in the way that someone from Texas might enjoy a gun show, weaving the web between Andy Warhol and the copycat artists who followed, doesn’t produce much in the way of historically memorable moments.  It was just a big day of fun with colour, noise and packaged goods…and a reminder you have to buy more stuff on the way home.  At the Pop Art show you get a sense of the life and times of the population (albeit with an ironic and scolding attitude).  At the same show, however, you don’t get a sense of the artists and their motivations.  I could have been in Las Vegas and met with the same, quasi-depth of philosophical arguments.  Honestly.  I have those sorts of friends.

Arshile Gorky: a man without name and age

With the single artist shows, however, it feels like someone’s told you an important story about someone you thought you knew enough of already.  It’s like reading the obituaries, but without the gloomy mandate.  Did you know that nobody knows Arshile Gorky’s age when he passed away?  Even he didn’t know what year he was born.  His mother died of starvation without, apparently, telling him his age, and he didn’t think to look it up before producing a passport.  As professional, Gorky was fierce in his erudite education, and copied the modern masters proficiently.  Left with few choices, Gorky’s work shows evidence of Picasso’s point of view, the bioforms of Joan Miro, and the colour composition of Cezanne.  At one point, however, he found his individual voice, and became what he’s know as today: the link between the European Moderns and America’s Abstract Expressionists.

Theo van Doesburg was rule-committed...

Opposite Gorky on the third floor at Tate Modern, was the mammoth exhibition of the European Avant Garde in the 1920’s and 30’s.  This exhibit is easily an afternoon of standing on your poor feet, searching for the nearest bar just to have a time out, before recovering with an obvious nap.  Theo Van Doesburg seems to be at the centre of not only the de Stijl movement, but, as I discovered, secreted amongst the Dadaists as well.  That probably explains the largess of the show.

...until he wasn't.

Van Doesburg was also at the apex of the moment in time when art turned into design.  He was inclined to be rule-bound on form, line, and colour.  That is, he was rule-bound until he wasn’t, like when he used the name I K Bonset to write for Dadaist publications.  At the time, in the years after the apocalyptic First World War, re-creation of a better world was in the air.  In the re-build, or Population 2.0 as I’m sure some over-zealous PR person must have wanted to call it, modern life was clipping along swiftly, providing wide berth for artists to not only create art, but to imagine new architecture, furniture, visual graphics, films, even music.  Entire design industries owe at least a slight nod to Van Doesburg and his avant-gardian pals.

Henry Moore relaxing after work

Finally, in Henry Moore at Old Tate, a broad mix of materials is presented with impressive results.  Moore could have been the multimedia specialist of his day.  It’s not often when a sculpture artist has a large collection in one place, and in this case, it provided a sense of variety in materials.  Having that sort of well-explored, primal education is like learning to make ice cream by trying out every possible flavour.  Think how good you would be at making ice cream.  Think how big you would be.  Maybe that’s how we got to Pop Art in the first place.  It’s all making sense.

Birmingham's IKON Gallery: our lifeline to contemporary visual culture

Birmingham: England’s second largest city.  It’s a colossal second to London in population, cultural energy, and decent pubs.  The distance between the largest and second-largest, in population, is the equivalent of New York City and Austin, Texas.  Birmingham, however, is ground zero for the industrial revolution, heavy metal music, and the Balti.  The intrepidness of its history in the muscular shadow of London speaks volumes about its local pride and pluck.  At least that’s what I told myself while walking to the Ikon Gallery for a small, but important, gathering of art folk.

Birmingham is England’s Pittsburgh in that pretense doesn’t reveal itself here.  So with a handful of optimism and some hopeful yearning, I attended a local meeting of art-minded people to discuss the topic of a new contemporary art building to be built in Birmingham.  “Imagining Museums” was held at what is Birmingham’s lifeline to current visual culture: the Ikon Gallery.  The Ikon isn’t the Tate Modern, but it does a remarkable job informing us locals with contemporary visual culture.  Without it, we could easily be stuck listening to Pink Floyd.

Unfortunately, this is still England, and to ask British professionals to devise an image of the future is like making the request to meet in Hells’ conference room of getting no-where fast.  On the precipice loomed a fiery fur ball of committee meetings waiting to be gathered, rolled and spat out.

the IKON gallery; small but concentrated

Initial panel discussions from other global museum directors provided an immediate spark, with vital prompts to go for a new type of museum “while you have the chance”.  Great, I thought, this is going to be a blistering exchange.  After the administrators had their say, however, the exchange was thrown over to (mostly) the locals.  That’s when things turned a bit hazy and grey.

Having only lived in Birmingham for a year, but in England for five, it’s clear to me that Birmingham has an advantage that most British cities don’t.  All sorts of immigration happened, and is happening, in Birmingham, and to ignore the obvious is like wondering if there are any gay men in my home city of San Francisco.  Pakistanis, Caribs, Africans together make up 27% of the population (according to Wikipedia), and that number doesn’t include mixed race.  Amassing contemporary art from these communities, mixed with the current Anglo Saxon offerings, yields an understanding amongst nations that other cities can’t, or won’t, provide.  A new museum that includes nations united could eliminate the need for a British National Party, or any other narrow-minded, political group.

There was a push amongst the group of 50-60 art professionals to canvass the community, to ask them directly what they wanted.  Some of the international administrators were broadly suspicious of that idea.  What you don’t want is entertainment, warned one.  Perhaps give them a wizened choice, recommended another.  This sort of holier-than-though thought process is what gets the art community into trouble.  They turn super-nanny on us.

I’m not sure where this is all going, but as pie-in-the-sky meetings go, a room bursting with animation to discover the new world this wasn’t.  Regardless, there is a palpable (albeit at the low hum end of the audio range) local push for contemporary art in Britain’s second largest city, and with any luck, we might just get something that reflects it.

“…It provides a means for understanding the contemporary world, and, potentially, for making it a better place.”  You’d be mistaken if you thought this ambitious phrase was lifted from an exhibition programme at a contemporary art gallery, or an expensive brochure at a museum of modern art.

It would be a good guess though.  People in the art world certainly throw that kind of thing around like it’s part of the badge, and it sounds like a focused aim of contemporary art.  Those That Know Best proclaim that contemporary art confronts us with purpose, and questions our angles and viewpoints in daily life.  Contemporary art tackles the tough problems with a smack on the head and makes us think about our choices.  It’s supposed to change our perception, make us think differently, get us to move in a new direction.  The position of contemporary art in our lives, however, is being usurped by a a new leader.  Ladies and Gentlemen of The Arts and Letters, Distinctive Guests, and Biennial Buddies, you’ve just been lapped.

The quote above was taken from the About Us section of The Design Museum’s web site.  Contemporary Art, over the last century, has had its chance to make friends and influence enemies.  Instead of addressing the everyday man, however, it chose to address the marginal few - in many cases, the very few - those that have bags of money, or the simple gullibility to create a market in a vacuum.  Contemporary Art has created it’s own No Girls Allowed Club.

Most of us have a bigger commitment to design than we do contemporary art.  Not that we haven’t tried the latter.  But design is more affordable, available, and intelligible.  It solves problems, makes us aware of ourselves, forces us to act, makes our heart beat faster.  It becomes part of our personal statement to our fellow Earthlings and probably beyond.  Design is our individual and collective branding.  It builds network-like organisation across imaginary lines of religion, geography, politics, and arguably solves a lot of the world’s problems right there.  Two parliamentarians, or members of Congress, could easily throw verbal blows across the room, but they could just as easily be seen later in the day exchanging applications on their iPhone, or talking about the design of the city’s new symphony hall.

Contemporary art, on the other hand, struggles to get noticed.  I often ask this question of people I know or just meet: Do you understand contemporary art?  Close to everyone says no, but they certainly mean to comprehend it one day.  How many countries, religions, industries have that apologetical clause at the end of of a statement, they mean to.  It’s like flossing your teeth, or joining a gym.  We know it’s the right thing to do, and we’ve been meaning to for the longest time, but…

Contemporary Art goes out of its way to make enemies, to confound, confuse, berate, annoy, mis-fire, even put to sleep.  Very few of us are buying what they’re selling.  However, most of us can talk about Ferraris, iPods, Prada, great CD covers, well thought out gardens, art deco skyscrapers, the latest hair style, cool night clubs and modern restaurants with contemporary takes on French cuisine.  We can go on about skateboard graphics, impressive graffiti, luxurious handbags, sleek running shoes, even Italian inspired salt and pepper shakers.  And  we don’t have to own or experience any of them.  We’d be happy as Larry aspiring to a level of just talking about it over pints, or browsing over shelves.

Jennifer Northrop is the Director of Communications and Marketing at America’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.  Cooper-Hewitt is the American equivalent to the British Design Museum, only more thorough in history (they seem to like collecting there).  She had this to say about the 2009 National Design Awards, and the effects of design in our lives.

“Design is intriguing to the public,” says Jennifer Northrop, director of communications and marketing at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, “because design isn’t art.”

Ouch!

Birmingham's Water Works Tower

In the middle of a rare dead-level residential Birmingham are two narrow brick towers thrust into the sky, six floors in height, both called Water Works Towers.  Water works towers I’ve seen in other cities around the world are usually shaped like this, tall, narrow, mysterious, and I can’t figure out why.  I guess it’s compulsory that a water works tower is made to look like a fireman’s hose.

As it happens, this structure is the perfect void for an exhibit put on by the Ikon Gallery people, in a place that isn’t in the Ikon.  What’s more, the demonstration here is mostly audio.  The producer of the idea, Yukio Fujimoto is a Japanese conceptual artist working in sound, with an interest in how we humans hear (it’s already sounding like navel gazing, but stay with me).  This display is one of those rare times when conceptual art is more hit than miss.  This is not art considered to be inspirational, but after experiencing the show, I’m glad someone did it.  It’s such a little kid thing to do.

IT, is four floors of the waterworks building with over 1000 battery operated clocks ticking away in their own time universe.  Each clock is the same: cheap, small, square-shaped, black face, red hands that move with a stutter through each tick-tock.  Each of the floors is the same as well: small, concrete, 2 or 3 windows, hexagonal-shaped, about eight feet across. To get to each floor takes some mountain climbing expertise on narrowing stairs, but the constant ticking tells you that there really is only one way to go: UP.  It’s hard not to be curious.

probably 1000 clocks

I nearly missed the lone beating clock in the first room.  In fact I almost stepped on it.  Heavy breathing from the stair climb disguised the barely audible noise of the singular clock. Through cracks in the ceiling, however, I could make out the beating from the upper floors.  Floor 2 consisted of nothing but 10 clocks laid out in one line, while the third floor held a grid of 100 neatly aligned units, 10 x 10.  Finally the top, and last, floor incorporated 1000 of the now familiar boxes beetling away, lined up in as good a grid as you’re going to get inside a cramped tower room.  I learned later that the cheery young staff safely tucked away on the ground floor have to re-align the clocks every morning because each day the clocks push themselves around via the jerking movement of the second hand.

I wouldn’t call this time/ticking/audio experience necessarily inspirational; it doesn’t grip you with creative energy, but it’s a pretty cool thing to see nonetheless.  Maybe it does inspire you to be aware of yourself.  Regardless of the number of clocks vying for your attention, you could always make out a rhythm.  The gallery’s press release asserts that when you get to the top, the overwhelming number of clicking clocks results in a white noise of sound.  The release also insists that the clocks’ audible movement reminds us of our own lives ticking down to the ultimate end of our time.  I thought no such thing.  I wish there were a hundred floors more;  I’d love to hear what millions and billions of clocks sound like pressed into a limited space.  Yet another reason not to read the literature of galleries’ marketing departments before seeing or experiencing the work yourself.

If you linger at 1000 clock room for awhile longer, you’re also turned on to a treat of visual experience.  When you do that thing with your eyes by not staring at any one clock, like kids do when they begin to cross their eyes, your peripheral vision is obtusely aware of multiple second hands oscillating to their own beat.  It’s a little bit like standing in a room full of jumping beetles.  Don’t worry, I held myself back from stepping on anything, clock or beetle, in the top floor.

As I left the building, I was keenly aware of the environment where the tower finds itself, propelled out of its residential surroundings.  I was thinking it would be devastating to the neighbours if all 1,111 alarms were armed for the same time each morning.  Again, not inspirational, but I hope somebody does it.