contemporary monkey

As an artist - as a hungry, wanting, miserable-existing, low-rent-living, desperately seeking appreciation artist - wouldn’t you want to have maximum exposure so that any one of us buyers and lovers of art might catch on that you, well, exist?  More philosophically, if you have a showing of your work, and it lasts only one day, do you, or the art itself, really exist?

In the November issue of Art Forum (the leading industry publication, but really the advertising brochure for the art gallery world), we find ourselves an artist committed to producing multiple pieces, only to show them for one, single, here today, gone tomorrow, 24 hour period.  This mysterious exhibit, called Dia de Frutas y Nubes Negras (Day of Fruits and Black Clouds) showed (past tense) a series of empty wooden crates devised by Gabriel Sierra, hanging about the whole of the otherwise empty art space.  His inspiration for the empty crates are taken from a broader idea, the success of which is not worth debating, mostly because nobody saw them.  It is, however, worth pointing out, and reflecting upon, and possibly even to remedy the situation for, the myriad and colourful ways contemporary artists seem to find for lodging bullet firmly in foot.

Gabriel Sierra: Artist for a Day

What’s more, for our intrepid artist above, the one day opening wasn’t enough of a operational hurdle.  The show was held in an area between the centre of Bogata, Columbia and a nearby slum.  For all of us clairvoyant enough to be there on this day of magic, the signage on the outside of the artist-run studio was nearly non-existent (hmmm,  “artist run” you say, perhaps a hint for what went wrong).  Above the art space doorway was one of the artist’s pieces signaling to all passers-by for what lay inside; like a flag for the secret tribe of the world’s least ambitious carpenters.  This was art determined to be ignored.

But let us not cast stones in the house of glass.  Perhaps our artist friend could do with aid from my favourite subject,  “Mathematics for Artists”.  For this second chapter, I thought to help the poor lad out with a bit of logical instruction, in the hopes that other artists might learn from a brethren’s mistake.

KEY TO GRAPH

P = Population. Think of this number as people, animals, even plants that might want to see your show.  You want this number to be a large one.

T = Time. This is a number working against you.  Against all of us actually. This number will always increase, and rarely, if ever,  go backwards (even in the artist world).

The horizontal line has two important points: “o” for open, and “c” for close.  The distance between the two is the duration of your show.  If measured in days, you want this to be a big number; certainly bigger than one, as exemplified by our dauntless friend above.

The vertical axis has two points as well.  The lower one, “n” = nobody. This “n” happens to everyone, even a Jeff Koons or a Damien Hirst.  There has to be a nobody before the show opens; otherwise, it wouldn’t need opening.  The second point, “m” correlates with your new goal, and represents the multitude, or mob, if you like.  As time moves forward, your goal is to get more people to see your work.  That’s why you do, what you do.  This unpleasant, but indispensable “strategy” will greatly benefit your future, and help us out as well.

The third point on the horizontal axis, “r” represents the point in time that critical reviews are published in art magazines.  Reviews have nothing to do with adding more people to your visitor list.  In fact, nearly all reviews surface in the public pool of influence after shows have been closed.  Nobody knows why this is, but keep in mind that it doesn’t matter.  Critical reviews are to the artist, what a spatula is to an athlete: completely useless.

Commit this graphical image to memory and your success is nearly guaranteed.  All you have to do is produce original, thought-provoking art (a mathematical lesson for a later time).

Martin Kippenberger

Plowing through Adam Lindemann’s “Collecting Contemporary“, I ran across Martin Kippenberger, a German artist who died of liver cancer in 1997.  He was 44.  Hmmm, I wonder what his lifestyle was like?  On the Saatchi Gallery site, his life’s work is said to be prolific, mostly because he claimed that anything could be art.  As you might have noticed, ‘anything’ is exactly what the 1980’s were good at making and discarding, so the prospects for work were good for anyone with that sort of a philosophy.

Model Interconti

The more I read about him, the more I feel Martin Kippenberger was my kind of person.  He seemed to treasure pointing out the ridiculousness and gullibility of the art industry to take itself too seriously.  Particularly of his fellow artists.  Reminding them they were just as human as the everyday man, and working in the materialism of the 1980’s, Kippenberger  seemed to take every opportunity to poke the art world in the eye.  He worked in all sorts of media, but his ironic wit was sharp throughout.  Once he purchased a Gerhard Richter painting, which looked like the top of a coffee table, and made, well, a coffee table out of it.  He purchased a run-down gas station in Brazil, and named it after a Nazi War criminal.  He used a bar in Berlin to jam his paintings onto a side wall, after which he painted that very same wall as if it was a typical scene captured in the moment, preserved for art historians of the future to lavish praise on this “must be the most popular artist of the day”.  Kippenberger himself, brands himself; an early form of today’s famous for being famous “celebutantes”.  Why not.  At least Kippenberger had the talent as a painter of realism, the cheek to promote himself outrageously, and self-perception to know it was all a game anyway.  It was kind of sport for him, not art.

Paris Bar Berlin

The only problem I have with any of his work is that you have to know the inside joke.  It’s a lucky art lover who might accidently find him or herself with an appreciative gallerist, critic, or curator who might be good enough to let the audience in on the obscure stories.  Without which, the joke goes untold.  Maybe Kippenberger would find that interesting anyway.